Call them impulse items, gift books, bathroom books, or ephemera collections—everyone’s probably familiar with those books that sit by the bookstore cash register, in the hope that people will pick them up on a whim, either for someone who’s hard to shop for, or just in a moment of brief interest. That interest rarely lasts long, especially these days, when the blog-to-book phenomenon turns popular websites like Stuff On My Cat and Hot Chicks With Douchebags into knockoff print versions on a regular basis. (More rarely, the same phenomenon spawns something more durable and high-end, like the bestselling Postsecret art books.)
A decade ago, most of those books were forgotten 10 minutes after the gift-wrap came off; these days, they’re forgotten in the time it takes to mentally click over to the next novelty website. But a few books either go further with their premises, or are just so entertaining that they’re actually worth the money.