Josh Kilmer-Purcell
This is one of those books that has me vacillating wildly between seething jealousy and abject horror. When Josh and Brent, overworked Manhattanites, find the perfect old mansion for a song it seems like their dreams have come true. The first months of farming and spending weekends at …
McSweeney’s
Sheer silliness for the well-read and deeply snarky. Entries include
…Thirteen Writing Prompts: Imagine if your favorite character form nineteenth-century fiction had been born without thumbs. Then write a short story about them winning the lottery.
Klingon Fairy Tales: There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
Stephen Fry
A true Renaissance man, actor and comedian Stephen Fry has written a wonderful biography of his childhood. Mostly set in his childhood of boarding schools, Fry tells about the loneliness of being gay and British, his love of music, family problems and eventual life of crime. Brilliant and …
Wade Davis
Davis’s first chapter “Coonskin Cap” ties with http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html for funniest thing I’ve read in the last year. A flamingly fabulously gay man who escaped his home in the Ozarks to recreate himself as an anonymous city-dweller, Davis decides at 40 that he is doing it all wrong. After …
Stephen Fry
British actor and comedian Stephen Fry (Jeeves of Jeeves and Wooster fame) is that rare breed of European – one who actually likes Americans. In his attempt to show his British audiences that we aren’t all a bunch of loud, vulgar, gun-toting religious nuts he undertakes a project …
Jen Lancaster
Not Lancaster’s best memoir to date, but still a hoot. Her realization that she was becoming a moron, wits dulled by reality tv, inspired her to try to improve her mind a la Eliza Doolittle. Lancaster chronicles her attempts at reading literature, going to plays, trying new foods …
Terry Border
Using everyday objects, coupled with bent wire, Border creates a whole inner anthropomorphic life for inanimate objects – a kiwi shaves its fuzzy back, a banana lays battered and bruised in the boxing ring, a group of peanuts attend a funeral for a jar of peanut butter. Weird, …
Sam Macdonald
Sam Macdonald was a fat, broke failure. His social life consisted of sitting on a bar-stool all night. His apartment, he noted, was the “brownest” place he had ever lived. Mustering the reserves of a truly desperate man, he decided to go on a starvation diet to loose …
AJ Jacobs
Jacob’s past books have focused on his year-long experiments – reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and living “biblically” (kinda). His My Life as an Experiment: One Man’s Humble Quest to Improve Himself by Living as a Woman, Becoming George Washington, Telling No Lies, and Other Radical Tests (formerly …
George McDonald Fraser
Rivaling Terry Pratchett for the king of humorous writing, George McDonald Fraser creates a fictional vision of the pirate life lifted directly from Treasure Island and Basil Rathbone movies with touches of slap-stick (if fruitcart then chase scene). Fraser’s pirates are walking, talking, larger-than-life pirate stereotypes. …
Reverend Jen
Not a book for this with rigid morals or no sense of humor, Reverend Jen covers her year as a sex writer for Nerve magazine. While most of her experiments are scary/gross/dangerous they also have a tinge of quirky dorkiness that makes her lovable… in a deranged sort …
A
viva Yael and P.M. Chen
I think the title pretty much says it all. Embarrassing, ghastly, tasteless and generally awful tattoos at their truly lowest. Yep, there’s a guy with “loser” tattooed on his forehead, an owl with breasts, a dolphin with a bong, Michael Moore and more. WHAT …
T
he Phat Phree
OMG! IT’S PEOPLE! THAT YOU HATE! This book is a collection of modern soliloquies rendered in the style of some of the most irritating and despicable people we have the misfortune to run into. Charming people like:
I Just Made Some Statements that I Can’t Back …
Jeanette Fulda
I have long been a fan of the blog pastaqueen.com and loved every minute of Fulda’s book. Topping out at nearly 400 lbs, Jeannette decided to loose over half her body weight. However, instead of the usual attempts – weight loss surgery, liquid diet, WeightWatchers/Atkins/Grapefruit Diet – she …
Roger Bennet and Jules Shell
Yes, another thrilling tome from the authors of Bar Mitzvah Disco! As in their previous book, you don’t need to be a wealthy east-coast Jew to enjoy this collection of stories and pictures from late 70s and 80s sleep-away camps. If you’ve been …
Claire Lewis
This collection of teeth-grittingly awful stories make me so grateful I never became a wedding photographer. Jam-packed with horrendous Bridezillas, venomous mother-of-the-brides, gad-awful ministers and other fiascos Exposed will make even the most painful wedding seem a painful pleasure cruise in comparison. There are a few stories of …
