Since you didn’t ask….
Kevin over at Political Animal asked a bunch of policy wonks, real serious thinkers, and other social maladroits to come up with lists of serious non-fiction books for the holidays. So, naturally, he didn’t ask me.
Not that that stopped me from coming up with a list anyway.
For your Kwanzaa shopping pleasure:
Long before he became a drug addict selling his body in the alleys behind independent film houses showing Deliverance, Rush Limbaugh gave his stamp of approval to Bob Cobb’s Dittohead Bartender’s Guide featuring drinks such as One Bourbon, One Scotch, and Three Divorces or the ever popular Purple Pilonidal Punch. Make sure to have a copy around the house for the upcoming holidays because you never know when Jenna and NotJenna may stop by.
If you drew Ken Mehlman’s name as his Secret Santa, may I suggest a copy of Letters from the Closet, because he already has nine copies of this and he really doesn’t need anymore.
They were handing this out at the Republican Convention and it must be pretty good because the cover caused over 80% of the male delegates to, um, you know, “launch a preemptive attack on the interior of their tighty-whities” (if you know what I mean). It also makes a great gift for the postgraduate college student on your list even if he isn’t a Christian and doesn’t believe that Jesus is his Lord and Savior.
If you’re like me (and you are in many more ways than you want to admit) you hate it when you go into a bookstore and some non-employee has moved books that they don’t approve of into the wrong section so people can’t find them. The book industry refers to this as “maglalanging” which results in lost sales and peevish employees who would really rather be at home working on their angst-filled bildungsroman instead of explaining to some yokel that they can’t buy volume seven of the Left Behind series (The Rapture: The Royalty Check Has Cleared) with food stamps . One perpetrator of “maglalanging” is this crazy lady who keeps going into Borders, Barnes & Noble, and your finer independent bookstores across the country and shifting Born Free and Equal into the fiction section, which is a shame because Ansel Adams’ photos are really quite moving.
Finally, it won’t be available until after Christmas and it is fiction, but Sam Francis is finishing up his retelling of To Kill A Mockingbird. With a working title of Tom Robinson Had It Coming you can look for it in the lobby when the Hannitization tour hits a sleepy backwater podunk town near you.
I hope this helps you out. You can thank me later.
