humor and parody

The next RA Roundtable meeting will be Wednesday, April 12, 2017 at 9am at the Homewood Library.  We’ll be talking about bookgroup picks and popular fiction, so bring a couple of titles and share with us!

Upcoming events in which you may be interested:

The Homewood Library is hosting a Jane Austen-Regency Ball on Saturday, February 18th, 7pm-9pm.  Tickets are $15 per person and must be purchased in advance.  For reservations, call 205-578-8280 or email jasna.alabama@gmail.com.

The annual Friends of the Library book sale at Emmet O’Neal Library will take place the last weekend in February.  Member of the Friends may attend the preview party on Thursday, February 23rd. The sale is open to the public Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, February 24-26.

Today, we shared humor and parody books.  It was a fun, and funny, meeting!

Jen Lancaster is one of my favorite humorous essayists/memoirists!  She has all of the snark of Sedaris or Handler with slightly less cursing. Her blog is hilarious and she’s pretty active across most popular social media platforms.  I haven’t yet tried any of her fiction, but I adore her memoirs.

Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl’s Guide to Why It Often Sucks in the City, Or, Who Are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me?

Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or, Why Pie Is Not the Answer

Pretty in Plaid: A Life, A Witch, and a Wardrobe, Or, the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase

My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict’s Attempt to Discover If Not Being a Dumb Ass is the New Black, Or, A Culture-Up Manifesto

Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult’s Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development, Or, Why It’s Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Fruit Loops Are Not For Dinner

The Tao of Martha: My Year of Living, Or, Why I’m Never Getting All That Glitter Off of the Dog

I Regret Nothing: A Memoir

Holley, Emmet O’Neal

The Taking Tree: A Selfish Parody by Shrill Travesty

We all know the story of the "selfless" tree that gave all she had just to make sure a young boy was "happy".  Snore. This is a different tree. This is a different boy. This is a very different book.

The Taking Tree is not so happy when the boy takes her twigs to pick on his sister, or takes her apples to sell for college (she's an oak tree for goodness sake), or when he cuts off her branches to build a house that he burns for insurance money. And the boy is not sorry at all. Ever. In fact, he's kind of a jerk. And the boy asks for more, and more, and more until the oak tree is so fed up she just can't take it any longer. While another story might end sweetly with an old man sitting on a stump. This one does not.

Michelle, Irondale

Adulthood is a Myth: A Sarah’s Scribbles Collection by Sarah Andersen

Do you love networking to advance your career? Is adulthood an exciting new challenge for which you feel fully prepared? Ugh. Please go away.

These casually drawn, perfectly on-point comics by the hugely popular young Brooklyn-based artist Sarah Andersen are for the rest of us. They document the wasting of entire beautiful weekends on the internet, the unbearable agony of holding hands on the street with a gorgeous guy, and dreaming all day of getting home and back into pajamas. In other words, the horrors and awkwardnesses of young modern life. Oh and they are totally not autobiographical. At all.

Adulthood Is a Myth presents many fan favorites plus dozens of all-new comics exclusive to this book. Like the work of fellow Millennial authors Allie Brosh, Grace Helbig, and Gemma Correll, Sarah's frankness on personal issues like body image, self-consciousness, introversion, relationships, and the frequency of bra-washing makes her comics highly relatable and deeply hilarious.

Find more of her hilarious comics on her blog, Sarah's Scribbles.

Michelle, Irondale

The Hunger Pains: A Parody by The Harvard Lampoon

The hilarious instant New York Times bestseller, The Hunger Pains is a loving parody of the dystopian YA novel and film, The Hunger Games.  

Winning means wealth, fame, and a life of therapy losing means death, but also fame! This is The Hunger Pains. When Kantkiss Neverclean replaces her sister as a contestant on the Hunger Games—the second-highest-rated reality TV show in Peaceland, behind Extreme Home Makeover—she has no idea what to expect. Having lived her entire life in the telemarketing district’s worst neighborhood, the Crack, Kantkiss feels unprepared to fight to the death while simultaneously winking and looking adorable for the cameras. But when her survival rests on choosing between the dreamy hunk from home, Carol Handsomestein, or the doughy klutz, Pita Malarkey, Kantkiss discovers that the toughest conflicts may not be found on the battlefield but in her own heart . . . which is unfortunately on a battlefield.

Jon, Avondale

I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks by Gina Sheridan

Straight from the library--the strange and bizarre, ready to be checked out!  From a patron's missing wetsuit to the scent of crab cakes wafting through the stacks, I Work at a Public Library showcases the oddities that have come across Gina Sheridan's circulation desk. Throughout these pages, she catalogs her encounters with local eccentrics as well as the questions that plague her, such as, "What is the standard length of eyebrow hairs?" Whether she's helping someone scan his face onto an online dating site or explaining why the library doesn't have any dragon autobiographies, Sheridan's bizarre tales prove that she's truly seen it all.

Stacked high with hundreds of strange-but-true stories, I Work at a Public Library celebrates librarians and the unforgettable patrons that roam the stacks every day.

Jon, Avondale

I Had the Right to Remain Silent…But I Didn’t Have the Ability by Ron White

Fans of Ron White’s "perfectly-phrased everyman gripes and raunchy, grinning asides*" will find much to appreciate here. He riffs on everything from obnoxious designer sunglass salesmen to his wife’s wealthy but stingy family, and he revisits some of his most famous characters, such as his troublesome dog Sluggo ("He ran away all day. He was gone for ten hours. So, to punish him, when he came home I took him for a walk."). Best of all, White’s hilarious material is accompanied here by clever artistic interpretations, courtesy of illustrator Matthew Shultz.

Jon, Avondale

Bless Your Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments by Celia Rivenbark

From the wickedly hilarious pen of Southern humorist Celia Rivenbark comes a collection of essays that brings to mind Dave Barry (in high heels) or Jeff Foxworthy (in a prom dress).

Step into the wacky world of "womanless wedding" fund-raisers, in which Bubbas wear boas. Meet two sisters who fight rural boredom by washing Budweiser cans and cutting them into pieces to make clothing. Learn why the word snow sends any right-thinking Southerner careening to the Food Lion for extra loaves of bread and little else.

Humor columnist and slightly crazed belle-by-birth Celia Rivenbark tackles these and other lard-laden subjects in Bless Your Heart, Tramp, a hilarious look at Southern---and just plain human---foibles, up-close and personal. So pour yourself a glass of sweet tea and curl up on the pie-azza with Bless Your Heart, Tramp.

Jon, Avondale

Holidays in Heck by P.J. O’Rourke

P.J. O'Rourke is one of today's most celebrated political humorists, and has been hailed as "the funniest writer in America" by both Time and The Wall Street Journal. Two decades ago he published the classic travelogue Holidays in Hell, in which he traversed the globe on a fun-finding mission to what were then some of the most desperate places on the planet, including Warsaw, Managua, and Belfast.

In Holidays in Heck, P.J. embarks on supposedly more comfortable and allegedly less dangerous travels--often with family in tow--which mostly leave him wishing he were under artillery fire again. The essays take O'Rourke on a whirlwind of adventures, beginning at the National Mall in Washington, which he describes as having been designed with the same amazing "greatest generation" aesthetic sensibility that informed his parents' living room. We follow him as he takes his family on a ski vacation (to the Aspen of the Midwest--Ohio--where the highest point of elevation is the six-food ski instructor that his wife thinks is cute). And later he experiences a harrowing horseback ride across the mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

The result is a hilarious and often moving portrait of life in the fast lane--only this time as a husband and father.

Jon, Avondale

Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits by Dave Barry

What Dave Barry did for the men's movement in his Complete Guide to Guys and for foreign relations when he did Japan he now does for . . . everything in America. The rapacious observer of Tupperware ladies and leisure concept salesmen sounds off on:

Football--Football is more than just a game. It is a potential opportunity to see a live person lying on the ground with a bone sticking out of his leg, while the fans, to show their appreciation, perform "the wave."

Sailing--There's nothing quite like getting out on the open sea, where you can forget about the hassles and worries of life on land, and concentrate on the hassles and worries of life on the sea, such as death by squid.

Gambling--Off-Track Betting parlors are the kinds of places where you never see signs that say, "Thank You for Not Smoking." The best you can hope for is, "Thank You for Not Spitting Pieces of Your Cigar on My Neck."

Jon, Avondale

Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan

In Dad is Fat, stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan, who’s best known for his legendary riffs on Hot Pockets, bacon, manatees, and McDonald's, expresses all the joys and horrors of life with five young children—everything from cousins ("celebrities for little kids") to toddlers’ communication skills (“they always sound like they have traveled by horseback for hours to deliver important news”), to the eating habits of four year olds (“there is no difference between a four year old eating a taco and throwing a taco on the floor”). Dad is Fat is sharply observed, explosively funny, and a cry for help from a man who has realized he and his wife are outnumbered in their own home.

Jon, Avondale

Food: A Love Story by Jim Gaffigan

Eaten in your car so you wouldn’t have to share with your children? Gotten hungry while watching a dog food commercial? Does the presence of green vegetables make you angry?

If you answered yes to any of the following questions, you are pretty pathetic, but you are not alone. Feast along with America’s favorite food comedian, bestselling author, and male supermodel Jim Gaffigan as he digs into his specialty: stuffing his face. Food: A Love Story is an in-depth, thoroughly uninformed look at everything from health food to things that people actually enjoy eating.

Jon, Avondale

Go the F*** to Sleep by Adam Mansbach

Go the F*** to Sleep is a book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, it captures the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night.

Read by a host of celebrities, from Samuel L. Jackson to Jennifer Garner, this subversively funny bestselling storybook will not actually put your kids to sleep, but it will leave you laughing so hard you won’t care.

Samuel, Springville Road

You Have to F***ing Eat by Adam Mansbach

From the author of the international best seller Go the F*** to Sleep comes a long-awaited sequel about the other great parental frustration: getting your little angel to eat something that even vaguely resembles a normal meal. Profane, loving, and deeply cathartic, You Have to F***ing Eat breaks the code of child-rearing silence, giving moms and dads new, old, grand- and expectant, a much-needed chance to laugh about a universal problem.

A perfect gift book like the smash hit Go the F*** to Sleep (over 1.5 million copies sold worldwide!), You Have to F***ing Eat perfectly captures Mansbach's trademark humor, which is simultaneously affectionate and radically honest. You probably shouldn't read it to your kids.

Samuel, Springville Road

A Load of Hooey: A Collection of New Short Humor Fiction by Bob Odenkirk

Bob Odenkirk is a legend in the comedy-writing world, winning Emmys and acclaim for his work on Saturday Night Live, Mr. Show with Bob and David, and many other seminal TV shows. This book, his first, is a spleen-bruisingly funny omnibus that ranges from absurdist monologues (“Martin Luther King, Jr’s Worst Speech Ever”) to intentionally bad theater (“Hitler Dinner Party: A Play”); from avant-garde fiction (“Obituary for the Creator of Madlibs”) to free-verse poetry that's funnier and more powerful than the work of Calvin Trillin, Jewel, and Robert Louis Stevenson combined.

Odenkirk's debut resembles nothing so much as a hilarious new sketch comedy show that’s exclusively available as a streaming video for your mind. As Odenkirk himself writes in “The Second Coming of Jesus and Lazarus,” it is a book “to be read aloud to yourself in the voice of Bob Newhart.”

Maura, Trussville

Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film by Patton Oswalt

The instant New York Times bestseller from author, comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, a “heartfelt and hilarious” (USA TODAY) memoir about coming of age as a performer during the late 1990s while obsessively watching classic films at a legendary theater in Los Angeles. “[Oswalt has] a set of synapses like a pinball machine and a prose style to match” (The New York Times).

Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakable addiction. It wasn’t drugs, alcohol, or sex: it was film. After moving to Los Angeles, Oswalt became a huge film buff (or as he calls it, a sprocket fiend), absorbing classics, cult hits, and new releases at the famous New Beverly Cinema. Silver screen celluloid became Patton’s life schoolbook, informing his notion of acting, writing, comedy, and relationships.

Set in the nascent days of LA’s alternative comedy scene, Silver Screen Fiend chronicles Oswalt’s journey from fledgling stand-up comedian to self-assured sitcom actor, with the colorful New Beverly collective and a cast of now-notable young comedians supporting him all along the way. “Clever and readable...Oswalt’s encyclopedic knowledge and frothing enthusiasm for films (from sleek noir classics, to gory B movies, to cliché-riddled independents, to big empty blockbusters) is relentlessly present, whirring in the background like a projector” (The Boston Globe). More than a memoir, this is “a love song to the silver screen” (Paste Magazine).

Maura, Trussville

Girl Walks Into a Bar: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters,and a Midlife Miracle by Rachel Dratch

Anyone who saw an episode of Saturday Night Live between 1999 and 2006 knows Rachel Dratch. She was hilarious! So what happened to her? After a misbegotten part as Jenna on the pilot of 30 Rock, Dratch was only getting offered roles as “Lesbians. Secretaries. Sometimes secretaries who are lesbians.” 

Her career as a female comedian at a low point, she suddenly had time for yoga, dog-sitting, learning Spanish—and dating. Dratch reveals the joys and terrors of putting herself out there in a quest to find love and then becoming a mother in an undreamed-of way. With riotous humor, she recounts breaking the news to her bewildered parents, the awe of her single friends, and romance and coparenting with her baby-daddy, John.

Filled with great behind-the-scenes anecdotes from Dratch’s time on SNL, Girl Walks into a Bar . . . is a funny book with a refreshing version of the happily-ever-after story, full of sensitivity, candor, and plenty of comic relief, as only Rachel Dratch can tell it.

Maura, Trussville

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jen Lawson

When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.

In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives. 

Judith, Homewood

Underwater Dogs by Seth Casteel

From the water's surface, it's a simple exercise: a dog's leap, a splash, and then a wet head surfacing with a ball, triumphant. 

But beneath the water is a chaotic ballet of bared teeth and bubbles, paddling paws, fur and ears billowing in the currents. From leaping Lab to diving Dachshund, the water is where a dog's distinct personality shines through; some lounge in the current, paddling slowly, but others arch their bodies to cut through the water with the focus and determination of a shark.

In more than eighty portraits, award-winning pet photographer and animal rights activist Seth Casteel captures new sides of our old friends with vibrant underwater photography that makes it impossible to look away. Each image bubbles with exuberance and life, a striking reminder that even in the most loveable and domesticated dog, there are more primal forces at work. In Underwater Dogs, Seth Casteel gives playful and energetic testament to the rough-and-tumble joy that our dogs bring into our lives.

Judith, Homewood

Underwater Puppies by Seth Casteel

The world fell in love with swimming canines in Seth Casteel's first book, Underwater Dogs. Now, in more than 80 previously unpublished portraits of underwater puppies, we see man's best friends at their most playful and exuberant. Each vibrant and colorful underwater image shows off the wild and sublime range of emotions of puppies, cute and irresistible to the very last.

Judith, Homewood

F in Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers by Richard Benson 

"F" stands for "funny" in this perfect gift for students or anyone who has ever had to struggle through a test and needs a good laugh. Celebrating the creative side of failure in a way we can all relate to, F in Exams gathers the most hilarious and inventive test answers provided by students who, faced with a question they have no hope of getting right, decide to have a little fun instead. Whether in science (Q: What is the highest frequency noise that a human can register? A: Mariah Carey), the humanities (Q: What did Mahatma Gandhi and Genghis Khan have in common? A: Unusual names), math, or other subjects, these 250 entries prove that while everyone enjoys the spectacle of failure, it's even sweeter to see a FAIL turn into a WIN. 

Judith, Homewood

Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens by Sloane Tanen

Photographs by Stefan Hagen 

With more personality than most people have to spare, New York artist Sloane Tanen's tiny yellow chickens negotiate the tricky modern world, filled with three-headed blind dates, menacing KFCs, playground popularity battles, and annoyingly crowded yoga classes. They perch amid doll furniture, in scenes photographed in glorious color and brilliantly captioned- and their lives will strike you as strangely familiar...Charming, spiky with off-kilter wit (or waxing jobs gone terribly wrong), and somehow larger than life, these chickens win the hearts of all who behold them. 

Holley, Emmet O’Neal

Going for the Bronze: Still Bitter, More Baggage by Sloane Tanen 

Join these fluffy, yellow, surprisingly human protagonists as they face a new series of dilemmas in their exquisitely crafted, miniature settings. Whether playing the online dating game, trying couples therapy, dealing with uncooperative children, discovering the melancholy of middle age, dreaming of a better life, or finally grasping the golden (or at least bronze) ring, these chickens encounter everyday troubles and triumphs as painfully recognizable as they are hilarious. Clever, charming, and endlessly entertaining, Going for the Bronze is a brilliant follow-up to a wholly unique bestseller.

Holley, Emmet O’Neal