Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris is not for everyone. Specifically, it’s not for anyone who thinks holidays are magical events or anyone who has normal people as relatives. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your view), that’s a pretty small group of people. It’s not that I don’t like holidays; it’s just that I see the good and the bad and come out somewhere in the middle on my opinion of them. Also, I don’t have normal relatives (they probably say the same about me). If you can laugh a bit at the absurdity inherent in some holidays or are a little bit jaded about it all, then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this collection of humorous essays observing the less jolly side of Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Sedaris’s humour is skewed to say the least, but I enjoy that sort of thing being a little skewed myself. The essays cover working as Santa’s elf in department store, a very bizarre family newsletter, a drama critic’s review of elementary school holiday plays, a barnyard Thanksgiving fable, and other assorted curiousities.

Since the stories are short, the book is easy to read during the hectic holiday season (even though I read it all in one go). You can find David Sedaris’s books at amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk. You can also try bookcloseouts.com.

If you haven’t heard of Rick Mercer, I have only three guesses:

• You’ve been living under a rock.
• You have no sense of humour.
• You’re not Canadian.

The first two I can’t help you with, but if you’re not Canadian then you should know that Rick Mercer is a comedian, a satirist, and all around delightfully twisted soul (which isn’t really all that uncommon up here in Canada, but Rick Mercer happens to make a living at it). If you’re American, think of Rick Mercer as our Jon Stewart — only more twisted and with better access to our politicians, er, I mean targets.

This book is a follow up to Streeters which was also a collection of Rick Mercer’s trademark rants. This time the book includes not only rants featured on The Mercer Report (previously known as The Monday Report until CBC moved it) but also rants that have appeared on Mercer’s blog.

The rants are typical Mercer (that’s good). The only complaint I had about the book had to do with the way rants are grouped by topic and sometimes the chronology of the rants is mixed up in order to make a better read. That gets a bit annoying when you are constantly going back and forth through time within a single topic.

If you watch the show regularly and read his blog, you’ve likely seen all the content before, but it is nice to have it in book form. I don’t read the blog so there were rants that I hadn’t seen before as well as ones that I remember from the show. It is a good book to pick up, read a few pages, and put down without losing any of the impact of the rants (or read it all the way through if you’re so inclined).

Most of the rants are political satire, so a knowledge of Canadian politics and current events is needed. Think of trying to watch Jon Stewart with no knowledge of American culture or politics and you’ll realize why.

A couple of the captions mentioned Bond books by Kingsley Amis. One of the books was The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007, which is a tongue-in-cheek guide to living like 007. Apparently the first edition has its own disguise: the dust jacket can be turned inside out, in which case the book appears to be entitled The Bible Revised to be Read as Literature.

Of course, with a description like that I had to go and hunt down the book. I found it at my local university, but sadly that library removes all the book jackets from their collection so I didn’t have the chance to see the book’s disguise.

The book is a quick little read (111 pages) and is written in the second person (addresses the reader as ‘you’), which is something that you don’t see very often, but in this case it works because the book instructs you, the reader, on how to be (or pretend to be) 007. If you’re too old to pull that off, there are instructions for being ‘M’, and if you’re too female for that there are instructions for being a Bond girl.

All of the instructions are backed up with references in the margin to the Ian Fleming book and chapter where that particular behaviour or fact was noted, so there was actually quite a bit of work put into this book.

I found myself wondering if the actors that are recruited to play 007 are given this book to read. I ran across a particular passage that makes me think that the writers, at least, definitely read this book. In the Drink chapter, under Cocktails, is this little gem:

The Vesper. You will have to instruct the bartender or waiter specifically, as follows: Take three measures of Gordon’s gin, one measure of vodka, half a measure of Lillet vermouth. Shake very well until ice-cold. Serve in deep champagne goblet with large thin slice of lemon peel.

While this is being concocted, explain to your companion that when on a job you never have more than one drink before dinner. But you do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well made. You hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad.

When the drink arrives, take a long sip and tell the barman it’s excellent, but would be even better made with a grain-base vodka that with a potato-base one.

Now, the reason that this caught my eye is because I had recently re-watched Casino Royale (the new one, not the spoof–though I have that one as well). And there is a scene between Bond and Vesper where they are sitting having dinner and they have a little back and forth about Bond naming his cocktail The Vesper (of course, this tidbit seems to have come from the book Casino Royale, it may have just come from there–but I like the thought of actors being given this how-to book on being Bond when they sign on for the role).

According to Bookfinder.com, The Book of Bond ranks high in the list of top selling out-of-print books in 2007. Guess I’m not the only one who watches the special features on Bond DVDs after all. The Book of Bond is a quick little read with understated British humour.