Let's face it. The last thing most college students need is another book to read. Between Boat Club, Corby's, Heartland, The Library, Coach's, The Backer, McCormick's, Club 23 and that one place we go to, like, learn, there's just not enough time in the week to fit in pleasure reading anymore. And in a day and age in which the typical college student is exposed to nightly mind-expanding marathons of "The Anna Nicole Smith Show" and high-culture relationship advice from "elimiDATE," our attention spans have been reduced to … wait, what were we talking about … oh yeah, to less than the lifespan of a suicidal fruit fly with liver cancer born in a fly swatter factory. But the media mogul powers that be have responded in kind by producing a new type of reading: short attention span literature. So, sit back, relax and pop a couple Ritalins as we look at the latest and greatest in this exciting, if quickly, forgotten genre.

Dear Alice

Reality television has taught us two things. First, if you put 14 ridiculously attractive 20-somethings on an island and dangle $1 million in front of them, they will eventually form Lord of the Flies-esque clans and urinate on each other for no apparent reason. Second, people that are incredibly weird love the spotlight.

Any reader of Viewpoint knows that the true cracked pots on campus just have to get their opinions in print. But filtering the daily deluge of letters is a tough job. The process breaks down into a triage operation separating the printably sane, the semi-printably less-than-sane and the completely unprintably insane.

The last category write-ins generally are immortalized in an age-old file for generations of tired journalists to laugh about. Writer Steven Ryniak supposedly sifted through 2,000 advice column rejection piles worldwide culled from 60,000 different publications. The result: "Dear Alice," a collection of 70 of the craziest submissions anyone has ever read.

In the ultra-litigious society of the new millennium, many are asking for legal advice. But the delusional need extra special counsel. For example, one man asks whether he will have to pay child support to the chicken that he believes he has impregnated and a college student asks under what terms he can legally kill his roommate.

While some of the letters seem contrived, in the age of "Jerry Springer" and "C.O.P.S.," they don't sound that implausible. The only downside to this book is that Ryniak doesn't give us the responses. After all, it would be good to know under what circumstances it is legal to kill your roommate.

The Encyclopedia of Personal Problems

Finally, an abnormal psychology handbook that describes the real life situations that therapy couch junkies ask their analysts about. Who need Freud? Nobody really wants to know why he or she keeps dreaming about his or her mother swimming in pool of frosting. Steven Appleby's "Encyclopedia of Personal Problems" gives future psychotherapists, or psycho therapists as the case may be, a solid reference for these situations.

For example, Appleby aptly describes personal problem of abstinence as "the masochistic decision to deny yourself something you want such as food or sex. If you must practice abstinence my tip is to abstain from something you don't like, such as being run down by a lawnmower or sticking your fingers in a toaster."

For those struggling to get out of the cannibal closest Appleby explains that the "only problem is that it is illegal. However, in today's overcrowded and permissive society, I'm sure it won't be long before you're on my menu, or vice versa. And I'm sure we'd both taste delicious. Serve with green salad."

Appleby's book is a constant reminder that no matter how weird you think you are, there's probably a cross-dressing, hypochondriac Nazi Eskimo dental assistant named JoJo LaVeine who thinks that the mothership is coming for him any minute and makes you look like the picture of mental health. This book is Prozac in print.

The Smoking Gun

Bureaucracy is an amazing thing. When the printing press was invented, Guttenburg used it to print the really important stuff: the Bible, porn, Chicken Soup for the Oppressed, Lice-Ridden, Dark Age Serf's Soul. Now, in an age when more books are being printed each year than there are people who are even semi-literate, it seems that nobody can sneeze anymore without somebody filing a report accurately documenting who, what, when, why, where and how it effected the migratory habits of the South African Yellow-Bellied Swallow.

And the champions of writing completely useless documents, the U.S. government, gave the keys to the ultimate library of stupidity to the general public in 1966 by passing the Freedom of Information Act.

"The Smoking Gun" is a printed collection of the greatest hits of obscure, inane and bizarrely interesting documents procured by the book's dot-com incarnation. For example, the book includes the deposition of a witness that begins with the phrase, "I think I had my pants on when I cut my penis off."

But "The Smoking Gun" isn't all good old fashioned genital-severing fun. There are a number of intensely interesting documents such as the now unclassified Secret Service report of a nurse who was on duty the day that Kennedy was shot.

Of course, no book of obscure documents would be complete without police reports detailing the arrests of all our favorite celebrities. The affidavits describing the 1999 arrest of a stoned and strikingly naked Matthew McConaughey and a public dessert-slathered massages of naked women administered by Robin Leach are two gems in this category.

It's good to see that investigative journalists are finally finding interesting things to bring to the public's attention, like Elton John's contractual preferences in floral arrangements and President George W. Bush's DUI citation, rather than the usual pointless nonsense such as the number of times they can use the word terrorism in an article.

The Good, The Bad & The Difference

"The Good, The Bad & The Difference" is a collection of columns by "The Ethicist" from The New York Times Magazine, Randy Cohen. Despite Cohen's dry wit, the collection actually is a fascinating look at ethics in the real world.

Cohen fields topics from all corners of the ethical sphere that are right up a college student's categorical imperative such as infidelity in relationships, the ethics of MP3s and dating professors.

Some of the most interesting material comes from reprints of instances when Cohen adds a dissenting opinion from a guest ethicist such as the sinfully syndicated Dan Savage or meat is murder maniac Peter Singer and when readers argue with his opinion. Though Cohen is very persuasive in his arguments, he doesn't let his ideas be the only ones on the page.

Cohen also includes a section for reader responses in the "Ethics Pop Quiz" in which he asks readers to answer ethical questions not posed to him in print. The most interesting of these submissions will be included in the upcoming paperback edition of "The Good, The Bad & The Difference."

Readers will find themselves thumbing though "The Good, The Bad & The Difference" for hours on end. Unfortunately, Cohen doesn't illuminate whether liberating two pieces of fruit from the dining hall is ethical or not — perhaps we'll never know.

101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells

Forget Dante. This compilation of 101 essays describes the nine circles of damnation though the eyes of the country's leading humorists. With comedic heavy-hitters like Henry Alford, Andy Borowitz and Randy Cohen venting their frustrations with the blemishes of this earthly paradise, this book is a scorching good read.

Alford pens a raucously funny look at his fear of analogism: the recurrent belief that one is British. Cohen ignites his fury against the obligatory American pastime of baseball. And Borowitz smolders about people who use the phrase "all that good stuff" to describe things that are not drug-related.

If The Observer staff had read more than seven and a half chapters of this book, they probably would have found a burning hatred for overly witty college journalists that overuse play-on-word humor.

Unfortunately, the editors of this particular compilation of infernos didn't include the Domer hell: the day the Pope declares beer the eighth deadly sin.

Contact C. Spencer Beggs at beggs.3@nd.edu

• Short attention span literature