Satire Books

This is an incredibly moving graphic novel. In order to earn money to feed his mother and infant sister Gen agrees to take care of Mr. Seiji, an artist burned head to toe by the bomb. Mr. Seiji is kept in a room and left to die by his brother and his brother's family. The way in which Mr. Seiji's family treat him, calling him a monster, wishing he would would die so they could stop being incenvenienced, is in direct contrast to the way in which Gen takes care of his mother, and the orphan Ryuta who looks like his dead brother. The story is a perfect metaphor for humanity, civility, and the way in which people treat each other when times are difficult for everyone.

The artwork his excellent. Nakazawa's somewhat cartoony style makes the horrors seem that much more horrific. The burn victims, both living and dead, the maggots crawling through a living person's dead flesh, people vomiting blood, all have an amazing stomach turning impact.

And yet mixed in with all this is Gen's childish love, hope, and optimism. Despite the setting, he and Ryuta manage to find humor and sing songs.

This is a fictional story, but it is based on Kaiji Nakazawa's real life experiences which he went through as a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. The names of some of the characters are the names of his family. The stories he tells are harsh and real and painful and good. Literature, in any medium, doesn't get any better than this.

Despite Amazon saying this book is only 3 pages long, it's actually 176. It includes five stories, all of which are much longer than the regular comic book stories. The entire book is in black and white, and the introduction includes a little story about the 1940's films. Also, as far as super villians go, the only famous one in the book is the Joker. The names of the stories are:
1. What a Sweet Racket (detecive type story)
2. The Phantom Terrorist (sort of like Phantom of the Opera)
3. The Joker's Symbol Crimes
4. The Secret Triangle Farm
5. The Missing Heir Dilemma

I know amazon doesn't have this available anymore, but if you can find it at a store I recommend it.

As a new father myself I found Pat Byrnes new book to be hilariously insightful and a thoroughly entertaining romp through the foibles of parenting. A must read for any parent or parent to be. God Speed Pat Byrnes.

I heard about this author from a couple of friends who had taken a class from him on comedy and religion (didn't know there was any comedy in religion but there you go). So I looked him up on the net and read samples of his novels and ordered Benedict XVI because it's the only one he's published so far. I'm still laughing. The sample was good but the novel gets better and better and ends up as the best damn comic novel since, you fill in the blank. What sets it off from the standard "bestselling" novel is the characters. Benny Good the charming bastard, Ariel the Southern California airhead, Esther Geld the virginal agent who sets Benny up as pope, Ron Something, whose last name Benny (and the author?) can't remember, Maven Plum, the Barbara Walters of this crazy world-the list goes on and on. Plus the plot. You think you know where things are headed but no, the story takes you in another direction entirely. Breathtaking roll-on-the-floor funny. What we have here is not a failure to communicate, what we have here is an undiscovered comic genius. If you like the Coen brothers you'll love this stuff!

Did I mention the cover is a gas?

You'd have to live under a rock not to know of the Berenstain Bears books and TV shows. I've loved the Berenstain Bears ever since my teenagers were babies. I like the classic Bears (where Papa Bear is always a bumbling idiot) and the later Bears (where Brother and Sister always learn an important lesson). So when I recently learned that Stan and Jan Berenstain, creators of the Berenstain Bears, wrote some books for parents, I had to check one out! I read "The Berenstains' Baby Book: Advice for Parents from the Creators of the Berenstain Bears" (ISBN 0-671-49629-8), and it's hilarious! The Berenstains dispense advice on all kinds of subjects, including pregnancy, feeding, bedtime, first words, discipline, daycare, and much more. The version I read was published in 1983, so parts are dated, but it really doesn't matter. The humor in this book remains fresh! Here's some of the advice they offer:

Pregnancy: While you've been working through the final stages of your blimp impersonation, solicitous friends and relatives have kept your phone ringing off the wall. Your mother-in-law is convinced that the whole process is taking much too long and that your delaying tactics are for the specific purpose of embarrassing her.

Grandparents: The grandparent's first impulse upon seeing the grandchild is to pick him up. It matters not that the child is happy in the crib, coach, or playpen. Nor does it matter that it required a supreme effort of stamina, will and native cunning to get him to lie there quietly in the first place. Up he's snatched! Then, after a few minutes of knee dandling, Grandpa glances at his watch and discovers that he'd better hurry if he's going to pick up Grandma in time to make the first show. . . . So, putting Baby back where he found him, he bids you adieu, but you don't hear him over the mounting decibels from your infant.

Potty-Training: Bladder Control consists of putting the tot on the pot every hour on the hour. It also entails sponging up a puddle every hour on the hour, roughly two minutes after you take the child off the pot. Stated in its simplest terms, your objective is to get the puddle in the pot. The solution is largely a matter of sticking rigidly to a schedule and constantly keeping a weather eye squinted for signs of precipitation.

Undressing: At two and a half, your tot will probably try to remove socks by grabbing at the piggie end and pulling toward his face. He pulls and pulls. Nothing happens. Eventually his hand slips off and connects with his nose. After this, be sure to slip his socks off his heels for him when he's in the mood to undress himself. Then when he grabs a handful of sock and yanks, he'll get results: there will be a sock in his fist when it connects with his nose.

There's even a brief fill-in-the-blank section at the end of the book with such humorous items as:
Smashed first priceless heirloom at ___ months.
First locked self in bathroom at ____ months.
Brought home first dead animal at ____ months.
First fist fight at ____ months. Who won? __________

"The Berenstains' Baby Book" is also loaded with adorable classic Berenstain illustrations. This is my new favorite gift item for expectant parents. Parenting isn't easy, but it helps when we can laugh at the many challenges and difficult stages. This book will bring out the chuckles in every parent.

This book is a collection of extracts from Bertrand Russell's many books and papers. In about 150 pages, the editor collected some of the wittiest remarks Russell has ever made. They sould be read bearing in mind Russel's own advice: "I sould not wish to be thought in earnest only when I am solemn". Indeed, some of the funniest quotes in this book are also the deepest ones. Add to that the ramarkable eloquence and clarity of Russell's writings (he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950), and you obtain a real treasure.

The contents of Russell's Best cover subjects as religion, ethics, politics and sex. Many of the views expressed in this book are obvious nowadays, but they were considered outrageous filth in conservative circles at the time of writing. Russell was a humanist and a pacifist, and he even spent some time in jail for that.

This book is a good opportunity for people without any training in philosophy to get acquainted with the views of a great thinker. The texts are so well-written that the novice can finish and understand the book in only a few hours. I cannot think of any other philosopher who could manage to do that.

Good book to leave in exam rooms while the patients are waiting. It leaves them in a much better mood !

Published annually since 1973, the "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year" features the best work of some of the nation's most talented pen and ink commentators. This 1985 edition, recounting the events of 1984, contains over 300 examples of this sublime political art form by 131 editorial cartoonists. The cover cartoon of Ronald Reagan riding the United States like a horse reminds us that this was the President was reelected in a landslide (there is another cartoon inside that transforms the map into Reagan's face). Consequently, the opening salvos of this volume are devoted to President Reagan, Mondale and the Democrats, and the Presidential Debates. It is interesting to see that it was not the incumbent President but the challenger and his party that offered the better fodder for cartoons. After all, you have a former Vice-President whose administration had failed to be reelected heading the ticket along with Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be nominated for the second spot on the ticket. Then throw into the mix the scandal of the Gary Hart campaign and Jesse Jackson's association with various undesirables around the world. Editorial cartoonists must have been pinching themselves to make sure all this wonderful nonsense was really going on.

In addition to the devastating defeat of the Democrats in the presidential election there were also the topics of the nation's ballooning budget deficit, the parade of geriatric leaders in the Soviet Union, and the grim spectacle of faminine and starvation in Ethiopia. There are also the old standards of defense spending, the Middle East, religion in the schools, education in the schools, and crime. But usually it is those unique moments in American history, such as Miss America Vanessa Williams, the first black woman to win the crown, being forced to resign because of the publication of nude photographs (Historical footnote: Williams is doing much better today than Ferraro). It always happens that while flipping through these pages that the year under review comes back in all its details. A standard history of the year 1984 could not serve as well.

This particular volume is graced by a foreword by Rep. Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and himself a frequent subject of editorial cartoons (a half dozen choice examples of which accompany his words). O'Neil posits that the dictum that a picture is worth a thousand words applies doubly to editorial cartoons and celebrates both their power and their potency. Looking through these pages from almost two decades past proves the point: looking at an editorial cartoon on the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympic games in Los Angeles can bring back the issue quite vividly. Then there is the poignancy of a couple of editorial cartoons that addressed President Reagan's announcement that a schoolteacher would be selected as the first "citizen passenger" to fly in space; the flight would probably take place in late 1985 or 1986.

When tripping down memory lane by flipping through the pages of "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1988," or any of its companion volumes in this series, what stands out the most are not the constant topics such as Congress getting nothing done, violence in the Middle East, concerns about the economy and defense spending, but the topics that are specific to 1987. That was the year of the doomed nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court and a players strike in the NFL, a great opportunity for editorial cartoonists to declare a plague on both houses. Then there was the PTL scandal that brought down Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye Bakker, a woman born to end up in editorial cartoons. Often, I find some of my favorite cartoons have to do with well-known personalities who died during the year: Jim Borgman has Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in the reception room in heaven and Bob Englehart drew the set from "The Honeymooners" with the figure of Alice weeping over the death of Jackie Gleason.

1987 was a good year for award-winning cartoonists, with Mike Peters picking up the National Headliners Club Award for his Iran-Contra action figures, Berke Breathed shaking the earth by winning the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for "Bloom County," and Dick Locher earning the Fischetti Award for a cartoon of Reagan as Karnak ("The answer is: 'I Don't Know!' Now, what's the question?"). The Iran-Contra hearings provided lots of fodder for satire, with Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North suddenly becoming a national figure, along with National Security Advisor John Poindexter. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan continued along with his "Teflon Presidency" while over on the Democratic side potential candidates Gary Hart and Joe Biden saw their campaigns self-destruct. You look over all the stupid things politicians were doing and no wonder the American public is jaded about scandals involving politicians. Then there was the controversy over promoting condoms as a way of reducing the spread of AIDS, just one of a dozen topics that cuts both ways in inflaming the passions of the American public. Still, all thing considered 1987 was a very good year for the pens dipped in venom by the nation's editorial cartoonists.

What could be better than a whole book devoted to the sometimes friends, sometimes rivals "Betty and Veronica"? Full of color stories that will have you laughing your head off. Well worth the price!