The Weirdest of 2008

Photo: Martha Williams

If we felt like being lazy about our “worst of” picks, all we’d have to do is take a look at the whackjob political books that came out around election time— Obama is a Muslim! Not only that, he’s Indonesian!—and be done with it. But no, we work hard for you, by collecting nominees beginning on January 1. In the end, are these the worst books of the year? Probably not. But they are certainly the strangest, which is a lot more fun.

The Undead Kama Sutra
By Mario Acevedo. Eos, $13.95.
Acevedo’s vampire/noir/erotica series keeps on chugging after hits like X-Rated Bloodsuckers and The Nymphos of Rocky Flats. We expected loads of ridiculous plot twists, “erotic” passages and some serious social anxiety about reading this one on the train. Check out the back cover description: “Now the aliens are back in a fiendish conspiracy with the U.S. government, and only Felix stands between them and the Earth women they covet. But when an army hit man attacks Felix and the bodacious vampire sexpert, Carmen, not even the astonishing erotic powers of the Kama Sutra for the Undead may be able to save them.” But the only astonishing aspect of the book is how tame everything is. Only Acevedo’s awkward vampire fetishism provoked us—“The human nectar bubbled into my mouth. Type A-negative, very nice.”—and not in a good way.

Hip-Hop for Dogs
By Janet Perr. Schuster, $12.95.
What to make of this book? It’s a dictionary of hip-hop terms—as defined by someone who thinks “flick” is rap slang for “movie”—next to poorly Photoshopped images of dogs. It’s not even clear who this book is for: Dog lovers who also think mocking black vernacular is the best? Is it racist when Perr writes under the entry for “ice,” and next to a photo of a dog in a diamond-studded necklace: “No leather dog collar for me…. And certainly no ghetto harness. It’s just ICE and bling all the way for this brotha”? We could have answered that question before opening this book, but now, we’re so much dumber for it.

We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons
By S. Gross. Schuster, $20.
We like to imagine the pitch for this little gem: “OK, I want to collect a bunch of my cartoons together, and the theme will be a symbol for hatred and genocide, under which millions of people died. It’s gold!” Gross’s intent with this book (which really is just 120 single-panel cartoons featuring swastikas) obviously is to poke fun at the despotic pinwheel, and our complaint isn’t that the book is offensive. It’s more the lack of funny that gets to us. In one, a nervous tightrope walker hesitates because there’s a swastika in the middle of his rope. In another, Pinocchio’s nose has a swastika at the end of it. By the time a guy deposits a wrapper in a swastika-shaped bin labeled “white trash,” we were horrified to find ourselves instinctively trying to come up with better Nazi jokes.

NEXT> The top 10 books of 2008