Books

A handwritten, sticky-noted journal of one man’s absurd office feud. It reads in under an hour, and it is more about a crush than a grudge.

An NPR producer’s guide to surviving life’s small humiliations, from stains to awkward elevator rides. Gentle, useful, and exactly as irreverent as public radio allows.

Thirty-two pages of bulldogs posed among flowers. It is a coffee-table novelty, and it is better than it has any right to be.

Mary Shelley started the novel at 18, during a rainy summer by Lake Geneva and a ghost story contest with Lord Byron. She invented science fiction along the way.

Melville’s whale book sold poorly, puzzled critics and was out of print when he died. It took a centenary and a generation of scholars to rescue it.

An LA painter, an earthquake and a city that refuses to take anything seriously. A fast, funny novel built to be read on a cross-country flight.

Short pirate biographies, a glossary, recipes, bad jokes and a coast-by-coast guide to pirate sites in North America, all written in pirate-speak.

A Chicago lawyer wrote a novel narrated by literature’s most charming pirate. Readers kept asking him the same joke: what is the difference between pirates and lawyers?

Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein teach the big ideas of philosophy through jokes. It became a surprise bestseller because it actually works.

A dating blog turned into a book of warning signs, with real stories that are hard to look away from. Funny, cringe-inducing and, at its best, genuinely useful.