From Jarret Keene, via the Tucson Weekly, comes a great piece for the holidays:

The holidays are all about friends and family—which means there's very little quiet time. Instead, there's clamor in the kitchen, TV sports blasting in the living room and hopefully a closet crammed with enough so-so gifts to be "re-gifted" by this time next year.

Let's face it, though: What everyone really craves during the holiday is a little bit of (to borrow from '80s metal band Queensryche) silent lucidity. And what better way to enjoy quiet time than with a cool book?

Sure, there are plenty of great new corporate-published novels out there worth buying—from The Godfather's Revenge to Cormac McCarthy's The Road. But after a week of eating ham and turkey leftovers, giant hardback books are a real pain to lug from the bathroom to the bedroom and back again.

To help combat holiday hernias, here is a list of small-press publications that will impress just about any kind of reader. Don't bother checking your list twice, though: These books are for naughty folks.

Need a book for a pet lover or mystery fan? Then get your greasy paws on a copy of Pet Noir: An Illustrated Anthology of Strange but True Pet Crime Stories (Manic D Press, $13.95). Shannon O'Leary wrote most of the tales in this collection, with a number of today's finest comic-book artists, including Mary Fleener, providing the pictures. The reader is guaranteed to learn all kinds of unusual things with each and every narrative--like how to bottle-feed a cougar ("Cougar Nursing 101") or how to train gerbils to attack ("Murder, Sorrow, Sex and Revenge") or how to exorcise your possessed kitten ("Satan Is in Your Cat"). However, you may want to attach a warning note with this book. After experiencing "The Christmas Koala Caper," you'll never look at the San Francisco Zoo the same way again. Pet Noir is an eerie yet uplifting celebration of man's love and respect for animals.

Poetry is boring, right? Well, not if you cautiously--and we mean cautiously--approach a book like Stumpfucker Cavalcade (Superstition Street Press, $10). Written by no less than Joe Pachinko, Oakland, Calif.'s most notorious anti-bard, this book on your shelves will certainly raise more hackles than eyebrows. Leave it on your coffee table, and it's guaranteed to be picked up and read. Resistance to titles like "I Hear the Inflatable Baby Bearded Clams Melting Below the Polar Ice Cap" and "Luck Vomit Torpedo" is futile. And the poems themselves? "Last Words" goes like this: "'Well, at least I won't / have to wipe my ass / anymore,' he said. / Then died." Now that's poetry--or something far worse. In any case, you can order this book at lulu.com. Buy two copies, because the first one will be lifted during a party. Seriously!

Read the rest of the article at the Tucson Weekly.

Source: Jarret Keene, Tucson Weekly

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