The Ask A Drunk Christmas Books Roundup

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It’s been a rich year for biography, with Kitty Kelley’s unauthorised life of Basil Hume (Protestant Way of Truth, £17.99) disclosing the Cardinal’s heroin habit, fondness for badger-baiting and complicity in the white slave trade. In Thora, the Unknown Princess (LikeHell Press, £4.50), Lady Colin Campbell claims that the Prince of Wales secretly married Dame Thora Hird in 1969, recording the event in grainy photographs which until now were thought to show American astronauts landing on the moon. Celeste Pettifer’s Fallaize: The Pasta Trail To Glory (Skemtrash, £12.99) rips the lid off a corner of Lancashire life better left unexamined.

Oliver Sacks’s latest study of cognitive disorder, The Man Who Mistook His Hat For A Wife, focuses on a Welshman who seldom if ever talked to his hat and left it at home when he went to the pub; amazingly, no one noticed he was ill. And the redoubtable Doris Lessing rails against British publishing in ’Wy Arr theiy Ørl Sew illitrit A'nd iNakkewrâtt!!!! (Chato & Widnus, £$.99 hradback).

Leading contributors to Ask A Drunk offer their own recommendations below.

― Rex (Rex), Saturday, 7 December 2002 22:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

Dear Guys,

Here is my Xmas list (couldn't be arsed typing Christmas - crap! I just did!)

Anyway, if you can't find your way to a Borders to get me the wit and wisdom GWB diary, any of these will do ....

Tora Bora Tomkinson & Anne Widdecombe: What to wear
John and Edwina: A Modest Proposal
Geri Halliwell: My Hell. The pop-up book
Bugger-my-Neighbour: The Michael Barrymore story
Lord of the Sales: J R R Tolkien
Anna Nicole Smith: From The Pig's Mouth
The Big-Fuck-Off-Coffee-Table-Hardback-Book of Kylie's Arse
You Cannot Be Serios! The Paranormal World of Ted Serios
Magnus Pike's ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS adventure
Fishing for boys: J R Hartley-Baden-Powell
Michelin pink guide to maisons closes 2003
George and Laura Bush: The Ignorant, Drunken and Corrupt WASP Factory
Bald and collared: The Harry Hill Story
Being Impossibly Nice and Talented and Cool and the Heir-Apparent to the Throne of Hollywood, by John Malkovich
You don't know Jack! The autobiography of Jack Stimpson

Even if you can't get these, please try to seek out 'Es tut mir leid: die Timothy Lumsdens tagebuche', which was remaindered late in 1982. But someone might be able to pick it up in a charity shop. Let me know....

― Pooster (pooster), Sunday, 8 December 2002 02:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

Sorry, for 'Ignorant', read 'Ingorant'

― Pooster (pooster), Sunday, 8 December 2002 03:16 (twenty-one years ago) link

For those who scorn light entertainments and long to sink their inscisors, canines, and bicuspids into meatier fare, I would recommend all of these titles without hesitation.

The Secret Life of Pismires, E.O. Wilson.
The Prosaic Dull Pointless Edda, Snorri Slapirsson
The Shellfish Gene, Dick Gawkin
A Comprehensive History of Aromatic Gums, Geena Davis, BA (ed.)
The Oxford Book of Rebuses, Harlan Smythe-Reebok, PhD. (ed.)

― Aimless, Sunday, 8 December 2002 20:09 (twenty-one years ago) link

I hate what you're impugning, Aimless, but I'd die for your right to impugn it.

BTW, didn't you know that Oxford Book of Rebuses is available with a free set of felt-tip pens now? Go for that one!

― Pooster (pooster), Monday, 9 December 2002 00:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

Ted Serios! Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
For those of you who haven't yet recieved your telegram from the queen; Ted Serios was a guy who claimed to be able to project pictures from his mind onto the film in a camera, back in, oooooh, 1968 or thereabouts. I thought he was outed as a fake back in the last millenium.

Here's my own Xmas shortlist:

Jeffrey Archer - "The ins and outs of prison life."

"Postcards from abroad." by Tony Blair.

"The importance of the Dado rail in British history." - HRH Wales.

"Europe on $5 million dollars a day" - Gordon Brown.

"History is the new rock'n'roll" - Simon Scharma.

"Rock'n'roll is history" - Pete Waterman.

"Whatnots to wear" - The Vivienne Westwood story.

― Pete Andrews, Monday, 9 December 2002 11:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

I think this is a surefire bestseller at point of sale this festive season:
What Knots to Wear, a little-known tract by the Marquis de Sade, brought up to date with a foreword by Ellen McArthur.

― Pooster (pooster), Monday, 9 December 2002 23:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

Failing that: What's Not to Wear? by Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen

― Pooster (pooster), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 00:09 (twenty-one years ago) link

Not a Minute More, Not a Minute Less - Jeffrey Archer
Lend Me Your Ear - Evander Holyfield
That's Where You'll Find Me Rummaging Through My Desk Drawer by Hugh Scully

― JSenlib, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 04:43 (twenty-one years ago) link

Run, Bitch, Run - Andrew Morton and John Leslie
Morton tackles another national treasure, giving us a valuable insight into the kind of parties women like to go to.
Leech : The Story of a talentless hanger-on - Victor Bokris
450 pages of guffawing nastiness as the 70's punk scene's blandest cartoonist retells stories of readdicting 60 year old literary icons to horse.
Gorging on Orgasm - Joanne Harris
After her recent piss poor rom-coms, Gatwick's finest goes straight for the source.
Woman on the Edge of U2 - Marge Piercey
Dystopian Zoo TV fun.
Shit - Irvine Welsh
Scheemees, fitba, smack and still no fucking plot worth reading from the Groucho's fattest mistake.
Jamie's Crazies - Jamie Oliver
Laugh like Atta as Jamie tells the story of blowing 6 million of his own pounds on teaching a man with the mental age of Jordan's cokebaby how to scramble eggs.
Hoi! Me Genius! - Victor Lewis Smith
Page after page detailing the directionless career of London's most hit or miss scat-comedian. Every paragraph dwarfed by huge pictures of the funniest bits from various Chris Morris series.
The Kitty Kilogram - Hunter S. Thompson
Uproarious tale of Gonzo journalism in Nuneaton wherein Hunter kills a kilogram of cats every day with a metal hook. Contains many references to other books of his which are far funnier.
September the Elfen - Robert Rankine
Hot spunk from everyones favourite 3 for a tenner sub-Pratchett bandwagoneer containing many haughty puns and ribald bullshit. Now with the added feature of an index of plot twists on the first page for those blind enough not to spot them by paragraph four.
Bridget Jones' Maternal Humiliation - Helen Fielding
In the most original and vital of the increasingly tense Bridget series, our hero gets impregnanted in a drunken one night stand by a fascist builder who has a mundane obsession with Champagne Supernova and organised football violence. Once again Bridget must make an important choice . . .
Modulok - Anne Rice
After retelling the myths of vampires, mummies and werewolves, every fat goths favourite masturbation self-help author turns her attention to the minor league self-assembly henchman from the 80's cartoon He-Man.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 13:31 (twenty-one years ago) link

I hate all this high-brow stuff! This is what people really want!

The Nicorette Prescription - Len Deighton

Gary Rhodes: Climbing Chalk Cliffs with Ice Axes in Three Days

Who Wants to be an Airport Vet? The glossy book of the muddled and desperate reality-TV series

Freaks! - Grainy, black-and-white, clandestinely shot photographs of fans lining up to receive the paraph of Marilyn Manson. Foreword by Les Battersby.

Do You Come Here Often? - the point-of-sale urologist's joke book

Leslie Crowther's 40 winks ... and other urban legends

Hall on Weals: 50 years of jovial prolixity and sado-masochism - Stuart Hall

How to Defacate: Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Delia Smith

Living and Working in Sri Lanka - Arthur C Clarke

By God, so I have! Witty retorts to leg-loss incidents - Jeremy Paxman (Ed.)

― Pooster (pooster), Thursday, 12 December 2002 00:22 (twenty-one years ago) link

Pete! Thank you for your elucidation vis-à-vis Ted Serios, but don't you think Magnus Pike's ENORMOUS ADVENTURE warrants more speculation? What the hell happened to that proto-TV-science-evangelist? Without him, no Simon Schama, no Adam Hart-Davies, no nothing! He made it cool to know things! Without Magnus Pike, global television would be populated with Cat-Deeley clones!

― Pooster (pooster), Thursday, 12 December 2002 00:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

Whilst I admit that would be bad, if there's a spare clone available...

― Weebleman (StillSimon), Thursday, 12 December 2002 11:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

three weeks pass...

It's too late for Christmas, but...

The Spirit of Plaice, a long (1210 pp.) stylish meditation on a certain bland whitefish. This book was inspired by Marcel Proust's rather lengthy book about the madeleine. It is written in the voice of the elderly Henry Miller, after he'd gnawed off his testicles.

― Aimless, Tuesday, 7 January 2003 05:27 (twenty-one years ago) link

six years pass...

Just in time for last second gift giving, please consider:

1001 Uses for Your Index Finger, Felix Heiferschnauzer.
Consumer Guide to Prescription Drugs, (ed.) M. Jackson
Brittany Spires: An Architectural Guide, Sir Culvert St. Jiminy
I Still Can Scare the Hired Help, M. Thatcher

― Aimless, Thursday, 24 December 2009 18:55 (fourteen years ago) link

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