Стивен Роули4.2 Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, no matter how adorable, Patrick is honestly a bit out of his league.
So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules” ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting—even if temporary—isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.
With the humor and heart we’ve come to expect from bestselling author Steven Rowley, The Guncle is a moving tribute to the power of love, patience, and family in even the most trying of times.
Джеймс Макбрайд4.0 В сентябре 1969 года неуклюжий, капризный, старый церковный дьякон по прозвищу Спортивный Пиджак, вваливается во двор жилого комплекса в Южном Бруклине, вытаскивает из кармана пистолет 38-го калибра и на глазах у всех стреляет в упор в местного наркоторговца Динса Клеменса. Когда-то Клеменс был подающим надежды питчером в бейсбольной команде, которую тренировал Пиджак. Все гадают, почему Пиджак подстрелил наркоторговца.
Распутывая историю, автор рассказывает обо всех, кто имеет к ней отношение: Клеменсе, свидетелях афроамериканцах и латиноамериканцах, белых соседях, местных полицейских, членах баптистской церкви, где Пиджак был дьяконом, итальянских гангстерах и самом Пиджаке. По мере того как повествование углубляется, становится ясно, что жизни персонажей, оказавшихся в бурном водовороте Нью-Йорка 1960-х годов, пересекаются неожиданным образом. Когда правда все же всплывает, Макбрайд показывает нам, что не все секреты нужно скрывать, что лучший способ вырасти — это встретить перемены без страха, и что семена любви лежат в надежде и сострадании.
Входит в десятку лучших романов 2020 года по версиям New York Times, Goodreads, Entertainment Weekly и TIME Magazine, номинант премии «Киркус» 2020 года. Одна из любимых книг года Барака Обамы и рекомендация книжного клуба Опры Уинфри.
Компания Sister Pictures, стоящая за производством «Чернобыля», приступает к разработке нового сериала — телеадаптации романа «Deacon King Kong». Сценарий к проекту напишет автор оригинального произведения, лауреат премии National Book Awards Джеймс МакБрайд.
Damon Young0.0 From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in America
For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as “How should I react here, as a professional black person?” and “Will this white person’s potato salad kill me?” are forever relevant.
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young’s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him.
It’s a condition that’s sometimes stretched to absurd limits, provoking the angst that made him question if he was any good at the “being straight” thing, as if his sexual orientation was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble move or knitting; creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; and generating the surreality of watching gentrification transform his Pittsburgh neighborhood from predominantly Black to “Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies.”
And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white.
From one of our most respected cultural observers, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity.
Simon Rich3.5 A hilarious collection inspired by a former Saturday Night Live writer's real experiences in Hollywood, chronicling the absurdity of fame and the humanity of failure in a world dominated by social media influencers and reality TV stars.
Simon Rich is "one of the funniest writers in America" (Daily Beast)--a humorist who draws comparisons to Douglas Adams (New York Times Book Review) and James Thurber and P.G. Wodehouse (The Guardian). With Hits and Misses, he's back with a hilarious new collection of stories about dreaming big and falling flat, about ordinary people desperate for stardom and the stars who are bored by having it all.
Inspired by Rich's real experiences in Hollywood, Hits and Misses chronicles all the absurdity of fame and success alongside the heartbreaking humanity of failure. From a bitter tell-all by the horse Paul Revere rode to greatness to a gushing magazine profile of everyone's favorite World War II dictator, these stories roam across time and space to skewer our obsession with making it big--from the days of ancient Babylon to the age of TMZ.
Patricia Lockwood3.7 From Patricia Lockwood—a memoir about having a married Catholic priest for a father.
Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met—a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972." His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.
Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence—from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cult-like Catholic youth group—with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents' household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother.
Trevor Noah4.4 Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
Harrison Scott Key0.0 Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father—a hunter, a fighter, a football coach, "a man better suited to living in a remote frontier wilderness of the nineteenth century than contemporary America, with all its progressive ideas and paved roads and lack of armed duels. He was a great man, and he taught me many things: how to fight and work and cheat and how to pray to Jesus about it, how to kill things with guns and knives and, if necessary, with hammers."
Harrison, with his love of books and excessive interest in hugging, couldn't have been less like Pop, and when it became clear that he was not able to kill anything very well, or otherwise make his father happy, he resolved to become everything his father was not: an actor, a Presbyterian, and a doctor of philosophy. But when it was time to settle down and start a family of his own, Harrison began to view his father in a new light and realized—for better and for worse—how much like his old man he'd become.
Sly, heartfelt, and tirelessly hilarious, The World's Largest Man is an unforgettable memoir—the story of a boy's struggle to reconcile himself with an impossibly outsize role model, and a grown man's reckoning with the father it took him a lifetime to understand.
Julie Schumacher5.0 Finally a novel that puts the "pissed" back into "epistolary." Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can't catch a break with his brilliant (he thinks) work Accountant in a Bordello, based on Melville's Bartleby. In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this droll and inventive novel uses to tell that tale is a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies. We recommend Dear Committee Members to you in the strongest possible terms.
John Kenney0.0 A wickedly funny, honest, and poignant debut novel in the spirit of Then We Came to the End and This Is Where I Leave You about the absurdity of corporate life, the complications of love, and the meaning of family.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. I have no idea what that means but I believe that in quoting him I appear far more intelligent than I am. I don’t know about second acts, but I do think we get second chances, fifth chances, eighteenth chances. Every day we get a fresh chance to live the way we want.”
FINBAR DOLAN is lost and lonely. Except he doesn’t know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he’s a bit of a mess and closing in on forty. He’s recently called off a wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he’s forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Super Bowl commercial for his diaper account in record time.
Fortunately, it gets worse. Fin learns that his long-estranged and once-abusive father has fallen ill. And that neither of his brothers or his sister intend to visit. It’s a wake-up call for Fin to reevaluate the choices he’s made, admit that he’s falling for his coworker Phoebe, question the importance of diapers in his life, and finally tell the truth about his past.
Truth in Advertising is debut novelist John Kenney’s wickedly funny, honest, at times sardonic, and ultimately moving story about the absurdity of corporate life, the complications of love, and the meaning of family.
DAN ZEVIN0.0 A coming-of-middle-age tale told with warmth and wit, Dan Gets a Minivan provides the one thing every parent really needs: comic relief. Whether you're a dude, a dad, or someone who's married to either, fasten your seat belt and prepare to crack up.
The least hip citizen of Brooklyn, Dan Zevin has a working wife, two small children, a mother who visits each week to "help," and an obese Labrador mutt who prefers to be driven rather than walked. How he got to this point is a bit of a blur. There was a wedding, and then there was a puppy. A home was purchased in New England. A wife was promoted and transferred to New York. A town house. A new baby boy. A new baby girl. A stay-at-home dad was born. A prescription for Xanax was filled. Gray hairs appeared; gray hairs fell out. Six years passed in six seconds. And then came the minivan.
Dan Zevin, master of Seinfeld-ian nothingness, is trying his best to make the transition from couplehood to familyhood. Acclimating to the adult-oriented lifestyle has never been his strong suit, and this slice-of-midlife story chronicles the whole hilarious journey - from instituting date night to joining Costco; from touring Disneyland to recovering from knee surgery; from losing ambition to gaining perspective. Where it's all heading is anyone's guess, but, for Dan, suburbia's calling - and his minivan has GPS.
0.0 “Brilliant . . . The dean of American comic writers showcases his varied talents mocking the public and private lives of politicians, average citizens and himself.”—The Star-Ledger Calvin Trillin has committed blatant acts of funniness all over the place—in The New Yorker, in one-man off-Broadway shows, in his “deadline poetry” for The Nation, in comic novels, and in what USA Today called “simply the funniest regular column in journalism.” Now Trillin selects the best of his funny stuff and organizes it into topics like high finance (“My long-term investment strategy has been criticized as being entirely too dependent on Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes”) and the literary life (“The average shelf life of a book is somewhere between milk and yogurt”). He addresses the horrors of witnessing a voodoo economics ceremony and the mystery of how his mother managed for thirty years to feed her family nothing but leftovers (“We have a team of anthropologists in there now looking for the original meal”). He even skewers deserving political figures in poetry. In this, the definitive collection of his humor, Calvin Trillin is prescient, insightful, and invariably hilarious. “A literary treasure . . . There is only one Calvin Trillin, and if he didn’t exist we would have to invent him.”—The Washington Times “Funny is to Trillin what drinking is to Uncle Jed in Annie Get Your Gun—it’s what he does ‘natur’lly.’ He’s also a lot more than funny. Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin is the twenty-eighth book he’s published over not far short of a half-century, and their range of subjects is remarkable.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post “Trillin made his reputation over four decades as the author of ‘U.S. Journal’ in the New Yorker [but he] is incapable of resisting the temptation of comedy. The jokes kept on welling up and Mr. Trillin made a parallel reputation as a writer of funny stuff.”—The Economist “Wry, whip-smart, understated, and entertaining.”—The Miami Herald
Дэвид Ракофф4.0 The inimitably witty David Rakoff, This American Life stalwart and bestselling author, looks at the modern world and his own life in defense of the commonsensical notion that you should always assume the worst.
In this deeply funny memoir, David Rakoff examines his own life and the realities of our sunny, gosh-everyone-can-be-a-star contemporary culture. He finds that, pretty much as a universal rule, the best is not yet to come, adversity will triumph, justice will not be served, and your dreams won''t come true. Although David has a long-nurtured abhorrence of "inspirational" memoirs, much of the book recounts his own personal experiences: the moment when being a tiny child no longer meant adults found him charming but instead meant other children found him a fun target; the late evening in Manhattan when he was young and the city seemed to brim with such possibility that the street shimmered in the moonlight - as he drew closer he realized the streets actually shimmered with rats in a feeding frenzy. He also weaves in his brand of acute and Oscar Wilde-worthy cultural criticism (the sad state of the outdated "House of Tomorrow" at Disneyland, for one). It all adds up to proof of the proposition: Always be a pessimist, and you''ll never be disappointed.
Steve Hely0.0 What Pete Tarslaw wants is simple enough: a realistic amount of fame that will open new avenues of sexual opportunity; the kind of financial comfort that will allow him to spend his life pursuing hobbies such as boating or skeet shooting at his stately home by the ocean or a scenic lake; and perhaps most importantly the chance to humiliate his ex-girlfriend at her wedding. This is the story of how he succeeds in getting it all, and what it costs him in the end.
Narrated by an unlikely literary legend, How I Became A Famous Novelist pinballs from the post-college slums of Boston, to the fear-drenched halls of Manhattan's publishing houses, from the gloomy purity of Montana’s foremost writing workshop to the hedonistic hotel bars of the Sunset Strip. The horrifying, hilarious tale of how Pete’s “pile of garbage” called The Tornado Ashes Club became the most talked about, blogged about, read, admired, and reviled novel in America will change everything you think you know about literature, appearance, truth, beauty, and those people out there, somewhere in America, who still care about books.
Ян Фрэйзер0.0 When The Atlantic Monthly celebrated its 150th anniversary by publishing excerpts from the best writing ever to appear in the magazine, in the category of the humorous essay it chose only four pieces--one by Mark Twain, one by James Thurber, one by Kurt Vonnegut, and Ian Frazier's 1997 essay Lamentations of the Father. The title piece of this new collection has had an ongoing life in anthologies, in radio performances, in audio recordings, on the Internet, and in photocopies held by hamburger magnets on the doors of people's refrigerators. The august company in which The Atlantic put Frazier gives an idea of where on the literary spectrum his humorous pieces lie. Frazier's work is funny and elegant and poetic and of the highest literary aspiration, all at the same time. More serious than a gag writer, funnier than most essayists of equal accomplishment, Frazier is of a classical originality. This collection, a companion to his previous humor collections Dating Your Mom (1985) and Coyote v. Acme (1996), contains thirty-three pieces gathered from the last thirteen years. Past winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor; author of the nonfiction bestsellers Great Plains, Family, and On the Rez; contributor to The New Yorker, Outside, and other magazines, Frazier is the greatest writer of our (or indeed of any) age.
Larry Doyle0.0 Denis Cooverman didn't want to give a typical graduation speech, cherishing memories and embracing challenges and crap. So, instead, he stood up in front of his 512 class-mates and their 3,000 relatives and said some-thing really important:
"I love you, Beth Cooper."
It would have been such a sweet, romantic moment. Except that:
Beth, the head cheerleader, has only the vaguest idea who Denis is.
And Denis, the captain of the debate team, is so far out of her league he is barely even the same species.
And then there's Kevin, Beth's remarkably large boyfriend, in town on furlough from the United States Army.
Complications ensue.
Denis comes of age overnight in this exhilar-ating, endearing novel that reminds us why we can't wait to escape high school but can never leave it behind.
Joe Keenan0.0 In this hilarious, laser-sharp comedy, the Emmy-winning writer and producer of "Frasier" sends up Hollywood pretense higher than it's ever been sent before.
Alan Zweibel0.0 Book DescriptionShulman, a chubby, middle-aged stationery-store owner from New Jersey, has always claimed that he’s been gaining and losing the same thirty-five pounds since junior high–and that if you added all of that discarded weight
Джон Стюарт4.2 Jon Stewart, host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show, and his coterie of patriots, deliver a hilarious look at American government.
American-style democracy is the world's most beloved form of government, which explains why so many other nations are eager for us to impose it on them. But what is American democracy? In America (The Book), Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff offer their insights into our unique system of government, dissecting its institutions, explaining its history and processes, and exploring the reasons why concepts like one man, one vote, government by the people, and every vote counts have become such popular urban myths. Topics include: Ancient Rome: The First Republicans; The Founding Fathers: Young, Gifted, and White; The Media: Can it Be Stopped?; and more!
Кристофер Бакли4.2 Кристофер Бакли - американский писатель, автор знаменитых бестселлеров "Здесь курят", "Господь - мой брокер", "Флоренс Аравийская", "Зеленые человечки". Блистательный журналист, он возглавляет редакции крупнейших журналов, таких как Esquire и ForbesLife.
В романе "С первой леди так не поступают" Бакли обращается к среде, знакомой ему не понаслышке: многие годы он был спичрайтером Белого дома. На сей раз его герои - "великие мира сего"; в основе сюжета - скандал вокруг супруги президента страны, подозреваемой в убийстве мужа, который изменил ей с голливудской звездой. Чтобы защитить себя, первая леди нанимает пройдоху адвоката - их некогда связывали весьма близкие отношения. Удастся ли ловкой парочке отбиться от обвинителей, читатель узнает из этой очень смешной и увлекательной книги.
David Sedaris3.4 The book that made Oscar Wilde seem dull: The brilliant, savage, hilarious collection of writings from David Sedaris being reissued with a new cover alongside other classic titles from the Abacus list in our 40th Anniversary year
Welcome to the wonderful world of America's foremost humorist David Sedaris, where learning French, like life, is littered with idiosyncratic delight . . .
'The Italian was attempting to answer the teacher's latest question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?" The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain.
"It is a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus."
"He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with his father."
"He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples."
"He nice, the Jesus."
Scott Dikkers0.0 The infinite possibilities of paper folding inspired origami, a simple, traditional craft that appeals to both children and adults. This comprehensive guide to the materials, tools, techniques, symbols and skills behind the Japanese art of folding paper into wondrous shapes is illustrated with refreshingly simple step-by-step diagrams. Crafters of all ages can quickly learn to create the basic folds, from the beginner's box glider and fish to such advanced projects as Green Man and murex shell. "Encyclopedia Of Origami" also takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the finest origami models being made around the world today.
Ян Фрэйзер0.0 When Ian Frazier's first collection of humorous essays, Dating Your Mom, was published in 1986, Time's reviewer Paul Gray called it "hilarious" and warned readers to" read sparingly... By 1996 another collection may appear." And he was rights. Frazier's new collection, Coyote v. Acme, includes twenty-two more side-splitting glimpses into some of the more oddball corners of the American mind. The title essay imagines the opening statement of an attorney for cartoon character Wile E. Coyote in a product liability suit against the Acme Company, supplier of unpredictable rocket sleds and faulty spring-powered shoes. Other essays are about the golfing career of comedian Bob Hope, a commencement address given by a Satanist college president, a suburban short story attacked by Germans, the problem of issues versus non-issues, and the theories of revolutionary stand-up comedy from Comrade Stalin.
