Holiday Book Quarterly
Gifts to read (and recycle) this winter
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By The Onion
Little, Brown and Company, 256 pp., $27.99
Not since 1999's Our Dumb Century (incidentally newly available in hardback) has an Onion publication felt so immediately satisfying. Unlike past years' best-of and news-archives volumes compiled from the weekly editions, here the Onion crew endeavors to create something entirely original, taking on the exhausting, exhaustive task of skewering every single country in the world (we think; we didn't really check) in fact-book/atlas format. Our Dumb World nails its easy targets ("The United States: The Land of Opportunism," "Venezuela: Fuck Everyone") and even its more difficult ones ("Afghanistan: Allah's Cat Box," "Democratic Republic of Congo: Like a Zoo You Get Killed At"). And while its ability to make topographical humor is a joy (Senegal begs Gambia for water; Minnesota is tagged, with Hawaii and Alaska, as a "bullshit state"), the book really shines when it goes off-script: telling the story of Nicaragua entirely in tropes from the video game Contra; painting upstart Eritrea as a petulant teen; imagining the once great Guinea Empire reduced to Guinea, Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Bissau (you could say they whiffed in leaving out Papua New Guinea, but why split hairs?). The trademark snarkier-than-thou tone is occasionally off-putting (especially with countries whose only attributes are abject destitution), but Our Dumb World is the most enjoyable page-through-at-your-leisure tome since that other great name in fake news brought you America (The Book). —Brian Howard
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By Kristen Rask
North Light Books, 144 pp., $19.99
Plush You! picks up where Rudolph's Island of Misfit Toys left off. Turns out, when mutant playthings aren't in Claymation, they're pretty lovable. This crafty book profiles awkward stuffies, the disturbed artists who make them and even provides patterns to whip up some of our own. Mr. Snarly Pants — a three-eyed fuzzy young lad with leopard-print legs — calls his signature dance move the "North South East West." If you want to make your Cannibal Bunny a victim, there are instructions for realistic throat slits and blood droplets. Karyn Lane, proud mommy of Speck, the Fuzzy Monster, creates her critters because they taunt her all day and night if she doesn't. Consider yourself warned. —Monica Weymouth
By the editors of TV Guide magazine
Running Press, 296 pp., $14.95
Ever lie awake at night quietly calculating the top 10 holiday episodes in TV history? Me neither, but the editors of TV Guide have, and they've pooled their trivia-filled minds to create a veritable Guinness Book of Random Television Records that will have you flipping and quizzing for hours — or at least during the car ride home from grandma's. This catalog of lists begins with a fun "A to Z" game, compiling letter-appropriate tidbits for hit shows like The Office and Desperate Housewives. From there the theme seems to change on every page — "Best Canceled Shows" is followed by "25 Best Actors Who Never Received Awards" and "Eight Best Movies of the '70s." See a pattern here? Me neither. Despite its wonky organization, though, Book of Lists is a fun reference for any boob-tube buff, with a touch of nostalgia. —Luke Sirinides
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By Nicholas Gurewitch
Dark Horse, 96 pp., $14.95
In the Perry Bible Fellowship strip from which this collection takes its name, Colonel Sweeto is a double agent in the war between the Chocolates and Lollytown. When his thin candy shell is cracked to reveal a chocolate interior, he is subjected to the worst possible fate: His nut is mailed back to his chocolate comrades. That's the joy of Nicholas Gurewitch's mind. When you or I see a peanut M&M, we think, "Melts in my mouth, not in my hand." Gurewitch wonders, "What's he hiding?" PBF's humor combines parts of Gary Larson's sci-fi weirdo world with a scoop of Max Cannon's perversion. But there's an unaccounted-for Technicolor twist that makes strips like "Scorpy the Forest Friend" (an innocent game of "tail touch" ends badly) and "Freaking Vortex" (a vortex creates an infinite regression for an astronaut who crash-lands on his own helmet) resonate the way a funny bone resonates. While many of these strips are also available online, the glossy hardback is really damn pretty. It also features "lost strips" — alternate endings and ideas that never made if off the drawing board. These, with Gurewitch's explanations for their suppression, offer a wonderfully macabre peek into a beautiful, bizarre mind. —Brian Howard
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By Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero
Marlowe & Co., 336 pp., $27.50
What vegan's universe wasn't affected by Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World? It's no shocker that the very same urban chefs who had you inhaling vegan butter-cream frosting during your free time have crafted the next revolution in neo-vegan cuisine. This collection contains inventive fare for the true veggie epicurean, but these are no simple feasts. Consider the Pistachio-Rosewater Cookies, for instance, which are not quite a snap even if you know where to procure rosewater. Each dish calls for complex ingredients and a fully involved set of hands. Two-page-long recipe sagas aside, though, there are quicker meat-free eats to be had if you read on. Moskowitz and Romero cut you a break at times, keeping it simple with meals that reflect their NYC roots — like the zippy barbecue seitan and crispy coleslaw sandwich and Brooklyn deli macaroni salad. On the other hand, entire sections are devoted just to sauces and dressings. Challenging the vegan palate with piquant offerings for sumptuous plates is not exactly easy, but with Veganomicon, it's often rewarding. —Kelly White
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By Cindy De La Hoz
Running Press, 368 pp., $29.95
If all Lucille Ball ever did was get wasted on Vitameatavegamin, girlfriend wouldstill be a legend. But in addition to her I Love Lucy gig, the goofyredhead was an established movie star. Lucy at the Movies chronicles hercareer on the big screen from the chorus line to spotlighting as Bob Hope's leading lady. While the film summaries, review clips and behind-the-scenes moments helpexplain the actress, model and comedian, the pictures do the real talking. You simply need to see Ball in her powdered wig as Madame Du Barry.And yet, not even all the costumes in RKO's arsenal can change the fact thatLucy and Ricky weren't in love. When things turn toward Ball's personallife and her divorce from Desi Arnaz, it feels like the day your own parents parted ways and no one bought you a pity puppy. —Monica Weymouth
By James Buckley Jr., David Fischer and Jim Gigliotti
Chronicle Books, 320 pp., $24.95
By Andrew J. Rausch
Chronicle Books, 320 pp., $24.95
Are your baseball- or movie-loving loved ones likely to be stranded a few hours at the airport this holiday season and in need of a time-killer? These new trivia books not only contain 2,500 brain-busting multiple-choicers apiece ("What is the location for the first scene in Quentin Tarantino's classic crime film Pulp Fiction?"; "What Phillies star went nearly hitless when his team lost the 1983 World Series?"), they have a handy LCD game module for either one or two players to test their wits. And for those revelers too stuffed during the Yuletide to reach for a calculator, the LCD screen conveniently displays the percentage of questions answered correctly. Lest you linger amid the shelves, draining the battery of the copy you're buying as a gift, you may as well pick up one for yourself. —Andrew Milner
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Edited by Chris Ware
Houghton Mifflin, 368 pp., $22
This is what happens when mostly underground comics wind up nicely packaged on the merchandising shelves of your local Barnes & Noble. Glorious in their full form, the excerpts from what are inarguably the best graphic novels published last year lose a lot of their comic-book-den luster. Sure, the book is chockablock with talent like Charles Burns, Alison Bechdel, Gary Panter, R. and Aline Crumb and Art Spiegelman, but with the book's format, you're forgiven if you can't grasp Panter's Jimbo's Inferno — think a pogo-ing, punk-rock, post-nuclear war retelling of Dante — in a mere nine pages. The Best American series for the most part gets it right when it comes to short stories and "nonrequired reading," but it unfortunately does a disservice to this genre. Editor Chris Ware, known for his own Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, shows a great deal of sophistication in his choices, but overall the work has a sad-sack, memoir-ish tone. Even when they're not expressly autobiographical pieces, they still are, such as Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings, which the author says he wanted to feel "autobiographical despite being wholly fictional." If you associate American comics with Superman and the X-Men, you'd better get ready for a heavy dose of ennui. —Dominic Mercier
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By John Farndon
DK Children, 192 pp., $24.99
It's a dare, see. If you're brave enough to crack its disco-ball-shiny magnetic exoskeleton and take a peek, Do Not Open threatens to totally blow your mind with secrets and mysteries so mysteriously secretive, you'll never be the same again. Maybe that's a stretch, but it does serve as the perfect bathroom reader, offering up tons of bite-size factoids — did you know that toenails grow four times slower than fingernails? — all absorbable in the time it takes you to do your business. Catering to the 9- to 12-year-old set, this frenetic, heavily illustrated tome works for adults, too, but is overwhelming in its written order. As its authors encourage, flip to a random page, read up on whatever catches your eye, then follow bottom-of-the-page "links" to related topics. Kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure, only no one ends up getting eaten by an abominable snowman. —Carolyn Huckabay
By Norman L. Macht
University of Nebraska Press, 742 pp., $39.95
There's a good reason Connie Mack inspired that statue outside Citizens Bank Park — as manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, he masterminded two of the greatest non-Yankee baseball dynasties ever (1910-14 and 1929-31) and helped keep the once-fledgling American League afloat. Historian Norman L. Macht remedies the lack of an existing book about the Hall of Famer with the first of a two-volume biography of Mack (1862-1956), from his humble beginnings as lanky amateur catcher Cornelius McGillicuddy in Massachusetts through keeping his cool in the rough-and-tumble days of turn-of-the-20th-century ball. When rival manager John McGraw called the Athletics "a big white elephant," Mack "cheerfully adopted it in all its ironic glory. He had a banner made with a white elephant and hoisted it at Columbia Park." (The A's also beat McGraw's New York Giants in the 1911 and 1913 World Series.) This comprehensive 700-plus-page bio ends in 1914. Macht has only 36 more baseball seasons to go to complete Volume 2. —Andrew Milner
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By Kinky Friedman
Simon & Schuster, 144 pp., $22
With his dusty cowboy hat, gruff chuckle and smoldering Cuban cigar permanently clenched in teeth, humorist Kinky Friedman undeniably ran one of the more entertaining political campaigns of 2006. The dude sold talking action figures on his Web site, for chrissakes. Beneath the showy stumps and snappy one-liners, Friedman's independent bid at the Texas governor's mansion also made a hell of a lot of sense, offering reasonable policies and uncouth honesty over politics-as-usual. While his defeat may have been a foregone conclusion — the four-way race ultimately went to Republican incumbent Rick Perry — a year later, Friedman remains no less vociferous, gathering his reflections on the experience (and leftover talking points) into this slim volume. You can practically hear him talking in his self-styled Jewish cowboy's signature droll manner as you flip the pages. His speedy delivery and penchant for puns — some prompting chuckles, some groans — owes a lot to Mark Twain, as does his political incorrectness (one chapter about his early months in the race rails against the "wussification" of society). An amusing chronicle of a greenhorn on the campaign trail, the book also intermixes bulleted ideas for the betterment of Texas politics — how to improve public education, for instance. This drags down the pace somewhat, but Friedman's views are applicable to government across the nation, with the Lone Star state serving as a case study. The Kinkster's logical, outsider-politics approach is so inspiring, you'll honestly hope he plans a run for Congress in '08. —John Vettese
Punk 365
By Holly George-Warren
Abrams, 744 pp., $29.95
Think you're cool? Your aunt was a punk before you were born. She wasn't always a soccer mom; she used to sing "Too Many Creeps" and "Beat on the Brat" to her sister's kids. A year's worth of photos and blurbs oughta jog your memory, and hers. All the usual suspects are included in Punk 365, with the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Clash each represented by at least a dozen shots. But there's also the forgotten boys (the Angelic Upstarts, the Planets), working women (Patti Smith, Debbie Harry), Svengalis (Malcolm McLaren, Kim Fowley) and their descendents (Madonna, Fugazi). The fans are here, too, in all their spike-haired, safety-pinned glory. There's so much beauty amid the filth. Jenny Lens got thrilling shots from the pit, Bob Gruen captured the chaos, Stephanie Chernikowski found the soul, and Roberta Bayley turned fleeting moments into iconic images. David Arnoff's photo of Exene Cervenka and Lydia Lunch shotgunning is, um, smokin' hot, and if David Johansen, Tom Verlaine and Nick Cave weren't Grandma's idea of teen idols, well, fuck her. So what if your aunt's all grown up and her powder room is more Martha Stewart than CBGB? She's still cooler than you. —M.J. Fine
By Barbara Calamari and Sandra di Pasqu
Abrams, 160 pp., $24.95
For the lackadaisical Catholic, holy cards are little more than forgotten handouts that get stuffed deep in our pockets at holiday Mass and aren't revisited until they've gone through a laundry cycle or two, crumpled and unrecognizable. Not so for writer Barbara Calamari and graphic designer Sandra di Pasqua. The pair gathered nearly 130 full-color, large-scale reproductions from the archives of the Rev. Eugene Carrella, pastor at St. Adalbert's Church on Staten Island, for Patron Saints. The focus of the collection is obscure and striking patron saints — those infamous mascots for different subsets of the faithful — with each card accompanied by a brief contextual blurb. Some are familiar: Gertrude the Great, patron saint of the West Indies, appears in a nun's habit, clutching a rosary. Less common representations include Martin de Porres, patron saint of mouse infestation, looking like a sneaky pied piper as he beckons a swarm of rodents from a home while a family of hungry cats lies in wait. With their lush imagery and lively selection, these holy cards transform from disintegrated pocket lint to the portable religious art they were meant to be. —John Vettese
Edited and introduced by Ira Glass
Riverhead Trade, 464 pp., $15
Ira Glass has made a career of turning reporting into fable, presenting first-person narratives about the unlikely everyman in his NPR/Showtime show This American Life. In this collection, the bespectacled host suggests journalism can be entertaining and wrought with not just observations, but ideas. The collection represents a quirky look at the new journalism guard — modern magazine writers who search-and-rescue unlikely tales about everyday folks and famous freaks. Given his propensity for slice-of-life reporting, it's easy to see why Glass chose these stories, including Michael Lewis' profile of a 15-year-old online stock trader, James McManus' chronicle of the World Series of Poker, and Coco Henson Scales' celebrity-charged "The Hostess Diaries: My Year at a Hot Spot." While not necessarily the best in nonfiction writing today (famous writers are replaced by lesser-known contributors, and some stories read more as period pieces than timeless classics), these selections encapsulate a cultural place and time. They also tend to read like scripts to — you guessed it — This American Life. An entertaining read? Sure. But hailing the authors as "kings" is a wild stretch, even if Dan Savage's hilarious stint as a Republican committeeman offers as much insight into politics today as it did more than 10 years ago. —Natalie Hope McDonald
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