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Foul Matter by Martha Grimes
Viking 2003
Literary Humor
ISBN: 067003259X
A picaresque romp through the cut-throat activities
of the publishing
business.
The mob guys are the best,
as they enter the world of literature,
packing heat.
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Operating Instructions
by Anne Lamott
One of the funniest books I've read.
It's endearing and overwhelming at the same time.
Lamott expresses true feelings about her
relationship
with motherhood and caring for Sam, her new baby.
Babies shit and throw up a lot;
Lamott gives us an honest account of that first
year with Sam.
And, as you might suspect,
it's not all a bowl of cherries. |
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Teacher Man
by Frank McCourt
A terrific book, filled with humor and humanity,
reflecting the experiences McCourt faced
while teaching high school English for 30 years
in New York City.
He shares his
ideas about education
and how teachers are treated in the system.
And he keeps us rolling with laughter in the classroom
aisles
as he relates his wonderful stories of how he
induces his students to learn a few things about life.
One story is about an incident that happened
on his first day in the classroom.
Two students were arguing over a bologna sandwich, and
it ended up flying through the air and landing on his
desk.
"And there's the bologna sandwich. What are you going to
do about a situation like that? No professor at NYU told
us what to do about flying bologna sandwiches. They
don't get into that. They have a higher level philosophy
of education.
But there's a sandwich. What are you going to do?"
McCourt picked it up and ate it.
And that got the attention and respect of his students.
"That was the breakthrough," McCourt said. "No teacher
had ever been seen at 9 a.m. eating a bologna sandwich. |
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Complete & Utter Failure
A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres
and Total Flops
by
Neil Steinberg
The ultimate tragi-comedy. You
won't stop laughing.
"Failure can be a guide, helping us shake off erroneous generalities
and briskly contemplate the face of things that otherwise are too
often ignored
- a handy tool to dredge up the forgotten and to celebrate the
shunned."
He describes his genre as
"historio-comedio-autobio-something-or-other." |
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
by Sarah Vowell
Vowell has a wonderful take on the world, childhood, politics, city
life, cinema, history, nerds and anything else that strikes her.
Never a dull moment, you'll laugh out loud at her mini-sketches as
she offers her view of the world with a critical, humorous eye.
The book also offers incite into our lives.
"Life is about an emotional connection to people
and things, and it doesn't matter where you are on the globe." |
