Scanning the Bookshelf

The fevered holiday shopping season gets more feverish by the minute, and while I can't help you find the Perfect Gift — A) I don't know you; B) I don't know the person you are buying for; C) I don't know what you are willing to spend; D) One man's ceiling is another man's floor — I can toss a few crumbs, er, ideas your way.

A pledge: no James Patterson twaddle (thanks, and a tip o' the hat to A. Salm). Now, let's get to it:

Ted Rall is a terrific journalist ("Silk Road to Ruin"), a take-no-prisoners political cartoonist ("America Gone Wild," to name just one collection, and his work runs in many media outlets) and ... gigolo?

Well, he was once, in 1984, aka "The Year of Loving Dangerously" (NBM, 127 pages, $18.95). Rall, as memoirist, teams up with artist Pablo G. Callejo ("Castaways") to look at an anus horribilus most of us would just as soon forget: His girlfriend dumped him, he was kicked out of college, booted from his job, you name it. He drifts from woman to woman, to survive. There's sex, sure, but it's a hard and humiliating way to go, and Rall is brutal as he savages himself and the choices he made:

"What begins as simple opportunities quickly devolves into a jumble of guilt, bitterness and a host of other dangerous emotions."

If your Tea Party pal couldn't wait to give you a copy of "Going Rogue" and it's, well, not your cup of tea, here's the antidote: "Going Rouge: Sarah Palin — an American Nightmare" (OR Books, 330 pages, $16, paperback).

The cover, which perfectly apes Palin's best-seller, might be reason enough to buy a copy. Edited by The Nation stalwarts Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, with serious intent leavened with humor here and there, a who's who of left-leaning writers from Naomi Klein to (my favorite) Matt Taibbi take on the lady from the North Slope.

An engrossing read? You betcha!

Jonathan Safran Foer is a righteous man. A passionate man and a terrific writer. He wants you to stop eating meat. Fowl. Fish. Why? Because it is the ethical thing to do. He makes a mighty strong case in "Eating Animals" (Little, Brown and Co., 341 pages, $25.99), a mix of solid reporting (60 pages of notes and references), emotional memoir and delightful wordsmith at play.

It starts simple, a 9-year-old Foer's light-bulb moment when a baby sitter opts not to eat chicken ("She didn't want to hurt anything"):

"'Hurt anything?' I asked?

"'You know that chicken is chicken, right?'

"Frank shot me a look: Mom and Dad entrusted this stupid woman with their precious babies?

"... My brother and I looked at each other, our mouths full of hurt chicken, and had simultaneous how-in-the-world-could-I-have-never-thought-of-that-before-and-why-on-earth-didn't-someone-tell-me? moments.

I put down my fork. Frank finished his meal and is probably eating a chicken as I type these words."

We've got a memoir theme going, more or less, so by god, let's milk it! Paul Rudnick — prince of The New Yorker, screenwriter ("Sister Act") and playwright ("Valhalla") — gets autobiographical with "I Shudder: And Other Reactions to Life, Death and New Jersey" (Harper, 318 pages, $23.99).

A series of essays that cover his family and career, "I Shudder" is poignant, even subdued, especially compared to his wild New Yorker romps — except for the excerpts from the fictional "Most Deeply Intimate and Personal Diary of One Elyot Vionnet":

"Christmas is woefully misunderstood. Some believe that on Christmas we celebrate the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is ludicrous. Do you think that, year after year, Jesus wants to be reminded of how very old he is? Do you imagine that Jesus enjoys watching everyone else opening their own mammoth piles of presents on what's supposedly his big day? Do you feel, after the way humanity treated him, that a gala annual blowout might comfort Jesus, by saying 'We're all terribly sorry about that crucifixion business, but hey look, Jimmy got a catcher's mitt'?"

You just know it's in that big box under the tree, don't you? So, next week take that "Post Offices of Maine" monstrosity your in-law regifted you and trade it in on a work that will mark you (or at least your coffee table) as artistically savvy: "The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics" (Abrams Comic Arts, 239 pages, $40) by Dennis Kitchen and Paul Buhle.

The creative influence of Kurtzman — the wickedly clever talent behind Mad magazine and Playboy's gem of a comic strip, "Little Annie Fanny" — is omnipresent, in everything from ad campaigns to underground comix, from "Monty Python" to graphic novels.

There are scores of images ranging from pencil sketches to full-blown comic books; 200 of them are full-color illustrations. "The Art of Harvey Kurtzman" is a delight on every page — satirical perfection combined with incredible artwork is a combination hard to beat.

Can you do an entire book in questions? Heck, I can't even figure out how to do this item solely in that mode, yet Padgett Powell has done so in "The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?" (Ecco, 164 pages, $21.99) — and done it exquisitely.

This is a mindblower yet much, much more than just literary experiment. Nor is it showing off — Padgett is a wonderful writer, playing with words, ideas, reality, you name it. A sample can't do justice to his work — you have to just surrender to the flow from Word One — but consider:

"Do you miss Tab and do you fully understand its disappearance? If you could have a guaranteed steady supply of an expensive or illicit substance or other commodity much prized and hard to get, what would it be? Are you surprised at the low number of people crazy or the high number of people crazy? Do you know offhand whether a hippopotamus sweats? If offered a cherry or a strawberry, which do you take?"

To find out more about Martin Zimmerman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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