It happens all the time. "I need a good book to read!” a friend will ask at a party. “Can you recommend anything?” Of course, and this is no burden. I read a hellacious amount of books and am happy to recommend a couple to a pal, just as I count on my deejay friends to blow my mind with the latest underground hip-hop mix or Japanese feminist grind-core experiment. The idea is to be a good editor, and find the worthy and unique from all the grit and gristle clogging up the Internet, and record/book stores. 

When it comes to books, if it’s got the Soft Skull imprint on it, it’s likely to be a swell read, whether it‘s counter-cultural autobiography or the most adventurous modern fiction -- or a fancy, nasty sweet collection of erotica to lay on the coffee table and shock your visitors with. Begun in the mid-‘90s, Soft Skull has always been the torch-bearer of titles that instruct with progressive ideas while never failing to entertain.

Soft Skull releases colorful, well-designed, exquisitely-written books that cover areas from all aspects of the bizarre art world. This includes “Freaks and Fire: The Underground Reinvention of Circus” by J. Dee Hill (about how some make a living creating spectacles for bored clubbers and tourists); the mordant, hilarious wit of deconstructed clip-out cartoonist David Rees in his “Get Your War On!” series (made up of nihilistic office workers freaking out over international politics); “Painful But Fabulous,“ the autobiography of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV founder Genesis P-Orridge, who candidly explains everything from his early bands’ flirtations with fascist imagery to his recent sex change; and the various Zine Yearbooks, collecting the best writings from the independent publishing underground.

For the politically and socially progressive, Soft Skull is the best in their field, responsible for keeping the ferociously convicting “Fortunate Son” in print (currently in its third edition), the fervent documentation by J.H. Hatfield of George W. Bush’s controversial career. “The Bandana Republic“ analyzes the long history of gang culture from an inside perspective, and the dark secrets revealed by Louis Reyes Rivera and Bruce George have never appeared anywhere else, as far as I‘ve read.

Two of their titles are particularly splendid: the autobio “Drugs Are Nice” by Lisa Carver, whose performance-art-punk rock troupe Suckdog messed up expectations of “alternative” culture just before everybody got “cool” in the early ‘90s (remember your boss getting a soul patch?). Carver fascinatingly chronicles her experiences. On the other side is “Cursed From Birth,” a collection of writing from William Burroughs, Jr., edited by David Ohle, showing that if your famous author father shoots your mother in the head and gets away with it, you’ll likely create astonishingly heartbreaking writing of your own.

~Chris Estey

Get It:

Soft Skull’s finest at http://www.softskull.com