Humor Books

This is one of my all time favorite books, its small and filled with all kinds of random trivia and factoids that are delightful to share. The only thing I didnt like about the book is that it ended. I loved the book and everyone whos borrowed it from me or read it off my coffee table has absolutely loved it. You will too!

I am a reading teacher at the middle school level. This has been a hit with many of my students, whom I have been reading it aloud to. Even those students who profess to hate reading love this book, and beg me to allow them to read it by themselves. Hats off to Cameron Tuttle for a great read!!

This book would be good source material for commedy script writers...and humans who believe forwarned is forarmed.You wil be very well armed with this little quick read.It is hard to put down .It is hard not to laugh loud and long.It is hard to chance ever leaving your bedroom again.

The Paranoid's Pocket Guide is a quick and easy read, and Tuttle should be congratulated for both her in-depth research into matters of trivial paranoia and her clever presentation of same. Besides the straightforward presentation of factual statements, generally one to four on a page, Tuttle has a stream-of-consciousness list of basic paranoid fears running in a continuous line along the bottom of every page.

Tuttle's Guide is more about clever presentation than it is about clever writing, but she gets full marks for creating an interesting book which is both informative and fun. And terrifying. I dare you to read it without suffering at least a few jarring re-evaluations of the world around you.

This book sits in a conspicuous semi-hidden drawer in my living room coffee table. I'm always hoping someone will open the drawer and start reading it... I think they would become completely engrossed, but would also start looking out the corner of their eyes for what might get them! Some of MY friends might break out in a cold sweat, throw down the book and go running out the door!

The pages of the book are multi-dimensional... it is designed to "trip you out." The little factoids come in fonts of multiple sizes, which is not really similar to ransom notes clipped from newspapers but elicits the same type of feeling. One of the best things about the book are the photos... even everyday objects like sponges and treadmills are made to look like fearsome devices of evil... and the captions to the pictures help. Offset well below the image as if to stand it's distance, the caption speaks out as if to whisper the name of the object in the simplest possible way: [ A SPONGE ]. Heh.

There is also what appears to be the ramblings of a hyper-paranoid person scrawled along the bottom of the pages. You have to read the book twice... once to follow that rambling from cover to cover, and once to read all the factoids. But when you are reading the factoids, you sometimes get a glimpse of the rambling. The oddness of it adds to the whole creepiness of the book.

The atmosphere of the book is similar in some respects to what a crazed private-eye type, or government agent type, would write.

I bought this book at a ued bookstore in fairly bad shape, but it was excellent.
Bloom County is one of the funniest comics out on the streets today. If you want to start reading Bloom County, Though, don't start with this book! Start with "Billy and the Boingers BOOTLEG". I just read this book at school, and I thought it was hilarious. This is an excellent book. The best series, i'd say, would be when Steve Dallas becomes Mr. America. That was SO Funny!
But, the best strip in this comic is the one when Opus and Portnoy are sitting in the pond, and pous tells about his favorite song (Yesterday)
Read This comic!

Close your eyes and go back in time 20 years. Ronald Reagan is in the White House and getting ready to run for a second term against Walter Mondale. Disco, Heavy Metal, and Michael Jackson compete for space on a new network, MTV. In the funnies, Bloom County provides a humorous take on American society. This collection from 1983 and 1984 can take you back to those golden days when the Soviet threat made terrorists seem insignificant.

I love the "Bloom County" seiries - the deranged goings on of various animals and humans, Steve Dallas the lawyer, Opus and of course, Bill the Cat. Mr Breathed's humor is right on target and very funny.

I recommend this book highly

Bloom County was one of the greatest comic strips ever to have existed, and possibly the best comic in the whole decade of the 1980's and that was when Calvin and Hobbs (by Bill Watterson) and The Far Side (by Gary Larson) were in their prime.

The best comic strips today are Scott Adams' Dilbert (which jumped the Shark a few years back, but still have good moments), Get Fuzzy (by Darby Conley) and a few online comics, most notably User Friendly (by Illiad) and Sinfest (by Tatsuya Ishid). See www.userfriendly.org and www.sinfest.net for some good stuff.

Bloom County dealt with political and social issues in original and novel ways. He didn't shy away from issues, and always dealt with things in a nice and funny way. Lovable Opus the Penguin became the soul of the strip. The plush Opus dolls I still own to this day are some of my favorite possessions.

Yes, it does look a lot like Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury. But Breathed was not copying it, but satirizing it and paying homage to it at the same time. Especially the way Milo Bloom played when compared to the Doonesbury's Uncle Duke... who Trudeau was just spoofing off from the real life Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (author who is most famous for his quasi-novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas").

However, my favorite character was Oliver Wendell Holmes, the young computer hacker who fought apartite in South Africa through his invention, which was going to turn all the white people in South Africa black. Then there was the time he basically brought down Western Civilization as we knew it when he hacked into the New York Stock Exchange and put "A vast Ye mattes, Bank of America's about to go belly up" across the ticker. He got a well deserved spanking for that.

Most important to me, however, Bloom County forms one of the great memories I have from High School. Reading Bloom County and talking about it with friends was something I really have fond memories of from that time. Maybe it was just something from youth that maybe you remember as a little better than it really was. Things like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams and the Night Court TV series seem that way to me now. Heck, I find much of Night Court to now be unwatchable. But Bloom County still seems to be very much readable to me. The 1980's in most ways basically stunk. But there were some minor high points to civilization as we knew it, and Bloom County was one of them.

This book was probably the best of the regular collections. It is good that I now hear that Breathed may be restarting Bloom County again.

Although perhaps not the best introduction to the characters of Bloom County, this book will please fans of Opus, Steve Dallas and the rest.

Opus heads off to the South Pole, Steve Dallas becomes a sex gargoyle but still doesn't get the girl and the 'roaches continue to cause trouble.

Despite it's vintage, Bloom County continues to appeal and it looks just as good from both sides of the Atlantic.

everybody loves humor, everybody loves food, and, well, there are creeps who don't like penn & teller, but this if one of the funniest things i've ever read, i learned every trick in the book and life is neeeeeever boring. the two best parts, in my opinion: teller's bit on the great egg drop and penn's story of a milkshake as self-defense. worth every penny.

Penn & Teller take their stage personas to the print medium, and it works superbly. Penn is just as loud as ever, and Teller (seen in many of the photos) wears his trademark blank smile.

Most books on magic and ``tricks'' tend to be frustratingly dull, but the lively prose, scrumptious humour and fine photos and illustration make this one a pleasure to read.

This magic book also has the virtue of presenting several tricks that are easy to perform--if you want to learn two or three very funny and fun tricks table gags that require almost zero practice, this is the book to get.

Ugh, this one is hilarious. The bad boys of magic have a book here that is a little different than your standard "magic" book. Maybe that is why I like it. There are a few great gags that I got from this book that I have utilized around the dinner table. Read this one.

Penn and Teller are comic magicians who go back to the 1970s, but did not make it big until their appearances on David Letterman and Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. Since then they have made guest appearances on many television shows including Home Improvement. And recently a cable show has given them their own time slot. Penn and Teller have also written three best-selling books: Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends, How to Play in Traffic, and this book How To Play with Your Food.

Most magicians do not share their secrets. But Penn and Teller love sharing the secrets of magic in a comic way. Some of the topics covered in this book are "Genteel versus vulgar food play"; "Why all miracles are fake"; Stabbing a fork in your eye"; popcorn and pizza tricks; the JFK trick; and many others. My favorite is the "Oliver Stone Melon-Head Trick", which is not for the squeamish. The only caveat is that they did not include the ImpeachBlair vanishing trick, but perhaps they can make the White House lap dog disappear?

Got this book a couple of years ago, and spent a weekend trying NOT to die laughing reading it! Some of the tricks in here were absolutely wonderful. I'll never look at jello molds the same way again!

Yes, this book is very witty and very easy to read. I am en route to France for a year next year as an American exchange student, and I found this book to be very helpful for every aspect of the process--except I wish she added more information like "Why did she switch host families?" and about school. She barely mentioned anything about homework, the lycée, or anything like that. But I loved everything else about the book. It was intriguing and exciting. And also, it's a very nice quick read. If you are, going to be, or was an exchange student, this book is a must-have. Anther book I recommend is The Exchange Student Survival Kit. Au revoir!

I am planning on studying abroad to France in 2003 and this book has helped me out in many ways. It told me exactly what I need to know before I go, how the French people are, the school system, and it gave me encouragement. Just reading about how she doesn't regret going makes me want to go even more. I just wished she would have added more about how to handle so much school! Anyway, this book is great to read, even if you aren't planning on going to France. It has a lot of interesting facts that I could never imagine possible. Great book.

The moment I saw this book in the bookstore, I knew I had to get it because Megan did what I have always wanted to do: be an exchange student in another country. This book is just so charming, delightful, and cute. I finally was able to be an exchange student this summer in a Spanish speaking country, and while I was not gone a whole academic year but only for a couple of weeks, I always had this book by my side because so many things were the same. So if you have ever been an exchange student before/hosted one in America, or are going too I recomend this book right away, and if you are just looking for a good book to read you'll have a ball.

On the cover of this book, the publisher exudes, "A delightfully irresistible, charming account of a young American girl's year abroad." For once, this kind of description is actually an understatement. Yes, the book is in fact "delightfully irresistible" and truly charming. But the writing is also exceptionally limpid and evocative and betrays an exceptional maturity and talent. Megan McNeill Libby gives us beautifully impressionistic portraits of France, the French, and her very personal struggles, disasters, and triumphs. Her depiction of the French is extraordinarily perceptive and from my own experience living in France totally accurate. At times, I laughed until I cried; more frequently, I caught myself involuntarily smiling and nodding in agreement. But the deeper reward of reading this book is simply seeing the way that Ms. Libby writes and thinks. She is one of those rare authors with whom one falls in love after (no, during) a single reading. I am normally sparing with my praise, but I readily admit to being a gourmand for this book. Merci bien, Megan, and please give us more!

The author of Postcards from France, Megan Libby, was just 16 when she went to France in 1994 as your typical AFS student. But she wasn't typical: she had her eyes wide open and was able to record, in a series of letters and postcards sent back home, what a humbling experience it is to be a newcomer in another culture. By turns comedic, touching, insightful, and revealing, Postcards from France is always refreshing - and it's highly likely this talented young author will go on to write more books that will be a pleasure to read.

Among the lighter and more overlooked sorrows of living in a post-terroristic era of conflict is all of the fun that could once be had, but no more, like - arguably - everything that takes place in this engrossing and extremely, extremely funny book, but one in particular: cleaning out one's refrigerator by mailing everything rotten (there's a way to do this with no postage, though you'll have to read this book to find out, and if you were to try it now, you'd have 10 SWAT teams on your doorstep in 36 hours or less) to everyone who might have ever annoyed you in some way.

Sigh...

Read this book, and I promise you'll never forget it.

-David Alston

This is the ultimate prankster handbook, an inspirational guide to mischief and mayhem. It is one of those books you can read bit by bit as there is a lot of material to absorb (not that you couldn't read it all at once, but it's like a rich cheesecake, you will want to savour each bite instead of gorging). The interviews are of varied allurement, some yielding more elation than others, but then you can't please everyone all of the time. Some of the stories told seem almost too wild to be real, until you see the accompanying photographs or news clippings and realize that some people have far better stories to tell than you or I ever will. And they aren't kidding, either.
Definitely makes my top 5 must-have "non-fiction or reference" books.

I lost my first copy of this in Nags Head in 1993. That's OK, it should be shared with as many people as possible because the pages are filled with shocking, playful, silly pranks from a host of prank 'generes.' A guy blows himself up at a high school reunion, another paints american flags on snails and on and on and. The books seems to capture a pre-PC time also: the 1980s.

What fun! This book is packed with great interviews with people who like to make trouble. All are amusing and all are inspiring. My personal favorites are the Henry Rollins and the Earth First! interviews. The Rollins interview makes me laugh just thinking about it, and the Earth First! interview is exciting to read. It makes me itch to go out and prank away. An excellent and informative read.

I love this book. I thought I was the only weirdo out there, but this book inspires me to be weirder. Great interviews with Dead Kennedy singer Jello Biafra, Abbie Hoffman and Henry Rollins. One of the few books I pick up weekly, even though I've read it from cover to cover many times. Still cracks me up.

First I would like to say that before a friend introduced me to Ranma I never would have even thought of reading a manga of any kind. Now after reading the first four books I find that I cant wait for the next two I ordered to get here so i can read them and order some more! Rumiko Takahashi is brilliant!

Where do i begin? Oh ok I somehhow reaveal my secret to everyone and my weakness

Ranman 1/2, Volume four is an AWESOME addition to the Ranma series! It is great! It has more excitement, romance, and cool guys!! (Yup, two new male characters who are awesome....plus there's Ryoga and Ranma......) In this book, you also learn Ranma's "weak spot." It's really interesting. You will know what it is if...you read the book!^^The only thing is, Ryoga isn't in this book as much as I'd like...but this book developes more of Ranma's personality, so I won't be mad. Volume four is probably my favorite Ranma 1/2 volume so far (I've read Volumes 1-4). It ends at a cliff-hanger, though. Well, Ranma 1/2, Vol. 4 (actually all Ranma 1/2 books) is really great! I highly reccomend it! Read it!

Well, Ranma gets not one, but two new rivals in this volume. The first is Hikaru Gosunkugi, who wants Ranma out of the way because he wants Akane. What does he do? He decides to offer his services to Kuno! The two join forces to discover Ranma's weak spot! But come on... Gosunkugi's incompetent! How could he learn it? Well, he does, and it turn out to be felines! But Gosunkugi is the least of Ranma's worries... it seems that a certain amazon from China isn't out of his hair like he thought! Shampoo's back, and has a curse of her own, which seeing as it's a cat one, it will probably dampen their relationship. Enter rival no. 2, Mousse, Shampoo's would-be lover, who challenges Ranma to a man to man fight! But with Shampoo's great-grandmother Cologne using a deadly pressure point touch on him, Ranma is stuck in girl form! Ranma now has to beat Mousse and get the cure for his condition! Things get hectic, ending in a cliffhanger, but it's really great stuff. Luckily, now that the book's been rereleased with a cheaper price, it's now more affordable to fans!

Ranma Saotome's life was complicated enough when he just had his turning-into-a-girl curse to deal with. But the fourth volume of Rumiko Takahashi's "Ranma 1/2," Ranma has a new slew of problems -- creepy stalkers, hidden phobias, martial-arts crones, and a girl who won't accept that "no" is his answer.

A new kid has arrived at school: stalkery, cadaverous Hikaru Gosunkugi, who harbors a crush on Akane and deep hatred of her fiancee Ranma. So he begins trying to find out what Ranma's hidden weakness is, but the fearless young martial artist claims there is nothing. Unfortunately, Gosunkugi is spying when Ranma's weakness is revealed -- cats -- and he tries to use it against him... with shocking results.

No sooner has Ranma recovered from his peculiar adventure than the tenacious Amazon Shampoo arrives again. Not only does she have a Jusenkyo curse of her own -- the cat -- but she has her wizened great-grandmother Cologne in tow. Cologne is determined to see Ranma marry Shampoo. And so, as Ranma squares off with a rejected suitor of Shampoo's, the old lady traps him in the body of a girl...

The fourth volume of his gender-bending action-romantic-comedy introduces some important characters. As well as bringing the incredibly persistent Shampoo back, it also introduces wizened-yet-feisty Cologne, and Mousse, a formidable master of hidden weapons. Or rather, he WOULD be formidable if he weren't legally blind.

The fourth volume also has the advantage of showing that Ranma isn't perfect -- up until now, the teenage martial-artist hasn't been slowed down at all, whether by lunatic athletes or ultra-strong romantic rivals. Giving him a raging cat-phobia -- so bad he passes out -- gives him more humanity. As Akane says, "It's cute to have a little weakness."

And speaking of Akane, she gets her first taste of romantic rivalry in this volume, when Shampoo sets up shop nearby. Though both Ranma and Akane claim that they don't even like each other, their mutual hostility towards any rivals is proof enough that they are starting to fall in love. If only Akane didn't freak out, and Ranma didn't insult her.

The fourth volume of "Ranma 1/2" is a pivotal one, adding even more characters to the romantic spiderweb that stretches all over the series. Weird, wild and funny.

What Northrup has to say is as interesting as the way he says it. I really loved his style of writing: chatty, wry, ironic, funny, serious--often at the same time.

I am so happy that he won the 1999 native american journalism award for his editorials, which appear in indian country today , news from inidan country and the circle. this book is wonderful and very funny! the poem he writes about John Wayne visitng Vietnam is a masterpiece and shows " the Duke" for what he really is a wimp and a wuz! get this book it's truly a gem!

This book is brutal without being harsh, funny without being lightweight. In a society where everyone (and I do mean everyone) is made to feel guilty for everone else's suffering, this is a breath of fresh air. The problems Northrup faces every day are aired alongside with the joys. For every pain, he offers a happiness.

And he never says you can't understand. He just offers another way to see his life.

Don't buy Ian Frazier's book if you want any kind of accurate picture of today's Indians. Buy this one instead - this is the book to get if you want to begin to understand the complexities of being an Indian. The author speaks to both the initiated and the ignorant. It's both a moving and a fun read.

I picked this book up at random while browsing the "Native American studies" shelf at my local book megastore, and I was quickly drawn in, reading it cover-to-cover in a day. Jim Northrop is an Anishinaabe who lives on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Northern Minnesota, and in this book he writes about reservation life, about Native American political issues, and about his own travels and experiences. One of the great strengths of this book is his honesty as a memoirist. While sticking largely to a humorous matter-of-fact tone, he does not shy away from his grief at his son's suicide attempt or his difficulties returning from war in Vietnam. Another strength is the conversational quality of the writing itself. At first it bugged me, short sentences put together into these meandering run-on paragraphs, but after some reading I began to think more of Italian vocal technique, where the tone continues, rising and falling, with words just dotted on the surface. Eventually it felt like I was just hanging out with the guy, listening to his interesting stories. There are times when the writing falls down, for example during an extended series of sports metaphors during a dicussion of racism, or in the rather forced series of kangaroo references when describing a tribal "kangaroo court". But despite these problems I found the writing compelling and accessible. I'm not qualified to analyze the political arguments he sometimes makes, but his perspective on treaty rights, sports mascots, and gambling will certainly stay with me, informing and broadening my thinking when I next encounter these issues in daily life.

First off, this is the BEST shounen ai manga I've ever read and it surpasses the yaoi titles too (and I've read a lot of yaoi-BL manga) it has everything anyone can ask for: beautiful art, wonderful stories and great characters, well except yaoi but this is better off without it because the love each character feels for one another makes up for the lack of sex.

#1 on my yaoi top list.

It was like poetry through art! It was such a beautiful collection of short stories. I fell in love with it on page 1. If you're expecting a long in depth sex-fest, you're going to be dissapointed; however, this book is by no means shallow, pointless, or without depth. Truely a work of art.

my best friend lent it to me and i was aghast at how beautiful the stories were, i'm really picky when it comes to yaoi or shonen ai and this, i must say is one of my favorites.

Same Cell Organism surpassed my expectations. The stories in this manga were sweet and charming. Starting with the first story of Nakagawa and Yokota. The emotion expressed through the breathtaking and clean artwork to the story lines enraptured me from the start. Very good and highly reccommended to Yaoi fans!!

I had never heard of this author before (whom, it seems, writes under several names) but I fell in love with this anthology of short stories and am now a huge fan. The artwork is gorgeous and the storytelling wonderful.
This manga is not, as the cover implies, yaoi. It is Shounen-ai, with only a few kisses,but shounen-ai at it's best. The first story is about two friends who fall in love and it's incredibly heart-warming.
The next story is very bittersweet, but great and there are several more stories.
Overall, this book won't change your life, but it will make it a little bit brighter.

Just as funny as all the other hillarious Dilbert books. Gte this one to start your Dilbert Collection or make it bigger. This book os a must read just like all of the other dilbert books so BUY IT

Shave the Whales is another Dilbert masterpiece! These strips were in the older Dilbert days, so there were more comics with just Dilbert and Dogbert. However, the pointy-haired boss started becoming more of a character, and some office jokes are featured. It is a great book for any Dilbert fan! It is filled with wit, humor, and incompetent management. A wonderful book!

I have never been disappointed with anything written by Scott Adams and this is no exception. This is a collection of some of the older strips featuring our office hero Dilbert dishing out some sarcasm and much-loved puns. If you are a Dilbert fan like I am, this is a must have for your collection. I laughed hysterically and then laughed some more; I shared it with my friends and they laughed; then I silently cheered as Dilbert sticks it to the PHB as all of us wish we could. Hats off to Scott!

As another member if the DNRC, I claim, the other two induhviduals in this list (if you can't easily spot them, I claim you also) to help me when my car is stuck in the mud: "hey, buddy there is a whale under my car if you want it"

While this is the 4th Dilbert book, it is the 2nd book of strips from the newspaper, following "Always Postpone Meetings With Time-Wasting Mornons". The strips in this book are from the end of 1989 through mid-1990. Some characters of note introduced in this book are the Garbage Man (who is a member of MENSA) and Ratbert. Also, the famous fictional country of Elbonia makes it's first appearance. People will see characters that look a lot like Wally but aren't called that as Wally wasn't established yet. The humor picks up with more business related strips and the artwork tightens up a bit. A good book for laughs and light reading.

I always know when my husband is reading this because i can hear him laughing from the other end of the house! These are really cute and I recommend them to all my friends and family members.

I grew up with "talking heads" type comics. I can burn through the Sunday funnies in about a minute-and-a-half just reading the text and, truthfully, this is what I =did= do for many years because it was rare to find anything really interesting to look at. But when "Calvin and Hobbes" came around, and Berke Breathed transmogrified "Bloom County" into "Outland", I started to stop and look at what could be done in what I had formerly considered a fairly seriously limited medium.

Around 1992, I started a subscription to a local paper which carried "Rose is Rose" and I immediately recognized the same kind of wondrous artistic talent in Pat Brady that I had seen in Breathed and Waterston. Even more so, since the author didn't have the clout of these other two, he had to cram this creativity into the formats and patterns dictated by the newspaper nazis (who want to make sure there's plenty of room for those Sizzler's coupons).

The subject matter of the strip isn't for everyone. It's a sincere, sweet look at a happy family. The humor in the strip doesn't generally derive from strife or even serious friction, but from the characters' expressions of imagination, and even the creative manner in which they get along. The fact that this works without being cloying, in a millenium ushered in by the Simpsons and South Park, is a testament to the truth behind the art.

I love Rose is Rose, and this collection of strips has given me no reason to think otherwise. For the humorous looks at life you've come to expect from Rose and her family, (and Peekaboo, too!), get this. :) I couldn't stop laughing, and I had to read the whole book in one sitting!

If you love "Rose is Rose" especially Jimbo and Rose's relationship and/or Peekaboo the cat, you need this book.

This is a collection of Rose Is Rose comic strips, one of the few decent ones not to appear in the Washington Post (along with Foxtrot and maybe Funky Winkerbean). They're a bit sappy at times: son Pasquale has a helpful guardian angel and is too good to be believed. On the other hand, the artwork is excellent and some of the ideas superb. Rose, the mother, has recurring fantasies of being a biker babe, which are brought out at odd moments. Dad is a great tease, at one point getting onto his knees with his shoes under them and telling Pasquale that he got that way because he didn't eat his vegetables. Certainly very entertaining.