Satire Books

This is an excellent book. If you want to know how O.J got off or the reasons why it seem that the guilty go free then you have to read this book. Ashley goes above and beyond the call of duty as he gets his clients off the hook.

The book is a tongue-in-cheek romp through a parody of today's legal system. Each chapter deals with a new character whom sleazy lawyer Ashley Blackwood must defend for the nefarious crime he or she has almost certainly committed. And Ashley is very creative in doing just that! In fact, he can twist and turn the law beyond recognition. Sound familiar? It will to anyone today who wonders, at times, what our legal system is coming to.

The author develops each character with meticulous and subtle detail. Although the characters are entirely fictional, the reader will, no doubt, see the resemblance to some very famous (and infamous) defendants.

The writing is modern and sophisticated. A very funny book! The reader will keep turning the pages to see what impossible case the next client will bring to Ashley and how Ashley will get him off! The action is seen through the eyes of Attorney Blackwood's worshipful assistant. At the end of each case, Ashley summarizes his work with a Rule of how to defeat the system is such cases.

Well written, good fun. An ideal gift for any lawye

Ahh, feminist humor. It is even a little geeked out. Love it.

I remember getting this at a used book sale, and I've always regarded it as one of the best finds I ever could get. Very funny, a great anthology with everyone from Rita Mae Brown to Gloria Steinem, it's a good to book to have around to show to people who claim "feminists have no sense of humor!"

The title says it all: I've read perhaps twenty different Feminist humor collections, every one I could find, and this is the best one. I would recommend this to every woman, feminist or not -- Pick up a used copy, it won't set you back much. And enjoy.

Under his nom de foundation garment, Ophelia Bernice, Buck "Buck" Peterson reveals all the important stuff necessary to a real redneck wedding. For those who don't know the difference, a redneck owns their own double-wide trailer while white trash are more concerned with finding something to go with the biscuits, like food.
Planning a wedding is serious business when it's your fourth or fifth and the bride is pregnant with someone's baby and the groom is applying to the Witness Protection Program. The chapel needs decorating, the bridal gown has to be let out again, and the parents of the lucky couple must settle any long-standing feud before the first keg is tapped. Ophelia/Buck shows the crooked way to celebrating the sparkling occasion in low class high style, from bridal showers and bachelor parties to the service itself and the post-vow dove shoot, and the wretched hangovers the morning after. Any bride or groom-to-be would be most fortunate to have this handy reference guide now, before the June bridal season begins. The illustrations are cool, too, I guess.

This is perfect gift to give any bride to be or anyone that just loves redneck humor. It's really cute!!!

This wedding planner is toooo much fun. I bought it for several girlfriends and gave it to them at the showers...they all thought it was a hoot. The illustrations are great too. A terrific gift idea.

This is the delightful little memoir of Saul Steinberg,
translated from the italian by John Shepley. Its great value
is that it is the closest we will ever come to reading
the work of one of America's great literary talents.

Now it's become a pretty commonplace observation that
Steinberg is as appropriate a nominee for the literary
hall of fame as he is for the graphic artists'. This is
the little book that seals the deal. It turns out that
Steinberg's aphoristically-turned phrases are as clear and
concise as his drawings. This book is sadly, all he wrote.

Steinberg did not intend this to be a personal disclosure-
he is a man who had his memoir written by somebody else. And
yet, it turns out that the very tightness of phrasing gives
the man away. What did he learn of Milan when he was there?
Not much. "My chief interest then was girls. .I was looking...
.to find myself through love."

There are a few drawings here, all of them small and printed
just well enough to make you wish they were printed better.
If you are amoung the unconverted and want to catch examples
of his drawing see the wonderful exhibit at the Morgan
Library in New York or one of the great collections
(my favorite is Passport). But for true believers, Reflections
is Steinberg's literary love song, a book that puts him in the
company of Borges.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN
9781601640005

Published after his death in 1999, this is a meditation based on a series of interviews of Steinberg by Buzzi. Beginning with his childhood and youth in Romania, through his wartime experience in Italy and his maturity in the United States, Steinberg muses with an acute visual sense, appropriate for an artist. The book is illustrated with his drawings.

His ideas about influences on art are insightful. as he describes early photographers "inspired by the paintings of Delacroix and Ingres", to his thought that Bacon "clearly derives from the Polaroid". I was intrigued by his suggestion that the use of industrial paints in American art occurred because of poor artists used cold-water flats as studios, "and to make them livable they had to scrape and paint the walls, doors and windows, and floors . . . and this led them to work on a large scale, to use industrial paints, such as gold or silver on radiators, new materials". His description of the New York City taxi cab of the `40's as created out of Cubist elements, of the automobile influenced by Constructivism, Cubism, and "Fernandlégerism" makes one look at cars in a whole new light.

The title, Reflections and Shadows, comes from a section in which he discusses how what one sees in reverse in a reflection (in a mirror, in water) or shadow is often better - sharper, more intense - than the original. "If you look only at the reflection, and not at the reflecting part, you see a gratuitous reality that exists for you alone. For fun I throw a stone into the upside-down landscape, and seeing that the lower part moves I almost expect the upper part to move too."

If I quoted all my favorite parts of this book, I'd be typing almost the entire thing, so you'll have to go read it for yourself!

The autobiographical musings of a New Yorker cartoonist told to his old friend, and filled with wit, humanity and philosophical gems. Stories of escaping from the fascist police in Italy, too lazy to brutally arrest people at the usual invisible ungodly hour. Or civic life in 1950s Washington, and the charming people who knew exactly how to be courteous and to dismiss those who didn't belong. Or the poor white in kentucky, like protagonists out of American fiction, whereas the bourgeoisie, respectable people, "always the same". And Magritte's discovery of multiple sources of light in a painting (sun, streetlamp, electric light inside a house, the moon, reflections of light. Or American gastronomy, in which "the taste of the nation are governed by the tastes of children".

Milligan can't help himself: he'd be making goony jokes while being eaten by a lion. Here, in the second volume of his war memoirs, he's typically rumbustious and full of bad puns and silliness right in the middle of fighting the war in Northern Africa. He explains the dreadful boredom of waiting for battle and the utterly unreal experience of battle itself: being strafed and bombed and shelled, with loved friends dying a few feet away. He never dwells on the tragedy of war, but you can tell that, thirty or forty years later, he still feels the devastation and loss amidst the japes and jibes.

This is a great war memoir. You really feel what he felt-- the confusion and misery and sometimes the giddy exhilaration of living when others died. You'll laugh out loud at his antics, and you'll see the simple bravery of the British Tommies in WWII. Recommended.

A very quick and surprisingly engrossing book. ROMMEL is just as good if not better than its predecessor, Adolf hitler: My Part in His downfall. Milligan does a fantastic job of juggling the humor and the tragedy without overwhelming the reader with the events of the times. His sad nostalgia isn't as pronounced as it is in DOWNFALL, but it is there, as he does take time out from reminiscing to hammer out a paragraph about how he longs for the old days. His writing makes those who never experienced it long for it as well.

This book written by a comedy genius was both marvellously funny and desperately sad at times. I thoroughly enjoyed the bit about the gun going over the edge

Lynn Phillips' new book is so witty and sharp in its observations. It's laugh-out-loud heady. I particularly enjoyed the range of references, from the highbrow to the lowbrow and everywhere between. It's a great tonic
compared to so many of the self-congratulating self-help books.
Wayne Lavender, Psychologist

Lynn Phillips is one of the funniest, creative, and savvy living writers out there. Her Kitty Lyons piece in nerve was one of the sexiest, intelligent columns out there. 'Self Loathing' is a hilarious take on self help books- tackling all things for which we beat ourself up for: diet, relationships, porn...
Great gift & great read!


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the apple sisters

An invaluable contribution to the canon of self-help books that drive us all to despair. Finally someone gets it. So Beginners and experts alike - Get it. Share it with others who suffer from self doubt or should. We should start a campaign to get it into the hands of most of the 24 hour news agencies and FOX. They have not begun to tap into the self-loathing they ought to be feeling.

Excellent and beautiful representation of natural birth at the end of the the book. Just as entertaining and stimulating as the rest of her books. Bought it a year ago and still read it over every month or two.

I loved reading this book while I was going through my first pregnancy, even though mine was achieved in a more orthodox manner than Toni's :-) I hope my next time goes as smoothly as Rafael's birth. I think this book had a very accurate and suspenseful portrayal of pregnancy, and Clarice's stress was not stereotyped as the classic "nervous father"

This latest version of "Dykes" delivers good artwork, postmodern lesbians, and chosen family relations like no one else in the business. A book you will read again and again.

There's no single theme to Speed Bump: Cartoons For Idea People, no basic philosophy - but his 'outtakes' appear in over 200 newspapers around the country and Speed Bump is a fine survey which gathers these into themed chapters, includes the author's introduction to each, and even presents a small portion of color cartoons with the black and white winners. Dave Coverly is funny and pointed: Speed Bump is running in its 10th year and has been nominated for numerous awards, so place this book at the top of the list.

This is the funniest second book ever written by Dave Coverly....he is by far the best comic panelist working today. Plus I think he's completely kicked his Beanie Baby habit.

It has been a long time since I've read a cartoon book that is laugh out loud funny. Dave Coverly's quirky sense of humor and drawing skills combine to create a book that is hard to put down until you have read every one of the cartoons. In fact I didn't put it down until I had completed it and had to keep sharing individual cartoons with others as I went along. A joy to read and sure to put a smile on your face, Speed Bump is highly recommended humor.

This is an absolutely hilarious (and yet true) read. The most embarassing point of it all is a couple of these idiots have played in Cleveland. I hope to see more from this author and think you will enjoy the fresh prospective that he puts on everything in the book.

Enjoy the Read!!!

David C. Coleman
Cleveland, Ohio

This is a great compendium of funny and embarrassing stories involving some of the biggest athletes of the past few years. I'm a sports fan, but not as rabid as most - so I hadn't heard a lot of these stories. Written by a newspaper columnist, it was an enjoyable read and full of fun facts. For a fictional, humorous book that imagines a solution to athlete's outrageous behavior by mandating educational seminars, check out Robert Gussin's TRASH TALK. It's as equally hilarious as the real thing.

Funny and unbelievably researched with lots of varied sports knowledge and clever inuendo exhibited by the author. Loved the section divisions and the clever multiple choice test in section three! My Dad will love this one!

I too, bought this book thinking it was light humor. It's much more than that even though I laughed out loud several times reading it. Much of the humor is dark and thought provoking. I saw my own predicament in many of the descriptions. I recommend it to any creative person.

I bought this book mostly as a kind of joke. Most of my friends and I classify ourselves as starving artists, so I thought this book would, at the very least, be an eery window into our lives.

What I got was not just a mildly amusing look at the life of the stereotypcal "starving artist," but in many cases, I was laughing out loud. Not only that, but the authors have infused wonderful accounts of real artists as examples for the various topics they discuss. Even though much of the advice is light-hearted and probably not meant to be taken too literally, there's a good portion of it that is as useful as it is entertaining.

What started out as a book I bought on a whim became a book that I have declared one of the best books I've ever read. Okay, that may be a bit melodramatic, but I'm an artist...aren't I entitled? ;-)

Bottom line? If you are an artist or know an artist who has ever struggled, GET THIS BOOK...if nothing else, you'll have a few laughs and your lack of success (and quarters for laundry) won't seem quite as grim.

A funny look a the nitty gritty issues of life mixed with facts about what the (now) famous did in similiar situations. Lots of fun (& sometimes helpful) suggestions for handling everything from critiques to living situations. Great fun to read!