The Good Book
Beer Pong, Now in Book Form

On any given Friday, we feel obliged to indulge in sport that somehow incorporates booze. 

Still, we'll be honest: if you had asked us yesterday, we would have said a book with 196 pages about beer pong was about 195 too many.

We don't usually admit this, but: we were wrong.

Meet The Book of Beer Pong, a nearly 200-page opus devoted to all things beer-y and pong-y, hitting bookshelves now.

Despite that old saying about books and covers, let's start with the packaging: the faux-leather cover and gold-leafed pages make it feel like a Bible. Which, in a way, it is: give the book a quick flip and you won't just find everything from a comprehensive history of the sport and tips on how to hold a tournament ("have the finals in the most dramatic position as possible"), you'll find nothing less than a consideration of life's most pressing dilemmas. Like the comparative advantages of cans, bottles and kegs.

Of course, there's also a good bit about the sport itself. (And we do mean sport—the book's first line is "Beer Pong is not a game.") We found ourselves bookmarking pages on alternative grip styles (including a pinky-free method called the "Claw Grip," and an experts-only style called the "Royal Grip," supposedly named for its "popularity among sovereign autocrats"), proper methods of distracting your opponents (only some of which involve nudity), and (important in these thrifty times) a full page devoted to repairing a dented ball.

We recommend the flame method.