The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson

This Swedish satire will have you pondering your own External Happiness score and the price due for the universe's pleasures.

A young man receives an extraordinarily large bill from a vaguely governmental-sounding agency. Of course, it's junk mail and he ignores it. Until the next bill comes with an additional service charge added.

He soon strikes up a strange friendship - maybe even flirtation - with the woman at the agency who's assigned to his remediation call. But the more they talk, the higher and higher his bill total climbs.

It's an odd, intense little book (pocket-sized and just 200 pages). I wanted to know what would happen, but I was at the same time off-put by the seriousness of the story's oppressive bureaucracy. It's a nightmare: he can't escape an enormous government bill despite the fact he knew nothing about it. Will they kill him? What is the punishment for exceeding the threshold?

Taft 2012 by Jason Heller

Given all that's going on in today's politics, this book is incredibly relevant: a subtle, truly funny political satire for people who wouldn't normally read anything in that genre.

Improbably, ex-president William Howard Taft has reappeared after a 99-year Rip VanWinkle-style hibernation. Lots about America has changed in the last hundred years - except the fact that we could still use an honest, ethical politician who speaks his mind and heart. Taft for President!?

Ant Farm by Simon Rich

"Short story" doesn't begin to explain these vignettes - some are less than a page. They're like ironic, sour, incredibly funny comedy sketches.

Rich is a former Harvard Lampoon president, and that type of humor certainly shines through. If you love skewed looks at the everyday world, you'll love this.

But don't read it all at once. The book is only 139 pages long, but it's best consumed in smaller morsels - three or four stories at a time. That way you get the biggest impact, without the comedy numb that happens when you overindulge.