What have been the holiday buying trends this year? "It's been a strange year. We still don't have one book that is the big seller. I've talked to other retailers and distributors and they say the same thing. Because of the elections or talk of a recession, people are being very careful about their money right now."

Are there any holiday books that have really surprised you? "There was a book that was very popular last year that is very popular again this year called The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. It's a little book that lists 100 horrible things and what to do to get out of them--what to do if you are attacked by killer bees, or how to jump from a moving train--and for some reason people find this to be really popular. Last year's trend seemed to be about anxiety and fear, because our two big sellers last year were The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook and The Pop-Up Book of Phobias. You open it and all these pop-up snakes fly at you. I think that said a lot about the whole millennial situation and the mood in the country."

What has been popular this year? "The Darwin Awards has been very popular. You have to either be rendered sterile or kill yourself to get a Darwin Award. One guy cut off his own neck with a chainsaw when trying to impress his girlfriend. We sold out immediately."

What would you recommend? "I would highly recommend Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware's graphic novel. It's going to rank up there in years to come with Maus by Art Spiegelman--it's really beautiful. There's a great gift called Forbidden Erotica. It's photographs from the Rottenberg collection--which is a collection of sort of amateurish erotica from the early 1900s, and they're all hardcore erotic pictures. There's nothing quite like it."