With a title like Endangered Pleasures: In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity and Other Indulgences, they'd be justified in coming to Elastic Waist headquarters and forcibly taking away our blogging licenses if we did not declare this little collection of essays to be our next very exciting Elastic Waist Book Club selection. It strikes at the heart of everything we believe in--just check out our mission statement over on the right, there.

All the essays in the book are very delightfully about the undeniable pleasure of things that have suddenly become vices, slightly wicked, to be avoided at all costs or otherwise your moral and physical health will be ultimately compromised. It's a book about the beauty of the occasional indulgence, in allowing yourself to wallow in sin and eschew guilt and have a damn pile of bacon for breakfast, because a lifetime of granola stretching out endlessly beige before you--that's no kind of lifetime at all. We approve. We approve heartily.

I've dipped here and there into the little volume already, because the title was so enticing, and I can tell you that Holland writes beautifully, elegantly and profoundly about sinners and sin, vice and the people who revel in it--even secretly, even for the briefest moments. Pick it up, and then this Friday, let's start talking about the dirty little secrets you have, and the dirty little secrets you wish you had, and which should remain on the endangered list.