in which the author discusses five books he’d read, if time permitted.

1. Leadership and Crisis, by Bobby Jindal.
Anyone else think that Bobby Jindal looks like a total badass? Like he could do 25-30 one-armed pushups? Or 100-200 crunches in 30 seconds? Or run an Iron Man triathlon against the whole Kenyan Iron Man triathlon team and still come in first? Like he could take out all the aliens and the mercenaries in Predators starring Adrien Brody and Topher Grace? Like he could take on Randy Macho Man, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Andre the Giant in a steel cage match (circa 1985) and have a chance of emerging unscathed? Like he could triumph over Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Leatherface in a street fight in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?

2. My Passion for Design, by Barbra Streisand.
This looks more entertaining than Yentl (Babs cross-dresses to enter a yeshiva) or Nuts (Babs as high-end prostitute fighting a murder rap for killing a john played by a post-Airplane, pre-Naked Gun Leslie Nielsen) but less entertaining than Prince of Tides (Babs gets down with Nick Nolte. In case you didn’t understand what Prince of Tides was about, I’ll say it again: “Babs gets down with Nick Nolte.” Pretty good idea for a movie.)

3. After the Falls: Coming of Age in the Sixties, by Catherine Gildiner.
“I think the 90s are going to make the 60s look like the 50s.”—-Dennis Hopper, Flashback, 1990. Co-starring Kiefer Sutherland. Mr. Hopper was wrong about a lot of things—-this was one of them.

4. The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas, edited by Robin Harvie and Stephanie Meyers.
New atheists bring you more of a grumpy “no-no-no” than a cheery “ho-ho-ho” this Christmas season. Ha! (Note: For the first time, I teamed up with a few L.A.-based comedy writers to pen a joke—-this was the result. If you liked this joke and would like to see similar jokes in this column in the future, please write me at ediesedgwick@ediesedgwick.biz.)

5. Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and The Signs Of The Times, by Peter Seewald and Pope Benedict XVI.
I like this book because, even though it’s really a book-length interview with my man Benedict XVI, he still gets credited as a co-author. I’ll bet Peter Seewald was like, “Yo, Benedict, I’m gonna take full writing credit on this one,” and the Pope was like, “Fuck no!” and Seewald was like, “Well, how about you just get an editing credit, or we say the book is ‘by Peter Seewald with Pope Benedict XVI?'” and the Pope was like, “Peter, you know I don’t fuck around with no ghost-writing type of credit. I’m the motherfucking Pope! P.S. You can use condoms now if you want to.”