Welcome aboard, train wreck.
2021 has been like 2020 Jr. Not nearly as bad but still enough to make you mumble, “WTF?” twenty times a day. I know I’m supposed to be an adult and watch the news and stay up on current events but when you have anxiety and depression, that’s just adding kerosene to the campfire.
We all need something to take out minds off the daily grind and twenty four hour news cycle. We need to laugh. So, for your mental health and mine, I’m giving you nine books to help fuel your socially acceptable escapism.
As always, I will post link where you can buy these books. If you use my link, I may earn a small commission. This comes at no cost to you. So, thank you.
Bossypants by Tina Fey
From the Amazon description – Spirited and whip-smart, these laugh-out-loud autobiographical essays are “a masterpiece” from the Emmy Award-winning actress and comedy writer known for 30 Rock, Mean Girls, and SNL” (Sunday Telegraph).
Before Liz Lemon, before “Weekend Update,” before “Sarah Palin,” Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.
She has seen both these dreams come true.
At last, Tina Fey’s story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon — from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.
Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we’ve always suspected: you’re no one until someone calls you bossy.
Includes Special, Never-Before-Solicited Opinions on Breastfeeding, Princesses, Photoshop, the Electoral Process, and Italian Rum Cake!
About the author –
Elizabeth Stamatina “Tina” Fey (/feɪ/; born May 18, 1970) is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She is best known for her work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (1998-2006) , acclaimed for her impression of former Alaska Governor and 2008 Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and for creating acclaimed series 30 Rock (2006-2013) and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015-present). She is also well known for appearing in films such as Mean Girls (2004), Baby Mama (2008), Date Night (2010), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), and Sisters (2015).
Tina Fey broke into comedy as a featured player in the Chicago-based improvisational comedy group The Second City. She then joined SNL as a writer, later becoming head writer and a performer, known for her position as co-anchor in the Weekend Update segment. In 2004, she co-starred in and wrote the screenplay for Mean Girls, which was adapted from the 2002 self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes. After leaving SNL in 2006, she created the television series 30 Rock for Broadway Video, a situation comedy loosely based on her experiences at SNL. In the series, Fey portrays the head writer of a fictional sketch comedy series. In 2008, she starred in the comedy film Baby Mama, alongside former SNL co-star Amy Poehler. Fey next appeared in the 2010 comedy film Date Night and the animated film Megamind. In 2015, she created and produced the television series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, originally for NBC and eventually for Netflix.
Fey has received eight Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, and four Writers Guild of America Awards and was nominated for a Grammy Award for her autobiographical book Bossypants, which topped The New York Times Best Seller list for five weeks. In 2008, the Associated Press gave Fey the AP Entertainer of the Year award for her satirical portrayal of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a guest appearance on SNL. In 2010, Fey was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, becoming the youngest-ever recipient of the award. On January 13, 2013, Fey hosted the 70th Golden Globe Awards with her long-time friend and fellow comedian, Amy Poehler, to critical acclaim. The duo hosted again the following two years, generating the highest ratings for the annual ceremony in a decade and receiving similar acclaim.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
To learn more about the author and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/3EmTOuu
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
From the Amazon description –
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book Review
A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole’s hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is “huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans’ lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures” (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).
To learn more about the author and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/3tDxzv2
Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
From the Amazon description –
#1 New York Times Bestseller
“Funny and smart as hell” (Bill Gates), Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half showcases her unique voice, leaping wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions with deceptively simple illustrations.
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices.
This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written.
Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to.
FROM THE AUTHOR:
This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:
Pictures
Words
Stories about things that happened to me
Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
Eight billion dollars*
Stories about dogs
The secret to eternal happiness*
*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!
About the author –
Allie Brosh has enjoyed writing ever since her mom tricked her into writing a story to distract her from her immediate goal of wrapping the cat in duct-tape. She started her award-winning blog in 2009. Brosh lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband Duncan, her two dogs, and six pet rats.
Bio and photo from Goodreads.
To learn more about the author and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/3A9gATV
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
From the Amazon description –
With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself.
Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent. But mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age. Utterly courageous, uproariously funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, I Feel Bad About My Neck is a scrumptious, irresistible treat of a book, full of truths, laugh out loud moments that will appeal to readers of all ages.
About the author – Nora Ephron has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally, Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. She lived in New York City with her husband, writer Nicholas Pileggi.
To learn more about the author and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/3tBhEgY
Yes Please by Amy Poehler
Amazon says this is a great read on a Kindle. If you need a Kindle, click here.
From the Amazon description –
Do you want to get to know the woman we first came to love on Comedy Central’s Upright Citizens Brigade? Do you want to spend some time with the lady who made you howl with laughter on Saturday Night Live, and in movies like Baby Mama, Blades of Glory, and They Came Together? Do you find yourself daydreaming about hanging out with the actor behind the brilliant Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation? Did you wish you were in the audience at the last two Golden Globes ceremonies, so you could bask in the hilarity of Amy’s one-liners?
If your answer to these questions is “Yes Please!” then you are in luck. In her first book, one of our most beloved funny folk delivers a smart, pointed, and ultimately inspirational read. Full of the comedic skill that makes us all love Amy, Yes Please is a rich and varied collection of stories, lists, poetry (Plastic Surgery Haiku, to be specific), photographs, mantras and advice. With chapters like “Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend,” “Plain Girl Versus the Demon” and “The Robots Will Kill Us All” Yes Please will make you think as much as it will make you laugh. Honest, personal, real, and righteous, Yes Please is full of words to live by.
About the author – Amy Poehler is a writer, actress, producer, and director. She lives in New York City and Los Angeles with her two boys. She hopes her new book, YES PLEASE, will get her invited onto her hero Judge Judy’s yacht.
To learn more about the author and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/3C4JAge
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
From the Amazon description –
The #1 New York Times bestselling (mostly true) memoir from the hilarious author of Furiously Happy.
“Gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate.”—O, The Oprah Magazine
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.
About the author – Jenny Lawson is a very strange girl who has friends in spite of herself. She is perpetually one cat away from being a crazy cat lady.
To learn more about the author and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/3k5Mz1T
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays by Samantha Irby
From the Amazon description –
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This essay collection from the “bitches gotta eat” blogger, writer on Hulu’s Shrill, and “one of our country’s most fierce and foulmouthed authors” (Amber Tamblyn, Vulture) is sure to make you alternately cackle with glee and cry real tears.
Whether Samantha Irby is talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making “adult” budgets; explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette (she’s “35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something”); detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes; sharing awkward sexual encounters; or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms (hang in there for the Costco loot!); she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.
About the author –
Samantha Irby writes a blog called “bitches gotta eat” and has written two books: “Meaty” and “We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.”
To learn more about the author and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/2YHRrlq
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
From the Amazon description –
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this hilarious instant classic, the creator of The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood.
“[Kaling is] like Tina Fey’s cool little sister. Or perhaps . . . the next Nora Ephron.”—The New York Times
Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”
Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!
With several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? proves that Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.
Praise for Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
“Where have you been all our lives, Mindy?”—Glamour
“Who wouldn’t want to hang out with Mindy Kaling? . . . [Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?] is like a mash note to comedy nerds.”—Time Out New York
“Very funny.”—Boston Globe
About the author –
Mindy Kaling is an actor, writer, producer, and director. She wrote and stars in the film Late Night, and is currently at work on a collection of essays coming to Amazon Original Stories in summer 2020.
Mindy is the author of two New York Times best-selling memoirs, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns) and Why Not Me?, and recently starred in the film Ocean’s 8. She’s the writer and producer of the TV series Four Weddings and a Funeral, coming to Hulu in summer 2019, and is also working on a coming-of-age comedy series for Netflix.
She is known for her work as the creator and star of The Mindy Project, and for her years on the critically acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning NBC show The Office. In addition to producing, directing, and portraying the celebrity-obsessed Kelly Kapoor, Mindy’s Office credits include writing the Emmy-nominated “Niagara,” along with twenty-four other episodes.
Mindy was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. In 2014, she was named one of Glamour’s Women of the Year.
To learn more about the author and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/2X9tT8m
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
From the Amazon description –
The classic collaboration from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, soon to be an original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant.
?Season 2 of Good Omens coming soon!
“Good Omens . . . is something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated. Lots of literary inventiveness in the plotting and chunks of very good writing and characterization. It’s a wow. It would make one hell of a movie. Or a heavenly one. Take your pick.” —Washington Post
According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world’s only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.
So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.
And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist .
About the authors – Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. Among his numerous literary awards are the Newbery and Carnegie medals, and the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. He is a Professor in the Arts at Bard College.
Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was fifteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987 he turned to writing full time, and has not looked back since. To date there are a total of 36 books in the Discworld series, of which four (so far) are written for children. The first of these children’s books, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime bestseller, and was reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early 2006 (it is also available as a mass market paperback (Harper Torch, 2006) and trade paperback (Harper Paperbacks, 2006). Terry’s latest book, Nation, a non-Discworld standalone YA novel was published in October of 2008 and was an instant New York Times and London Times bestseller. Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an Officer of the British Empire “for services to literature” in 1998, and has received four honorary doctorates from the Universities of Warwick, Portsmouth, Bath, and Bristol. His acclaimed novels have sold more than 55 million copies (give or take a few million) and have been translated into 36 languages. Terry Pratchett lived in England with his family, and spent too much time at his word processor. Some of Terry’s accolades include: The Carnegie Medal, Locus Awards, the Mythopoetic Award, ALA Notable Books for Children, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Book Sense 76 Pick, Prometheus Award and the British Fantasy Award.
To learn more about the authors and their other books, click here. https://amzn.to/3npeETS https://amzn.to/3nAdeps
Hopefully, these books can take you away from the impending doom that Fox News and CNN want us to believe is coming. If you read any of these, please let us know what you think of them.
Until then, that’s all I’ve got for today, train wrecks. All aboard.
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