Memorial Day marks opening weekend for many beaches in the US. This means a lot of people are breaking out their swimsuits and guiltily remembering that long forgotten New Year’s resolution to hit the gym more often.  But don’t fret, while the weather warms up you've still got time to find your workout of choice. And when you want a relaxing read to soothe those sore muscles at the end of the day, these five books show how profoundly a deep commitment to fitness can change a body -- both inside and out.

VB6 by Mark Bittman

Mark Bittman’s interest in becoming fitter was more than just cosmetic. He was seriously overweight, and the concern wasn’t a six pack for the beach but the threat of type 2 diabetes and the many health risks that came along with that condition. His doctor recommended cutting out all animal products, but Bittman balked at the challenge of becoming vegan. After all, as a renowned food journalist, much of his life and socializing centered on food of all kinds. But something had to change, and VB6 is the compromise Bittman reached -- to go vegan, but only before before 6 pm, “because that’s when you’re most likely to combine eating with socializing, an important and even beneficial thing.” VB6 is the story of how he did it and also a how-to manual. Including everything from shopping lists to recipes, the book gives a full account of how Bittman put VB6 into action. In the end, the plan paid off in both aesthetic and health benefits -- Bittman is now 35 lbs lighter and no longer pre-diabetic.

Hell Bent by Benjamin Lorr

Benjamin Lorr was overweight and just looking for a new way to shape up.  Bikram yoga, a series of poses practiced in 110 degree heat, sounded interesting, an intense new way to try to get fit. But as his interest in Bikram yoga grew, Lorr found himself in a wild new world of fanatical competitive yogis. Lorr traces his own journey into competitive yoga leading up to his participation in the National Yoga Asana Championship. The competition is “heated” enough to be compelling, but the story is made even more fascinating by the parallel investigation into the complicated life and lore of Bikram Choudhury, the controversial founder of Bikram yoga. Lorr finds people who have been saved by the Bikram practice, and people who have been shattered by Bikram the man. Hell Bent is an intriguing look into a complicated fitness subculture where everyone looks great, but darkness governs some of the hearts beating beneath chiseled torsos.

Prime Time by Jane Fonda

Fitness knows no age limits. Jane Fonda rocked a leotard as an early fitness guru in the 1970s, and she’s still going strong today now that she’s in her 70s. In Prime Time, Fonda discusses how those in middle age can keep their bodies and minds in top condition. She shares her own “life review” process and doesn’t shy away from details about her divorce from her famously wealthy husband Ted Turner. Fonda positions fitness as an integral piece of a holistically fulfilling lifestyle, and gives plenty of pointers on how readers can make positive changes for themselves. So don’t be surprised when your newly svelte grandma plunks her beach towel down next to yours this summer.

Eat and Run by Scott Jurek

In his first book Born To Run, Scott Jurek illuminated the intense practice of ultrarunning, wherein runners cover hundreds of miles in punishing conditions. Jurek himself has set the U.S. record for distance run in 24 hours -- he made it 165.7 miles, a distance equal to almost 7 marathons. Eat and Run is a more personal book, a look back at the individual history that turned Jurek from a normal Midwestern kid who kind of hated running into a vegan, record breaking, elite athlete. Eat and Run also covers considerable ground when it comes to nutrition with lots of practical advice and vegan recipes. The moral of the story is clear – with dedication and drive, a human can not only change their body’s shape, but expand the limits of their body’s potential.

Gorilla Suit: My Adventures in Body Building by Bob Paris

Every built body has to start somewhere. Bob Paris started out a scrawny teen on an errand for a teacher. He stumbled over a set of weights in a storage room, hefted them a few times and thought it felt great. What follows is a personal passion that grows into a career; Paris built one of the best bodies in the business, eventually taking the Mr. Universe title for his hard work. But while his muscles were growing, his emotional life wasn’t always quite up to speed. Paris delves into the difficulties of being a gay man in the unwelcoming macho culture of bodybuilding. He says at times he felt like a "little boy walking around in a gorilla suit” when he was pumped up for competition. Paris doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of his sport either, openly addressing his use of steroids and other drugs while competing. In the end though, Gorilla Suit is an uplifting tale of how Paris’ efforts to change his body also changed his life.

Seventy-two years ago today in Duluth, Minnesota, the songwriter, performer, and cultural luminary known as Bob Dylan came into the world as Robert Zimmerman.

"I was born in the spring of 1941. The Second World War was already raging in Europe, and America would soon be in it," he writes in the 2004 book Chronicles: Volume One, the first installment of a planned three-part memoir. "The world was being blown apart and chaos was already driving its fist into the face of all new visitors. If you were born around this time or were living and alive, you could feel the old world go and the new one beginning."

The book's sweeping tone, balanced by a grounding in specifics -- its musical references alone constitute a world-class playlist that begs for indexing in an updated edition -- echoes the scope of Dylan's lyrics and the epic ambition of his self-mythologized entrée into the heart of the early 1960s Greenwich Village folk music scene.

Like his hero Woody Guthrie, who arrived in New York City on a cold day in the winter of 1940 at twenty-six years old after hitchhiking cross-country, a nineteen-year-old Dylan was born again upon landing in Manhattan on a cold day in the winter of 1961.

On his 1962 debut album Bob Dylan, he released "Song to Woody" as an appreciation for the folk legend. Citing Guthrie's lyric "We come with the dust and we go with the wind" (from the song "Pastures of Plenty") with the line "That come with the dust and are gone with the wind," Dylan foreshadows his memoir's expanded tribute to the singer-activist and his 1943 autobiography Bound for Glory.

In Chronicles, Dylan looks back nearly fifty years, long before his days of winning a [2008] Pulitzer Prize special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power," to the first time he listened to a set of double-sided Woody Guthrie records.

"I put one on the turntable, and when the needle dropped, I was stunned -- didn't know if I was stoned or straight," he writes. He was struck by Guthrie's "perfected style of singing that it seemed like no one else had ever thought about."

To read such heartfelt candor from an artist who has fought mightily to hide behind the opacity of surrealist images and a coyness cultivated to maintain a public image shrouded in mystery feels like a gift. Today, on his birthday, we share this excerpt from the Chronicles chapter "River of Ice" with you.

The songs themselves, his repertoire, were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them. Not one mediocre song in the bunch. Woody Guthrie tore everything in his path to pieces. For me it was an epiphany, like some heavy anchor had just plunged into the waters of the harbor.

That day I listened all afternoon to Guthrie as if in a trance and I felt like I had discovered some essence of self-command, that I was in the internal pocket of the system feeling more like myself than ever before. A voice in my head said, 'So this is the game.' I could sing all these songs, every single one of them and they were all that I wanted to sing. It was like I had been in the dark and someone had turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor.

A great curiosity respecting the man had also seized me and I had to find out who Woody Guthrie was. It didn’t take me long. Dave Whittaker, one of the Svengali-type Beats on the scene happened to have Woody’s autobiography, Bound for Glory, and he lent it to me. I went through it from cover to cover like a hurricane, totally focused on every word, and the book sang out to me like the radio. Guthrie writes like the whirlwind and you get tripped out on the sound of the words alone. Pick up the book anywhere, turn to any page and he hits the ground running. Who is he? He’s a hustling ex-sign painter from Oklahoma, an antimaterialist who grew up in the Depression and Dust Bowl days -- migrated West, had a tragic childhood, a lot of fire in his life -- figuratively and literally. He’s a singing cowboy, but he’s more than a singing cowboy. Woody’s got a fierce poetic soul-the poet of hard crust sod and gumbo mud. Guthrie divides the world between those who work and those who don’t and is interested in the liberation of the human race and wants to create a world worth living in. Bound for Glory is a hell of a book. It’s huge. Almost too big.

Charlie McDowell writes open letters to the unfathomably ditzy girls who live above him. What began as a Twitter feed is now a compilation that will hit bookshelves early June.

Below is an excerpt from Charles McDowell's Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story.

Dear Girls Above Me

CHAPTER ONE

“OMG, if someone ever writes a book about me, it should be called A Beautiful Mind,” said a voice still filled with the glory of having uttered some profound cliché.

“I think that’s already a book,” I responded out loud, to nobody. “And a movie.”

“And I’ll write the sequel, A Beautiful Fashion Sense. Fashion is totally my seventh sense. My sixth sense is seeing ghosts wearing last fall’s line,” chirped another voice in keeping with the enthusiasm.

I glared at my ceiling fan, hoping that this wasn’t going to turn into a trilogy. These voices, the voices of the girls who lived above me, had become the Greek chorus of my life. As a guy not new to city life, I expected the intrusions and boundary violations that occur when one lives with only a few inches of wood and stucco between himself and his neighbors. Random footsteps, muffled television programs, maybe even the occasional sentence fragment. But I most definitely did not expect to be the unwilling audience of a twenty-four-hour slumber party between the Winston Churchill and Benjamin Franklin of the 90210 generation.

But let’s back up a bit. To a more innocent time. Before the girls rearranged every idea I’d once had about life and love, and the biggest challenge in my daily routine was walking my dog.

I stood on the freshly cut lawn of my apartment building and looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. There was the girl across the street chatting on her cell phone, but she seemed much too preoccupied by the argument she was having with her boyfriend to notice me. So, I cleared my throat.

“Go pee-pees outside, Marvin. Pee-pees outside,” I said in the most high-pitched voice humanly possible.

These are the words I must say to my dog every morning in order for him to go to the bathroom. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret taking him to that dog trainer. I’m not totally sure, but I think she was legally a “little person” (which I Googled), clocking in at approximately four foot ten, and the pitch of her voice was commensurately high. No wonder dogs listened to her. So, now, any command I give to Marvin, I must deliver with this Mariah Carey screech. Otherwise he’ll just sit there and stare at me as if he has no idea what we’re doing outside. We go through this routine at eight a.m. every single morning. If I wait till eight thirty a.m., I’m screwed; the grass will be damp from the sprinklers and Marvin won’t go near it. Even the smallest drop of water frightens him. I guess that’s one of the drawbacks in rescuing a Hurricane Katrina–­survivor dog.

“Good boy, Marvin! Good boy!” Compliments must also come in this piercing frequency. I don’t know how much longer my vocal cords can take this.

“Bro, you shouldn’t talk like that where people can hear you. They might think you’re a homo.” This unsolicited morning advice came courtesy of apartment 4E, the guy who calls himself “the Con-Man” but whose real name is actually Conor. The Jesse James of my apartment building. What kind of person puts “the” in front of his name anyway? I guess the very same guy whose wardrobe appears to be sponsored by Ed Hardy.

“Good morning, the Con-Man. How’s your day going?” I said with complete disinterest.

“Awesome. I’ve already taken a dump and trimmed my pubes this morning,” he blurted out.

“Wow, Conor—I mean, the Con-Man, that’s a lot of information I don’t really wanna know about you,” I said with complete sincerity.

“Stop being such a pussy, bro. It’s science; it’s the human body; it’s education. Learn to love it.”

Why didn’t I rescue a cat? There would have been no reason to converse with him and his freshly trimmed nether area if I were a cat owner. Felines are smart; they go to the bathroom inside, just like humans. They are loyal and don’t whore themselves out the way dogs do. If I had been a cat, I’d have scratched the shit out of the Con-Man by now.

“All right, bro, I’m gonna go annihilate ten egg whites for breakfast. Maybe a splash of POM juice if I’m feeling craaazy,” he said. A real trailblazer. “Remember, bro, keep your voice down low, like this!”

“Yep. Got it. Thanks.” I was thankful—thankful that I was looking at the back of him as I said this. I watched as the Con-Man air-drummed his way over to his hydraulic truck and peeled out of the parking garage, almost running over apartment 6A, Mr. Molever, the on-site landlord. Mr. Molever is another person I can’t bear to talk to. Not because he’s a weasel like the Con-Man, but because I frequently forget to pay my rent on time and he loves to let me know it. I wish I could avoid him forever, but he’s made it impossible. Just last month, he’d implemented a new policy stating that “every check must be hand-delivered to ensure ultimate safety (do not fold check).” Don’t get me wrong, he’s perfectly nice, but boy can that man talk. And when he does speak, it only has to do with the apartment building. Over the last couple of years, I’ve literally become an expert on shingle-removal tools and copper piping, something I had previously hoped to never think about in my entire life.

But maybe Mr. Molever hadn’t seen me yet and I still had the chance to make a smooth getaway. I picked up my dog, who was carrying out my command mid-pee, and I hid behind the nearest tree. Marvin expressed his discomfort by heavily panting. But that’s because he’s unable to breathe through his nose. When you’re browsing at the shelter, they only tell you the positive stuff. They don’t mention how a particular breed is not good for hiding behind trees. I put my hand over Marvin’s mouth, praying that he would at least try to suck air through that little pug nose of his. It worked for three seconds, and then he began wheezing and shaking around. This caught the attention of Mr. Molever.

An adoring (and still growing) fanbase has waited seven long years for the return of Arrested Development. What started out as a cult hit has grown into epic proportions, mainly because of the intensely fallible but strangely relatable Bluth Family. Maybe we haven’t blown up a yacht or committed treason (light or otherwise), but we've all uttered the words “I've made a huge mistake,” once or twice in our lives. While we count down to new episodes on Netflix, beginning on May 26, here’s a look at what’s been on the Bluths’ reading lists over the show’s epic hiatus.

Lucille Bluth: Rose Kennedy by Barbara A Perry

Lucille has several times been revealed to be the power behind what exists of the Bluth throne, encouraging her family to profit from shady business dealings. And she’s not above disappearing middle school math teachers when necessary. So she’s definitely enjoying Rose Kennedy, an in depth look at the life of another powerful matriarch. Barbara A. Perry brings to light revelations from Rose Kennedy’s diaries and letters, revealing just how savvy she was in managing her family’s public image in the face of political scandal and private tragedy. But at the end of the day, every great lady needs a break from the complicated work of administering a family empire. While Rose found her comfort in prayer, Lucille is more likely to seek out a stiff drink. Cheers to both grand dames.

G.O.B: The Last Greatest Magician in the World by Jim Steinmayer

G.O.B may have been ousted from The Alliance of Magicians, but he’s still got big plans for his illusions. No doubt with a few tips from this biography of renowned magician Howard Thurston, he can become the next Last Greatest Magician in the World. Thurston grew from a street performer into the head of a massive travelling magic show, rivaling Houdini for the title of America’s greatest magician. G.O.B. is a consummate showman as well. He’s got fans blowing on him and doves in his pants. Greatness cannot help but follow.

Michael Bluth: Father, Son & Co by Thomas J. Watson and Peter Petre

With a pack of relatives who range from lazy to spiteful and crafty to clueless, it can get pretty draining being “the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.” So Michael enjoys taking some time off to read about a more functional family business in Father, Son & Co., the story of Thomas J. Watson Sr. and Thomas J. Watson Jr.,  the father and son team who built IBM.  Michael tries to pick up some tips on business management from the family that built one of America’s most massive and important companies. But most nights, Michael closes the book with a sigh, admitting that the charisma, forethought, and shared respect of the Watsons might be a little out of the Bluth wheelhouse. Still, he’s optimistic about his own son. He’s holding out hope that Michael, George Michael & Co. will be a great tome for future industry leaders to learn from.

Lindsay Funke: The Power of Half by Kevin Salwen

Lindsay means well, but her efforts at…pretty much anything…never seem to turn out exactly right. She admits that maybe she hasn’t done the best job raising her family, but it’s never too late to try something new. Philanthropy has always been a passion of hers and The Power of Half is going to help her take it to a whole new level. This is the story of the Salwen family, who decide to downgrade their house and life by half, living more modestly to give the difference to charity. Lindsay is still working out the logistics though. Maybe she can just give away her husband Tobias’ half of the closet and keep her designer clothes. That’s the same thing, right?

Buster Bluth: Great Bastards of History by Jure Fiorillo

Buster has never been able to live up to his father’s standards, greatly preferring his mother’s coddling. But he recently found out that his Uncle Oscar is his real biological father. So maybe this new bastard persona can give him a new path to success. A scholar at heart, Buster is of course first examining the annals of history to see what bastards have made of themselves. Covering the lives of fifteen people born out of wedlock -- from Elizabeth I to Alexander Hamilton to Fidel Castro -- Great Bastards of History shows that many people have risen from illegitimacy to positions of immense power. Buster is sure he can do it too. He’ll start right after...yawn…nap time.

Drew Magary is a poet of profanity, a guy working at the top of his scatalogical game for Deadspin, Gawker, and GQ among others. He's also a dedicated father of three children, ages seven, four, and one. He brings both of those sensibilities to fruition in Someone Could Get Hurt, a collection of essays on the sublime/ridiculous life of modern parenting. The memoir is much more than spit-up, dirty diapers, and head lice. It takes readers through a range of emotions, from the sober pieces on the horror of having a newborn who might not make it through the night, to a regretful piece on spanking, to an absurd tale of a young boy, an electric toothbrush, and his penis, to a story that captures the utter bliss of a father hearing his daughter say "dead monkey ice cream sundae with monkey eyeballs on top."

As a stay-at-home dad with a 2.5-year-old daughter, I feel the same way about Someone Could Get Hurt as she does about I Stink! (Kid loves the  sanitation department, what are you gonna' do?) Magary's memoir has more truth, and is way funnier, than any other parenting book I've come across. Granted, that's not many, but after Someone Could Get Hurt, I don't feel the need to read one ever again.

Biographile: Give us a bit of your background. It seems like you've had a bunch of different gigs...

Drew Magary: I worked in advertising for ten years, first in New York City, then in a small firm here in Washington D.C. In 2009, we lost a big client and they didn't have money to keep me on board. That gave me the freedom to take a risk and go into writing full-time. Luckily, it’s worked out, but I’m not sure it would have if I hadn't started laying the groundwork in 2006. The first blog I had was F.K.S. (Father Knows Shit), which lead to founding and writing about football for Kissing Suzy Kolber, to Deadspin, to magazine work. I also wrote a book, Men With Balls, that nobody read, then a novel, The Postmortal, that did okay and now Someone Could Get Hurt. I did F.K.S. for less than a year because of the other stuff, but writing about parenthood has been in the back of my mind for years.

BIOG: Prior to getting laid off, did you want to be a full-time writer, or was it not possible with the family...

DM: It was always trending that way. I was making enough money writing on the side that once I lost my job, it seemed right. It was shaky for a little bit, but I wanted to invest in myself and I didn’t want to be in advertising anymore. So far, so good, but it’s hard. I know it doesn't work out for a lot of people.

BIOG: You mention in the book that you did stand-up comedy, how long and why didn't you stick with it?

DM: I did like four gigs in New York. I sucked at it. I was sweaty, I couldn't remember the material. It wasn't that much fun. It’s not pleasant to be in the back of a club at 1:00 AM with a bunch of comics who fucking hate you and want you to fail. You get two minutes at the end of the night when everyone wants to go home. I respect the people who stick it out, but also suspect they’re mentally ill.

BIOG: You’re a funny guy and it seems to be the center to most of the things you write, do you consider yourself a humorist first?

DM: That’s where the ideas usually take me, somewhere funny or a bit goofy, but I don’t prize one thing over another. I write serious stuff sometimes, if there’s something there I can tap into. Much of Someone Could Get Hurt is serious. One thing you learn in advertising is that you have to use a lot of tones. A lot of ads are at least suppose to be funny, but there’s also serious ads for dialysis medication or whatever. There’s also ads of different sizes, from a long radio ad to seven words on a fucking billboard. Shifting tones and sizes every day gives you the the ability to be a chameleon when you write. It’s made what I do now a lot easier. I have the basic freedom to write whatever I want, so I can be serious if it fits. A lot of the time, humor makes things go down easier. If I have a point to make about what a bastard NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is, it’s better to be funny than preachy and annoying.

BIOG: Did you approach writing this memoir differently than the novel, or the web stuff, or the magazine work?

DM: It’s usually the same. Magazine articles are a little different because you have to take notes, and do transcripts, and put it in the right order. In the case of Someone Could Get Hurt, I was working off of memory. Like the other two books I wrote, I wanted it to be entertaining and frankly, as quick-to-read as possible. I dig books that are easy to get through, like butter. If it feels conversational in your head, it’s better than if you’re laboring and it feels like the author is talking to you from on top of a fucking mountain. If the book is a slog, and hard to get, it’s busy work. I don’t like that.

BIOG: Before you had kids, how many parenting books did you read?

DM: Before the kids, my wife would ask me to read books. I never did. She’s always giving me articles out of Parenting magazine, and I’ll say, ‘Oh, okay, thanks.’ Then they sit on my nightstand forever. ‘Do you read that thing I gave you?’ ‘Sure I did.’ ‘No, you didn’t.’ ‘No, I didn’t.’

BIOG: Did you read many fatherhood memoirs--

DM: No, no way. Fuck that. Those memoirs are all bad. When we sold the book, it was with the explicit knowledge that fatherhood books suck and nobody wants to buy them. It was incumbent upon me to write something that was better. You have to write these stories to be universal, so it’s not about your kid. It couldn't be a home movie glorifying my kids for the sake of vanity. It had to be relatable. Hopefully the book is, but readers will be the final judge of that.

BIOG: You touch on the difference between being a parent and “parenting,” almost playing a role in a movie or something...

DM: Everyone wants to look like a good parent in public. At the playground, you want other parents to say, ‘Look at him, he’s helping his kid down the slide, he’s so involved. What a great guy.’  Then behind closed doors, you don’t give a shit. Tell your kid to piss off because nobody’s watching. I always want to be perceived as a good parent. I’m always terrified that I’ll be labeled bad by...whoever. That attitude is detrimental to the act of parenting itself.

BIOG: There’s an essay in the book about taking your kids trick-or-treating -- you’re wearing a costume that adults mistakenly think is making fun of the disabled -- and it ends, “I stopped worrying about whether or not I looked like a lame asshole with kids and instead luxuriated in being one.” Good for you, but ultimately, it’s the way to raise less neurotic kids, right?

DM: Absolutely. If you’re self-conscious about the way you’re parenting, then your kids are going to pick it up. If you’re more loose and relaxed, and let them make their own mistakes, then they will be more confident and self-reliant. It’s hard to get there. It’s hard to watch your kids fight and let them resolve their problems. You want to step in and get them to stop beating the shit out of each other. Sometimes, it’s not the right thing to do.

BIOG: Explain why you think kids are great if you want to be anti-social...

DM: If I’m at a cocktail party and stuck in conversation with some lame-ass adult, I can always say, ‘Oh, is that my kid crying?’ Kids are good like that. ‘Oh, my kid is sick. Sorry, I can’t make it to the funeral.’

BIOG: One thing nobody told me about before having a daughter is how isolating being a parent can be...

DM: It’s true. It’s especially acute for stay-at-home moms. If they’re spending 8-10 hours a day with children, without an outlet adult conversation, it can really wear you down.  It’s difficult. I've felt it to, where you crave a different kind of interaction with people. It’s healthy to interact and flex the social muscles with different groups of people. If you’re with a kid all the time, it’s like any relationship, familiarity breeds some resentment. It’s always beneficial to get removed from the kids, process it, and come back.

BIOG: Another thing people don’t mention is how funny kids can be, not just in a goofy way, but with wit and style...

DM: Kids are much more creative than you and I. The adult thought process tends to follow reason and logic. It flows, but kids will just go anywhere. They will repeat the same shit over and over and think it’s funny forever. The other day my kid said ‘squirting pee,' a thousand times thinking it was the funniest thing in the world. Doesn’t mean anything, but they latch onto something and pound it into the ground until the next thing. They love the wordplay, especially when it doesn't make any sense.

BIOG: At what point did you decide you were going to be a scatalogical writer, ever any concerns about putting that out there?

DM: Occasionally, I get concerns. I don’t want my wife mad at me, but it’s always been the style I gravitated to, even as a kid. I loved Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison and guys like that and it appealed to me. I always wanted that voice for myself. That’s how I’m engineered and there’s nothing I can do about it. I say that as an excuse so I never have to change it.

If you were to accuse Jack Hitt of being an amateur, he might thank you. While the word has a pejorative ring to many, Hitt points out that in its truest form (from the root amo, amas, or amat) it has to do with being “in love with one true thing.” And if it’s prestige that the reader needs to justify the embrace of the amateur, how’s Benjamin Franklin as the first “garage tinkerer” for a start?

In the new paperback release of his book Bunch of Amateurs, Hitt covers an array of curious eccentrics of varying degrees of expertise who do things outside the restrictive boundaries of professionalism. Among other notable dabblers, we get self-styled biologists, obsessed birders, robot mechanics, and gungywampers (a very specific kind of archaeologist).

Hitt writes that “in European popular culture, amateurism is practically feared,” while in the United States, we admire a certain kind of risk-taker. In Europe, a renegade scientist is “mad.” In the U.S., he’s “absent-minded.” Our labcoat loonies don’t make monsters, he explains. They make flubber -- or sometimes, telescopes. Hitt wants us to see past our brand of condescending tolerance and see that there’s real value in the subcultures of D.I.Y. scientists and self-taught theorists.

In a chapter that illustrates how someone determined to do it himself can command some respect, Hitt brings us the case of John Dobson, a far out astronomer who made a telescope out of cheap glass, a cardboard tube, and a pair of Salvation Army binoculars. In the fifty years since then, Hitt writes, Dobson has “inspired generations of uncredentialed enthusiasts to prowl the heavens.” At the time of Dobson’s invention, reliable telescopes weren’t available for consumer purchase. But Dobson’s innovation and outsider ambition made the stars available to the masses. Not bad for an amateur.

Bunch of Amatueurs by Jack Hitt. Illustration by Nathan Gelgud, 2013.

After losing their friend on the roof of a hotel, accidentally stealing Mike Tyson’s tiger, suffering an assortment of bodily and dental harm, and tangling with a monkey with a particularly bad attitude, you’d think the boys of the "Hangover" movies might consider switching to water. But no, “the wolfpack” is back, in "The Hangover 3," which opens this Thursday. The tagline for this one is “It All Ends” -- but does that mean the drinking, or the series itself? It can be awfully hard to quit a good thing, as the authors of these irreverent memoirs about imbibing and (sometimes) getting sober, can attest. So, before you sneak that flask of wine coolers into the theater to watch the antics of a drunken Bradley Cooper and Company, check out these drinking memoirs.

Dry by Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs nearly lost everything to drinking. A dozen-drinks-a-night alcoholic, he hid his addiction from friends and family as long as he could, until he was forced to go to rehab or lose his job. Remarkably, the one thing he never lost was his sense of humor.  In this memoir, Burroughs manages to poke fun at himself and the cult of rehab while describing how he became an alcoholic, what he was like at his drunken worst, and the challenges he faced once he got sober. No preacher of AA pieties, Burroughs maintains a healthy disrespect for the sanctimony and self-congratulation that can come with getting clean. “Making alcoholic friends,” he writes, “is as easy as making sea monkeys.” Harder is becoming friendly with your sober self.

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp

“Our introduction wasn’t dramatic, it wasn’t love at first sight,” Caroline Knapp writes about her first taste of alcohol. Like Burroughs, Knapp was a high-functioning alcoholic -- to family and friends, she seemed completely in control, but in truth her drinking controlled her life, not the other way around. Starting at an early age Knapp used alcohol as “liquid armor,” a way to feel more up to the task of navigating daily life. This memoir is less laugh-out-loud funny than the rest of the books on this list, but Knapp has such a clear, self-aware voice, she conveys the mordant humor of her most desperate behavior, like keeping a “show” bottle half-full of Cognac on display even though she lives alone, and is going through a real bottle every few days.

Bad Dog by Martin Kihn

One school of thought has it that addicts just need to trade their unhealthy addictions -- drugs, alcohol, gambling -- for healthy ones, like exercise. But competitive dog training? In this memoir, Kihn, a former TV writer, is one drink away from hitting bottom when Hola, a poorly-behaved Burmese mountain dog, comes into his life. Kihn realizes that he needs to get a handle on his drinking if he wants to hang on to his wife, his career, and his health, and the best way to do that is at the end of a firmly-gripped leash. As he trains Hola to become not just a good, but a winningly well-mannered dog, he trains himself to live the sober life.

Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler

If the guys from "The Hangover" ever need a fifth wheel, they’d find a kindred spirit in Chelsea Handler. In fact, the stand up comedian might just drink them under the table. In this humorous memoir, Handler writes about getting herself into an assortment of embarrassing and mortifying situations -- usually with the help of a hefty serving of vodka, her drink of choice. The comic, who has gone on to have her own TV show and kickstart the career of several other equally cocktail-happy comedians, is so associated with the drink, Belvedere Vodka sponsored a recent tour.

Everyday Drinking by Kingsley Amis

Some novelists drink in order to write.  Kingsley Amis, on the other hand, may have written in order to drink. This volume combines his three books dedicated to the art and pleasure of getting schnockered: On Drink, Every Day Drinking, and How’s Your Glass?. Amis’s great enthusiasm for all things alcoholic causes him to take a more-is-more approach to the subject: no single glass of fine whiskey for him. He writes about how to treat a hangover, how to economize on alcohol while still getting good and plastered, the best things to eat when your drink is the main course, and how to drink without getting drunk -- though it’s doubtful he employed this last trick all that often.

With the 2013 Masters behind us, the social buzz around Tiger Woods's drop-controversy and Adam Scott's hallelujah-victory has lost its swing. To sate our appetite for the game of golf, and for the even broader appeal of high-stakes successes and failures, Don Snyder has teed up one of this year's finest tributes to the sport with his new memoir, Walking with Jack: A Father's Journey to Become His Son's Caddie. But before we lose a swath of you whose only definition of "golf" is a miniature windmill-dotted obstacle course reserved for birthdays, we hasten to add that Snyder breaks the boundaries of sports, sinking his tale squarely into the most relatable realm of all: family ties.

Walking with Jack is the story of a father and son leaning on one another to instill confidence, creating memories, and fulfilling a promise of companionship that ultimately leads Don to stand alongside his son as his professional caddie. Don Snyder, a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, is the author of both fiction and nonfiction, of which include his earlier memoir The Cliff Walk, a sensitive exploration of losing a job, and the ensuing search to support his family. We've asked Don to share with us some words on his writing interests for our Behind the Books series. Here he tells us of his early (and we mean early) writing routine, the importance of capturing our live's moments -- "each moment a scene" -- and the process of writing "from stillness into the sounds of a growing family."

Biographile: To the aspiring writer, what advice would you give? What advice helped you become the writer you are today?

Don Snyder: The best advice I can give is to take your vows of poverty and loneliness, prepare for many years of disappointment and  discouragement, and be eternally thankful for the privilege of doing the work that your heart is set upon.

BIOG: What five writers -- dead or alive -- would you invite to an imaginary dinner party?

DS: Richard Yates.  F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Thomas Wolfe. Alice McDermott. Virginia Woolf.

BIOG: As the author of both memoirs and novels, does one style of writing come more naturally to you than the other? The preparation for both must be remarkably different.

DS: For me, whether it is fiction or nonfiction, it has always come down to writing scenes from the inside out that bring characters and their motivations, and their fears and dreams to life and that give readers the feeling that they are inhabiting these scenes.  Everything hangs on striking the most vivid detail and selecting the revealing scenes that are heated by conflict.  I believe our lives, no matter how long we live, come down to a collection of moments. Each moment a scene.

BIOG: Read any great biographies or memoirs recently?

DS: An American Requiem by James Carroll.

BIOG: What classics would you read if you had all the time in the world?

DS: I have spent my life reading the classics over and over again. Especially Shakespeare's tragedies.

BIOG: It’s said that people either read to escape or read to remember. Do you fall into one of these groups?

DS: I  believe that the best books make us think about our own lives. Those are the kind of books I have tried to write, and that I hope to read.

BIOG: Faulkner said a writer needs three things: experience, observation, and imagination. Do you use all three equally, or rely on one over another?

DS: I think perseverance and conviction matter more than those three things.

BIOG: What’s next on your reading list?

DS: Two novels in progress by former students of mine who I am trying to help.

BIOG: What’s your writing routine? Where, when, and how does it happen?

DS: For the last twenty seven years, ever since my wife and I began having babies I have awakened at 4:30am and done my most serious writing in the early hours of each new day, writing from darkness into the light, and from stillness into the sounds of a growing family.

BIOG: Do you always have to finish reading a book you start?

DS: Absolutely. And the same is true with any book I set out to write.

Editor's Note: In Eat The City, author Robin Shulman invites us to take a bite out of the Big Apple by meeting New York's finest foodies. Her subjects aren't mere food fans, mind you, but anyone who falls on the spectrum ranging from the locally-sourced farm to the wine-stained table. The book -- as much a biography of a city as it is its inhabitants -- offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of farmhands, food producers, bee tamers, taste-makers and supply chain experts, all of whom are deeply woven into the cultural fabric of New York City.

Every person profiled in Shulman's history of the NYC food scene proves to be a fascinating exploration of not just the sleepless city's past, but of the myriad modern personalities behind every NYC plate you've tasted. It's a delectable dish of a book, and below we've made sure to introduce you to some of the characters that fill its pages. If you haven't picked up Eat The City just yet, don't let your stomach grumble anymore. The paperback version drops today. 

1) Mark Solasz, scion of a meat-cutting family going back to pre-World War II Poland, where his father, Sam, learned the trade from his own father, before fleeing to fight with the Partisans in the forest against the Nazis. Sam came to New York in the 1950s with only a couple of knives and ten dollars he earned cutting meat on board the ship. Soon he ran a business in the Fourteenth Street Market, the largest meat processing center on the east coast, a rough, dirty Mafia-run place, so crowded that delivery trucks had to wait more than an hour to even pull in to the market. Eventually Midwestern companies began to box meat and ship it direct to supermarkets, city butchers largely disappeared, and most of the remaining Fourteenth Street wholesalers, including the Solasz father and sons, moved up to the Hunts Point meat center in the Bronx, where they serve restaurants and hotels. Meat has finally been shunted to the sidelines of the city.

2) Josh Fields and Jon Conner, who started brewing beer when they were roommates in a giant Williamsburg loft, and continued as the recession hit and their work as artists dwindled. Why not be independent, they thought, and make art of something their friends can drink? Why not start a commercial brewery? Over the course of a year, to the crooning of Sunday-morning Sinatra on NPR, Jon and Josh hammered, welded, drilled, insulated, encased, wired, coiled, computerized, and reformed a thousand dollars’ worth of odd parts into a functioning brewery. But when the landlord decided to sell the loft space, they had to find a way to make brewing work in New York, a city where space is so expensive it can be hard to start something as large as a brewery.

3) Gale Robinson, whose father during Prohibition helped create a stickily sweet kosher wine that would become Manischewitz. No rule of Jewish law says that sacramental wine must taste of Robitussin and grape Kool-Aid. But the Jews of New York City had long made do with the grapes available: Concords, whose flavor was so musky in a wine, it required copious amounts of sugar. Gale remembers begging her father to serve something better than the heavily sweet Manischewitz at the table. Despite her distaste, her father’s Passover wine symbolized American Judaism for generations.

4) Jorge Torres, the son of Puerto Rican sugar workers, who grew up on a sugar plantation and the cane plant from the age of nine years old, and who came to the Bronx as a young man as part of a generation that could no longer make a living working sugar. After a lifetime of manual labor, he has coaxed into maturity a stalk of sugar cane he grows every year in the soil of his community garden in the South Bronx. He has found a way to offer his children only the sweet taste of the cane plant, not its bitterness.

5) Christopher Nicholson, a winemaker in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn who produces a high-quality wine from Long Island grapes, bringing back serious wineries to the city after decades of dearth. Christopher works for the Red Hook Winery alongside respected California winemakers Abe Schoener and Robert Foley. In just a few years of operation, his wines have sold to restaurants such as Blue Hill and Momofuku. As the B61 bus wheezes by outside, Christopher continues his rigorous experiments in Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Riesling grapes.

Stuart David has signed with Little, Brown to write a memoir about his time spent as a member of Belle & Sebastian. As co-founder and original bass player for the Scottish indie pop group, David will give details on the first time he met the group's future lead singer, Stuart Murdoch, on through their early years together and the recording and release of their debut album "Tigermilk." With two novels and a new band, Looper, under his belt, David views his autobiographical project as a good way to pass the time he isn't playing music: "There's always a huge amount of time spent doing nothing in a band. I don't really like alcohol or drugs, so I filled up the rest of the time writing books," he says. In the All-Night Cafe is due out in early 2015. [via The Los Angeles Times]

Actor Dev Patel, of "Slumdog Millionaire" fame, will play self-taught math prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan in a biopic based on Robert Kanigel's biography and scripted and directed by Matthew Brown -- whose previous work includes a screenplay on James Bond creator Ian Fleming. "The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan" will cover the mathematician's life from its beginning in a late nineteenth century rural village in Tamil Nadu, then turn to exploring his work in mathematical analysis and number theor0y, which earned him fellowships in the Royal Society and Trinity College in Cambridge, England, where he lived until his death at age thirty-two. [via The Economic Times]

Angelina Jolie will take on a new film role that's close to her heart: playing the lead in a biopic based on her mother, Marcheline Bertrand (best known for a lifetime working with Afghan women in refugee camps and founding Give Love Give Life to help fight gynecological cancers), who died at the age of fifty-six. Jolie -- who recently decided to undergo a double mastectomy after discovering she carries the BRCA1 gene that drastically raises the risk of breast and ovarian cancers -- has described her mother as "grace incarnate." We look forward to this tribute to mother and daughter, which will begin shooting in 2014, with Brad Pitt's Plan B production company at the helm. [via The Daily Mail]

Grace Kelly will soon reappear on the big screen, courtesy of Nicole Kidman, who will play the title role in a new biopic produced by Harvey Weinstein, to be released in time for next Oscar season. While working on the cinematic version of Kelly's life, Kidman also got a close look at her real-life counterpart's taste in jewels: To help her shine on the big screen, fine jeweler Cartier reproduced the diamond-rich pieces originally made for the Princess herself, so that Kidman could don them in her new role -- after the Sovereign House of Monaco gave its consent, of course. [via Fox News]