Awesome Books

An offshoot of the hipster hyperbole TV show, The Portlandia Activity Book is filled with fun activities and ideas like crowdfunding your baby, how to be a critic, a tarot card expansion pack and conversation starters and stoppers.

Physicist and xkcd creator Randall Munroe will soon release a book version of What If?, his funny and enlightening science Q&A series. The book features unpublished articles as well as revised versions of some of the published ones.

English Words That Don’t Appear on Tests (試験に出ない英単語) is a series of Japanese books that teach English through hilarious sentences accompanied by silly illustrations. They’re available at Amazon Japan and E-Hon.

Chockful of diagrams and explanatory text, Richard Hallett’s visually impressive book provides an in-depth look at not only every detail about how modern bicycles function, but also how they came to be. Informative and beautiful.

The perfect companion to Go the F**k to Sleep, Movies R Fun! features classic scenes from R-rated flicks like Fargo, Alien, The Godfather and Die Hard, illustrated in the style of children’s books. Illustrated by Pixar animator Josh Cooley.

A 2-in-1 bundle of Jeffrey Brown’s children’s comic books Darth Vader and Son and Vader’s Little Princess. It comes with two maquettes featuring the titular characters. The Son and Princess sets are also available separately.

Sterling Archer provides sage advice for spies, from dressing for success, to personal grooming, to taking down foes, to fixing the perfect cocktail, to seducing the ladies. Browse inside the book here. Say, that cover sure looks familiar.

Author John Biggs may be known for his work at TechCrunch and Gizmodo, but he’s also been writing an adventure trilogy for young adults about a secret underground train system that connects New York and the rest of the world.

The humorous trailer for astronaut Chris Hadfield’s non-fiction book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. In the book, Hadfield talks about his experiences as an astronaut and the lessons he learned from them.

This book can be classified under either non-fiction or horror depending on the person reading it. Simon Rich and Farley Katz outline the realities of married life in The Married Kama Sutra: The World’s Least Erotic Sex Manual.

Our pals over at MightyMega are giving away three copies of the new Cult Movie Art 2 from Gallery 1988’s Crazy4Cult series, courtesy of Titan Books. The book features tons of awesome fan art from classic flicks. (Ends 10/20)

We knew that Jughead loves to eat, but we didn’t know he’d develop a taste for human flesh. The zombie apocalypse comes to Riverdale in Afterlife with Archie by writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Francesco Francavilla.

Matthew Chojnacki’s Alternative Movie Posters: Film Art from the Underground is about the art of unofficial movie posters. Featuring over 200 posters with commentary from the artists. More on The Verge.

Fiftythree partnered with Moleskine to allow users of the brilliant iPad sketching app Paper to order a printed version of their virtual journals from within the app. Each book costs $40 and will be delivered in 2 weeks. More here.

Gary Hustwit’s upcoming book compiles the full text of the interviews from his design documentaries: Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized. Featuring prominent designers such as Dieter Rams, Sir Jony Ive and Chris Bangle.

An amusing collection of poetry written by cats. Or perhaps written by a human controlled by his cat master. Either way, why hasn’t this won a Pulitzer prize yet? Also available as a wall calendar – perfect for your kitty to claw at.