Raised when unsupervised kids roamed freely in the woods, my friends and I became adept at finding fun. My 20s were spent in New York in the 1980's zeitgeist of exploration and excess. A lifelong fan of comedy, I worked at the Comedy Cellar, where I booked and watched countless standup comics. Later, I left NYC’s glamor for Vermont’s nature. Since then, my Vermont newspaper column, "Upper Valley Girl," has amused and astonished (and possibly appalled) readers with humor and candor. Ever adventurous to the point of risk, making awful mistakes, and enduring impossible people, I learned limits the hard way. I advise young people not to do the same.
What better book for my list than one by Keith Richards titled Life?
I expected a fascinating history; I wasn’t expecting his hilarity. Often, actual humorists’ books are not well written or funny (exceptions: Billy Crystal, P.J. O’Rourke, Leslie Jones, Dave Barry, Aziz Ansari, Paula Poundstone, Mo Rocca, Chelsea Handler, David Sedaris, and others).
Aside from the juicy inside info about his life and one of the best bands ever, I dug the author's thoughts about life besides sex, drugs, rock & roll, and how choirboy Keith was a talented artist who spent time in marketing (who knew?). It's not clean in language or content, but hey, it’s Keith Richards.
As lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics, and the songs that roused the world. A true and towering original, he has always walked his own path, spoken his mind, and done things his own way.Now at last Richards pauses to tell his story in the most anticipated autobiography in decades. And what a story! Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records in a coldwater flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, building a sound and a band out of music they loved. Finding fame and success as a bad-boy band, only…
Notaro is a comedic goddess. I still don’t know what a “tweaker” is (since reading Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death years ago), but she cracks me up hard, early, and often. I wish she was my neighbor. She somehow makes her other characters sound as funny as she, which they may or may not be in real life.
The chapter on becoming magically invisible once you let your hair go grey is worth the price of admission. This book is largely about aging. She mines the comedy. I hope to meet her one day.
A laugh-out-loud spin on the realities, perks, opportunities, and inevitable courses of midlife.
Laurie Notaro has proved everyone wrong: she didn't end up in rehab, prison, or cremated at a tender age. She just went gray. At past fifty, every hair's root is a symbol of knowledge (she knows how to use a landline), experience (she rode in a car with no seat belts), and superpowers (a gray-haired lady can get away with anything).
Though navigating midlife is initially upsetting-the cracking noises coming from her new old body, receiving regular junk mail from mortuaries-Laurie accepts it. And then some. With…
The plan was insane. The trap seemed to snap shut on Bruce and Maggie Tate, an isolation forced on them by the pandemic and America's growing political factionalism. Something had to change.
Maggie's surprising answer: buy a boat, learn to pilot it, and embark on the Great Loop. With no…
A captivating memoir that I could not put down. The mesmerizing cover! The story of a happy child growing up in a happy family in the Midwest that is somehow riveting! I was hooked from the get-go.
As someone who used to book comics in NYC, I admire anyone who can do brilliant clean humor. I wouldn’t call her a humor writer. She’s just a fantastic writer. I do not re-read books, but I do re-read this gem to feel sane and awed and to laugh. It reminds me of simpler times and that there are good, genuine people in this messy world.
When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965 in Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period--people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
To three-year-old Zippy, it made perfect sense to strike a bargain with her father to keep…
Reading this, I felt like I was in a room with Poehler and lucky to be there. I dug this so. It’s genuinely funny, historical, and outrageous, with photos. It offers sound life advice and intel on The Business without a heavy hand at name-dropping (but enough to get one salivating).
I appreciate its length, considering she was doing so much when she wrote it, and I do believe she wrote it, unlike so many celeb books. Plus, I adore improvisational comedy, frequently referenced. I won’t spoil anything; I just highly recommend it.
In Amy Poehler's highly anticipated first book, Yes Please, she offers up a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much). Powered by Amy's charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.
At the age of forty-nine, Laurie Woodford rents out her house, packs her belongings into two suitcases, and leaves her life in upstate New York to relocate to Seoul, South Korea. What begins as an opportunity to teach college English in Asia evolves into a nomadic adventure.
Advice by way of memoir, which I liked more as it went along. Maybe it was a slow start for me because she had seemingly lucky breaks, and I’ve had struggles. By the end, I was in LOVE.
She is frank, ballsy, unapologetic, kickass riotous, with an apparent ability to moonwalk, all of which is to say totally New York City in a way that I badly miss, having left 30 years ago.
I relived some of my youth. I learned things and laughed.
What does it take to grow up cool and popular, master adulthood, fast track your success, and always be your best? Laura Belgray wouldn't know.
Her wildly relatable coming-of-age stories include hate-following her 6th grade bully on social media decades later; moving home post-college to measure her self-worth in hookups with Upper West Side bartenders; dating a sociopathic man-baby; proving herself in the early '90s at New York's coolest magazine (as the world's worst intern); falling for get-rich-quick schemes on the Internet; and, most of all, saying "tough titties" to the supposed-to's in life: driving a car,…
This easy-to-read collection of frank, funny, and uplifting advice is for readers of all ages (suggested: 18+) and genders. For most of us, over a lifetime, life is hard; it is up to the individual to figure out ways to feel good. There are many situations and people that, intentionally or otherwise, sabotage our happiness. Ann suggests how to manage them while grabbing and creating unbridled fun.
The book covers a multitude of topics (e.g., seize opportunities, but don’t kick yourself when you miss one; ask about your family’s medical history before it’s too late; how to handle difficult people; consider your Life resume, not just your career resume). Avoid Ann's mistakes and save yourself time while dodging needless, lousy feelings that serve no purpose.
Country music diva Hayley Swift has fallen off the charts and into a funk. Desperate to regain her place in the limelight, she agrees to a low-budget tour of Southern venues, starting with her 35th high school reunion.
There, in an unexpected but fortuitous reconnection, The Girls Next Door —who…
The Model Spy is based on the true story of Toto Koopman, who spied for the Allies and Italian Resistance during World War II.
Largely unknown today, Toto was arguably the first woman to spy for the British Intelligence Service. Operating in the hotbed of Mussolini's Italy, she courted danger…
