Category: Humor

January 1, 2011

Still Life by Louise Penny *** (of 4)

An aging, blue-haired, naif artist with a secret is killed by an arrow in a small, eccentric village outside Montreal. An elegant Francophone detective interviews...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

July 14, 2010

Double Whammy by Carl Hiassen *** (of 4)

Vintage Hiassen. The murderers and bad guys are Florida tele-evangelists and unscrupulous land developers, assisted by rednecks with brains the size of ‘possums. The good...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 21, 2010

Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander **** (of 4)

Auslander carries all of Woody Allen’s neuroses into the 21st Century and does it with panache. This autobiography is a therapeutic disgorging of growing up...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 21, 2010

Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson **** (of 4)

This was my first Bryson. It’s his description of walking the Appalachian trail. I can think of no other book that made me laugh out...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 18, 2010

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson **** (of 4)

Bryson recounts his Iowa childhood of the 1950s writing scenes so effectively that I could see every lincoln log (he peed on), smell the pages...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 17, 2010

To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever by Will Blythe *** (of 4)

One of the great first chapters in literature. Blythe’s book is a rant about basketball, specifically Duke vs. North Carolina. At the book’s opening he...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

June 17, 2010

Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost *** (of 4)

In the style of Bill Bryson, self-effacing and laugh aloud funny, Troost describes his adventures on the Pacific isles of Vanuatu and Fiji. He leaves...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

April 30, 2010

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs **** (of 4)

Jacobs takes a year to live strictly adhering to the bible. He doesn’t know bubkes when he begins and figures he’ll start reading Genesis and...

Book Reviews

0 Comments

April 29, 2010

The Finer Points of Weiner Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith *** (of 4)

A German professor of philology with a specialty in irregular Portuguese verbs is mistaken at an academic conference for a veterinarian with a similar name...

Book Reviews

0 Comments