As I write this, President Obama has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the accomplishment of not being George W. Bush, thus beating out the six billion other people who managed the same feat. Don't get me wrong—the president got my vote, much of my admiration and whole lot of my sympathy for the burden he inherited from the last administration, but I can't help but recall that it took Jimmy Carter a quarter-century of tireless work and results before the king of Norway handed him his bling. Just saying.

In any case, we should look upon Obama's award as one of the few high points in a year where half of us struggled to claw our way out of the depths of Satan's armpit, while the other half tried to pull us back in. That we as a nation have managed to scrape up enough pocket change from the couch cushions to keep us in franks and beans and keep despair at bay by focusing our attentions on the death of Michael Jackson, the breakup of Jon and Kate, and Robert Pattinson's scrawny hairless chest rather than the depressing facts of our real lives is a testament to our resilience, our resourcefulness and our heroically short attention spans. Go us.

This is my annual list of books I liked but didn't include in the regular column. I didn't get to read everything I wanted to (new novels by Jonathan Lethem, Nick Hornby and James Ellroy, for example), but I'm pretty pleased with what I did get to read and share with you folks, and here's the rest of it.

Naked Lunch: 50th Anniversary Edition by William S. Burroughs (Grove/Atlantic). A slipcased hardcover edition that purports to reproduce the original text of Burroughs' most famous novel. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Burroughs knows that he wrote Naked Lunch piecemeal, in fits and starts, and tinkered with it so much that any claim to "authoritative" text is suspect. Still, this is definitely worth having and reading several times. While over the years Kerouac has become quaint and Ginsberg has become required school reading, Burroughs' nightmarish and darkly comic hellscape remains as dangerous, dense and challenging as ever.

Saga of the Swamp Thing, Books One and Two, by Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben (DC Comics). Even if he keeps refusing to attach his name to the film versions of his creations (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell and the unfortunate movie version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Alan Moore is getting his rock-star due from the larger non-geek public. Thus DC has finally seen fit to release the work in which Moore made his bones in America, a throwaway horror comic about a man transformed into a swamp creature which, in one issue, Moore turned into a mind-blowing exploration of environmentalism, industrial terror and the nature of evil that lasted four years and opened up a new market for adult-oriented comics that gave us (yes, I'm name-checking him again) Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis and others.

I Drink for a Reason by David Cross (Grand Central). Cross ("Mr. Show," "Arrested Development" and a whole bunch of other stuff) sells us his first book, standard practice for popular comedians, except this comedian is David Cross, which means his book is obscene, trenchant, unapologetic and really frigging funny. Whether he's dealing with the loss of his hipster cred, calling bullshit on Larry the Cable Guy, holding forth on the sins of God and His more peculiar followers, or punching Bill O'Reilly in the nutsack, Cross' bits and rants are so good they'll make you forget to wipe.

The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes by Bryan Burrough (Penguin USA). If there's one thing we've learned in the last decade of rampant corporate corruption, malfeasance and inevitable implosion, it's that today's tycoons are boring. Sure, there's the occasional flake like Richard Branson or Donald Trump, who manages to find new ways to be tiresome with every passing year, but most of our modern-day gilded douchebags are bland cyphers like Kenneth Lay and Dennis Kozlowski and, well, the Bushes. Yawn. Burrough, author of the seminal Barbarians at the Gate, takes us back to the heyday of the Texas oil boom, when the oilmen were larger and louder than life and so were their hats. Burrough follows the four biggest names in old-school Big Oil—Cullen, Hunt, Murchison and Richardson—from their wildcat rise to their eventual fall, with every shady deal, extravagance and wretched excess along the way. A shamefully fun book.

3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man by Matt Kindt (Dark Horse). One of the best graphic novels—and by that I mean a graphic novel—I've read in a mighty long time, it's the story of a boy who grows and keeps growing to colossal manhood, told by the three women in his life, his mother, his wife and his daughter. As Craig Pressgang continues to grow at the rate of roughly one foot per year, he tries to find love and contentment, and make a place in the world, only to find the people around him literally dwindling out of his grasp. Beautifully drawn and austerely written, Kindt takes what could have been a gimmick and instead renders a powerful study of alienation and loss. Highly recommended.

In the Footsteps of Marco Polo: A Companion to the Public Television Film by Drake Belliveau and Francis O'Connell (Rowman & Littlefield). Belliveau and O'Connell undertook a mad quest to trace the route of the 13th-century Italian explorer step by step. Not an easy task considering that among the countries between Italy and China are modern-day Iran and Afghanistan. The PBS special was all right, but I found the book superior for Belliveau's incredible photographs, which are worth lingering over and revisiting. The text is by turns fascinating, when the travelers describe the people they meet along the road, and wince-inducing, when they recreate dialogue between themselves, but as a whole the book is worth checking out.

The Levon Helm Midnight Ramble by Levon Helm and Paul LaRaia (Backbeat Books). When the drummer (among other instruments) and vocalist for The Band developed throat cancer it was assumed that a brilliant musical career was over, but Helm is nothing if not stubborn and driven. Determined to beat the disease and get his voice back, Helm began to invite friends and family to his farm in upstate New York for late-night jam sessions. These sessions soon ballooned into full-blown concert events, which are documented here through Paul LaRaia's photos. Helm came back to produce some of the best music of his career (the album Dirt Farmer is a must-have), and the book is a chronicle of the powerful mojo of music and friends.

Wanted—Bear Cubs for My Children: One Hundred of the Weirdest Posts Ever Seen on Craigslist (and Their Responses) by Gary Fingercastle (Adams Media). Longing to do a little social experimentation but lack the necessary money, resources or Skinner boxes? Look no further than the online Petri dish called craigslist. Fingercastle spent a great deal more time than is probably healthy posting fake and outrageous entries on the popular public-notice site just to see what kind of responses he could provoke. The results are amazing. Apparently there are people out there primed and ready to give tattoos to children, take cash up front to kick your roommate's ass, become human crash-test dummies, and help a brother out with his sexual fantasy of becoming a human sandwich, giant slices of bread and gallons of mayonnaise and all. All I've ever gotten on craigslist was a couch. If only I'd known.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb by R. Crumb (W.W. Norton). I've talked to many people who were weirded out by the concept of underground comics' foremost artist taking a crack at the Old Testament, as if the very concept itself was subversive. What's interesting about Crumb's literal and comprehensive (every word in the King James Version is included here, even the "begats") rendition is that it only serves to illustrate how Genesis needs no help at all to be subversive and disturbing—the story of Lot alone is bizarre on any number of levels. For his part, Crumb treats his project as straight illustration and while the characters are done in Crumb's distinctive style, there are no visual puns or dirty jokes (though this is definitely not for children), and the depth of illustrative detail is nothing short of stunning. Crumb picks and chooses his projects at his leisure, but when he commits, he commits big time, and the result is not just a Good Book but a great one.

John G. Nettles