Surprise your friends and family with fun and entertaining books this holiday season for that White Elephant gift exchange. From humorous cookbooks to a silly field guide to identify rude birds, these are the perfect bookish gifts—with a twist.
Looking for more bookish gift ideas?
Check out our Holiday Gift Guide below!
Crafting with Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make with Your Cat by Kaori Tsutaya
Got fur balls?
Are your favorite sweaters covered with cat hair? Do you love to make quirky and one-of-a-kind crafting projects? If so, then it’s time to throw away your lint roller and curl up with your kitty! Crafting with Cat Hair shows readers how to transform stray clumps of fur into soft and adorable handicrafts. From kitty tote bags and finger puppets to fluffy cat toys, picture frames, and more, these projects are cat-friendly, eco-friendly, and require no special equipment or training. You can make most of these projects in under an hour—with a little help, of course, from your feline friends!
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Effin’ Birds: A Field Guide to Identification by Aaron Reynolds
A compact, comprehensive, and very silly field guide featuring more than 200 of the rudest birds on earth.
Effin’ Birds is the most eagerly anticipated new volume in the grand and noble profession of nature writing and bird identification. Sitting proudly alongside Sibley, Kaufman, and Peterson, this book contains more than 150 pages crammed full of classic, monochrome plumage art paired with the delightful but dirty aphorisms (think “I’m going to need more booze to deal with this week”) that made the Effin’ Birds Twitter feed a household name. Also included in its full, Technicolor glory is John James Audubon’s most beautiful work matched with modern life advice. Including never-before-seen birds, insults, and field notes, this guide is a must-have for any effin’ fan or birder.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Fifty Shades of Chicken: A Parody in a Cookbook by F.L. Fowler
Fifty chicken recipes, each more seductive than the last, in a book that makes every dinner a turn-on.
You’ll read about the adventures of Miss Chicken, a young free-range, from raw innocence to golden brown ecstasy, in this spoof-in-a-cookbook that simmers in the afterglow of E.L. James’s sensational Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. Like Anastasia Steele, Miss Chicken finds herself at the mercy of a dominating man, in this case, a wealthy, sexy, and very hungry chef.
And before long, from unbearably slow drizzling to trussing, Miss Chicken discovers the sheer thrill of becoming the main course. A parody in three acts—“The Novice Bird” (easy recipes for roasters), “Falling to Pieces” (parts perfect for weeknight meals), and “Advanced Techniques” (the climax of cooking)—Fifty Shades of Chicken is a cookbook of fifty irresistible, repertoire-boosting chicken dishes that will leave you hungry for more.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety: And Abstinence, Drugs, Satanism, and Other Dangers That Threaten Their Nine Lives by Zachary Auburn
The cats of America are under siege!
Long gone are the good old days when a cat’s biggest worries were mean dogs or a bath. Modern cats must confront satanists, online predators, the possibility of needing to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and countless other threats to their nine lives.
For over four decades, the American Association of Patriots have stood at the vanguard of our country’s defense by helping to prepare our nation’s cat owners for the difficult conversations they dread having with their pets. Written in a simple Q&A format, How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety answers crucial questions such as, “What is the right age to talk to my cat about the proper use of firearms?” and “What are the benefits of my cat living a lifestyle of abstinence?” and especially “Why does my cat need to use the internet? Can’t he just play with yarn like cats used to do?”
Our country—and our cats—stand at a precipice. It will take courage, and it will take hard work, but armed with the knowledge within these pages, we can make our cats—and America—great again!Our country—and our cats—stand at a precipice. It will take courage, and it will take hard work, but armed with the knowledge within these pages, we can make our cats—and America—great again!
Click to Read an Excerpt.
That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug by Emily Flake
From New Yorker humorist Emily Flake, a hilarious, oddly enlightening book of illustrations, observations, and advice that embraces the inescapable awkwardness of two human beings attempting to make physical contact with each other.
We’ve all been there.
You encounter the mother of your recent ex. That guy your best friend dated sophomore year. That friend-of-a-friend who you’ve met once but keeps popping up in your “People You May Know” feed.
Do you shake hands? Do you hug? Do you–horrors–kiss on the cheek? And then the inevitable: The awkward hug. That cultural blight we’ve all experienced.
Emily Flake–keen observer of human behavior and life’s less-than-triumphant moments–codifies the most common awkward hugs that have plagued us all.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
This Book Is Literally Just Pictures of Snoozy Animals That Will Make You Sleep Better Edited by Smith Street Books
Screw meditative methods, white-noise machines, and chamomile tea—this photographic compilation of silly sweeties napping will lull you peacefully to sleep.
As suggested by its title, this ridiculous book is a sleeping aid which harnesses the relaxing power of cute animals. Well, wait—haven’t you heard? The secret to a happy and fulfilled life is to just get eight hours of sleep per night. Except there’s one big catch: getting a good sleep is borderline impossible in our current snoozing climate. We’ve got smartphones forever by our bedside—complete with the blue-light temptation of scrolling through social media till sunrise. There’s only one solution: turn off the phone, and flick instead through this therapeutic book of snoozy animals. They will coo you into sleepy submission.
This book is literally just pictures of snoozing animals. Some of the lil’ sleepy sweeties featured include resting raccoons, cats having a catnap, napping numbats, siesta-ing seals, drowsy dingoes, slumbering sloths, and zebras catching some much-needed Zs. Toward these furry angels we must turn in these dire times of sleeplessness to get a good night’s sleep of our own.
Love Poems (for People with Children) by John Kenney
In the spirit of his wildly popular New Yorker pieces and the New York Times bestseller Love Poems for Married People, Thurber-prize winner John Kenney presents a hilarious new collection of poetry for people with children.
With the same brilliant wit and hilarious realism that made Love Poems for Married People such a hit, John Kenney is back with a brand new collection of poems, this time taking on the greatest “joy” in life: children. Kenney covers it all, from newborns, toddlers, and sleep deprivation, to the terrible twos, terrible tweens, and terrible teens. A parent’s love is unconditional, but sometimes that button can’t help but be pushed. Between back to school shopping, summer vacations that never end, the awkwardness of puberty, the inevitable post-college moving back in, and more, a parent’s job is never done, whether they like it or not.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Pop Science: Serious Answers to Deep Questions Posed in Songs by James Ball
A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist uses data, facts, and science to deliver hilarious, fascinating answers to some of the most famous questions in pop music history.
Some of the most famous questions of our time have come to us in pop songs. “What is love?” “How soon is now?” “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” But do you know the answers?
Breaking down lyrics from Bob Dylan, Queen, Rihanna, the Ting Tings, Billy Joel, and a variety of other genre—and decade—spanning artists with colorful graphs and Venn diagrams, Pop Science reveals the exact points where lowbrow pop culture and the highest science and philosophy meet. By revealing the economic status of doggies in windows, what war is good for, and what becomes of the brokenhearted, James Ball uncovers what we have always known—that pop music is the key to life itself.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Get Ready for Black Friday with Our Holiday Gift Guide!
Download our Book Lover’s Guide to Gifting so you can be ready to pick up gifts for every kind of reader this Black Friday. Whether the readers on your list are Star Wars fans, chefs of all skill levels, country music lovers, or romantics at heart, our gift guide is filled with bookish presents to give this holiday season.
