Get Up: A 12-Step Guide to Recovery for Misfits, Freaks & Weirdos

This self-help book for the substance-abusing artistically—and atheistically—inclined is both a ringing endorsement of AA and a brilliant piece of literary performance with poetic and savagely funny insights. Spoken word artist Sinister—a self-professed “misfit” and recovering alcoholic and addict—celebrates sobriety and provides a methodical analysis of the 12-Step program interpolated with biting commentary (“The difference between the Bible and a Magic Eightball is that 400 years ago, you would've been burned at the stake for owning a Magic Eightball”) and encouragement that is, by turns, sincere (in particular a foray into why artists are so prone to addictions) and comic (“Finding Your Inner A-Team”). The book is a wild mixture of autobiography, philosophy, social criticism, pop culture and nuttiness: the consummate self-help book for those too cool for self-help books. Although the author occasionally veers uncomfortably close to glamorizing his addictions, his advice is sound, detailed and heartfelt. (Oct.)