Satire Books

This is a great gift book for anyone who has anything to do with either cats or solar energy. I was very disappointed not to find it amongst Amazon's extensive inventory.

The Solar Cat Book is a great introduction to solar energy using cats as a model system. Augustyn teaches us about solar energy and heat flow mechanics through a series of small stories and jokes. The illustrations and cartoons are not to be missed. Although one of the reviews suggests that children can read this book, I think that it is intended and is more appropriate for adults. It is really a shame that this book is out of print. I think that it should be revived!

This book and its prequel (GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS) is really a primer in bad movies...as well as a great book of humor. Often, it is hard to believe that human beings actually made some of the movies described here...but it's all real.

The Medveds write in such an entertaining manner that you feel as though you've seen the movie (or at least picked up on its tone and key plot points)without having to put yourself through the agony of sitting through some of these!! It's a book I turn to over and over because it's so entertaining. And I have watched many a movie based on its recommendation. And not once have the Brothers Medved been wrong. These turkeys ARE turkeys!!!

Hilarious, fast-moving and well-written...with fun photos. Don't miss it!!

Having achieved vast success with the original Golden Turkeys - itself a sequel to the Fifty Worst Films of All Time - this was the third instalment in the bad film saga. Though not quite as good as the first Turkeys, the Medveds had discovered a rich vein and this book delivers much mirth. Two-headed monster movies, bad lyrics, inane dialogue and bad special effects still have a special place in my heart.

Having got this book for my wife's birthday (it's her favorite comic) we read it through over and over again. She loves the comic but we can't get it in our paper (and reading it online is tiresome). You can read Mark Heath every day and never get tired of it: the comic has a depth and humor that entertains and enlightens. Having it in book form (and FULL COLOR!) is a great way to spend an afternoon...no matter how old you are.

This is a great comic's retrospecive with beautiful art and a lot of whimsy to boot. Spot is a joy to read.

This lovebale little frog and his group of friends bring a lot of smiles and chuckles to even those readers who might not be familiar with the ongoing comic strip. Spot the Frog is just a wonderful, fun strip.

It's fresh and has a positive message for all these days. Kids will love it too.

This is the pentultament source for the history and intrigue of scotch...who is "doing" who and how does scotch go from hops, water, and copper pot to the necture of the gods - this is the ultimate source book...And it is written with a sense of irony and humor. Buy this book...if you love scotch you will adore this book.

Being a fan of single malt whiskies myself, I really appreciate his knowledge, at the same time that I am taken by his whimsical humour.(I am Canajian,eh?) His illustrations are outstanding, and he is a truly inspired watercolourist.

Any true Stones fan (sarcastic sense of humor required) will LOVE this book!-Howie T

THE BOOK IS A CONTAINERSHIP OF ABSOLOUTELY FABULOUS PAINTINGS OF (OF ALL THINGS) THE ROLLING STONES - THIS BOOK IS NOT ABOUT THEM SO MUCH AS ABOUT ART - THE STONES SIMPLY BRING OUT THE BEST IN PORTRAITURE ART - AND IF YOU NEVER LIKES THE STONES BEFORE, YOU WILL NOW. MIND YOU, TO THE UNINITIATED (IE ALL NON-ARTISTS) -THIS BOOK MAY SEEM POINTLESS SOMEHOW. BUT WAIT! COULD YOU POSSIBLY PORTRAY ANYONE WITH THE AMAZING ACCURACY THAT KRUGER HAS???- EVEN REMOTELY?? KRUGER HAS TAKEN THE QUINTESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF EACH ARTIST AND TURNED EACH PICTURE/CARRICATURE INTO A MINDBLOWING SENSATIONAL VISUAL FEAST-ENJOY! I DID! - AS AN ARTIST - IM COMPLETELY ENVIOUS OF KRUGERS ABILITY - AND I WANT TO WIN THAT $100- SO I CAN AFFORD TO BUY THE BOOK! - I READ A FRIENDS COPY AND DONT OWN ONE MYSELF (boo hoo!!)...ALTHEA (FANCY A PORTRAIT ARTIST NOT OWNING THE BEST PORTRAIT BOOK ON THE MARKET!!)

This joke book by Soupy Sales Rules and is highly recomended!!It's the joke book of joke books!!It's terribly sad and tragic though that his reknowned slapstick movie"Birds Do It" 1966co-starring Tab Hunter and Arthur O'Connell has never been released on vhs/dvd.Video distributors both large and small should aggressively pursue the release of this great overlooked gem of movie.So spread the word!!

A few groaners but I was in TEARS of laughter most of the time. What a great book. Having a bad day? Just pick up the book and open to any page and get a quick laugh. Once again, Soupy Sales rules!!!

Love this Book! I'm almost 30 and it still makes me smile.

This is a fun Peanuts and the gang book from the late Sixties. An enjoyable book!

Swift, the greatest English satirist, is of course best known for Gulliver's Travels, but the Tale of a Tub is more complex, more vicious, and funnier. In some of the best prose of the 18th century, he ridicules all sorts of conventions, religious, literary, rhetorical, and otherwise. He makes full use of the capacity that prose has for being deliriously irrelevant and digressive. It is similar in some ways to Tristram Shandy and the novels of postmodernism. It'll give you fits.

A Tale of a Tub is certainly Swift's least classifiable work. He's best known, of course, for Gulliver's Travels. This work was mostly written at the very start of his career, when he hadn't yet totally hardened into his later misanthropy, and it has all the demented exuberance of a great writer in his mid-20s finding a voice.

It defies description. The kernel of it is a satire on religious controversies, but that makes up about a third of the actual text. The rest is a series of prologues, forewords, dedications, prefaces, afterwords, epilogues and appendices, the sheer profusion of which suggest very much that Swift is poking dire fun at the idea of writing itself. In that respect, it goes further than any 20th century French golden boy of artistic revolt; Artaud looks like a stamped-in-tin romantic poet when set against Swift's manic nihilism. A Tale of a Tub is the closest anyone has ever got to writing a book that tackles head-on the futility of writing books, but that's only one interpretation of it. It exhausts interpretation by being as near as possible about nothing at all - and hence about everything. Plus it's not even 200 pages long. Swift never wrote as irresponsibly ever again, although the Travels, 'A Modest Proposal', the Bickerstaffe Papers, the 'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift' and the Drapier's Letters are all admirable enough. A Tale of a Tub is as comprehensive a piece of literary terrorism as was ever attempted.

Hutcheon's definition of parody is much broader than most, and I believe it is both fitting and useful. Parodic works, to Hutcheon, are not those which imitate at the expense of the parodied text (that's satire). Rather, they confront the past, and explore the difference between the parodied text and the present. As she writes, the pleasure comes from the degree of engagement of the viewer/listener in "intertextual bouncing" between the familiar and the new.

The book's premise is that parody is a genre fundamental to 20th century art forms. The works cited come from a wide range of disciplines, and are both modern and postmodern. The language is rather straight-forward and clear, a welcome diverson from many contemporary theorists. In fact, I found the book perhaps too repetitive, too focused on making a single point. Still, Hutcheon provides a thoughtful viewpoint from which to enjoy - and to make - art.

kalinin@terra.com.br
Linda Hutcheon's A Theory of Parody is one of the most important theoretical books of the decade not only on parody but also on postmodernism. The dispute over the worth of postmodern art revolves around one of its most striking features, i.e. the outburst of intertextuality in the form of parody and pastiche. This proliferation of parody has been described as an exhaustion of creativity, appropriation of the property of others, borrowing, pirating, and cannibalisation; all of which descriptions are quite derogative. Parodists have, therefore, been considered minor artists, who take out their spite on acclaimed authors by ridiculing them. Linda Hutcheon's views on parody are far more positive and allows us to analyse contemporary writers and give them their due worth. She claims that postmodern parody has changed in its essentials when it became an imitation with critical distance. It is a highly sophisticated genre and has come to be almost an autonomous literary form. It is, in fact, a form of literary criticism. According to her, parody is "repetition with critical distance;" it is "stylistic confrontation," a modern re-coding which establishes "difference at the heart of similarity." In short, in order for one to criticise any modern work of art, I believe that her theory becomes an essential tool, since it enables us to establish the relations between the work of art and all the included references, allusions and quotations, and moreover, to discover the evaluative judgement the author expresses on both the parodied texts and on his/her own text. Hutcheon's theory on parody helps us understand better what happens to the quotation from a canonical text when it is transported into a postmodern text which uses fragmentation and irony to subvert the original meaning. Conversely, Parodies offer a dialogue and a re-evaluation of the past in the light of the present, and a critical view of present from the perspective of the past.

In Thundering Sneakers, Prudence Mackintosh has anecdotally shared her life as the mother of 3 boys in a Texas town with humor and frankness. Mothers of boys anywhere will recognize her stories and grandmothers who have raised their sons will laugh as they remember those moments when they longed for a little girl to dress up. In the days of career women, Mackintosh has made her career writing about what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, and life with her three boys and her lawyer husband will bring laughter to your heart and tears to your eyes. This is a must read for any woman whose life is made richer, and rowdier, by sons. {Retreads is the sequel -- and just as good!

Prudence Mcintosh is just about my favorite author of all time and this book is the best. She is a real role model for young moms.You will love this book.