Funny, intelligent, and zany
919379
You know, I find it really funny reading all the negative reviews that throw all the typical criticisms at Glenn and his book.  I mean...call it uninformed and juvenile if you want but even if you don't agree on his worldviews, he HAS done his research and manages to write a book that gives good insight into issues without being dry and pretentious.  Good job Glenn
150963
"Dirty Jokes Your Mother Told Me" produced the full-range of reactions from me:  silly giggles, appreciative snorts, and head-shaking "oh no he didn't just go there....oh yes, yes he did."  From the first paragraph of the Preface, I knew I was going to spend my time with the irreverent, dirty, and playful humor switching between rolling my eyes and LMAO.

And all around enjoyable romp through the ever-warped mind of Engel.  Favorite "short-ass fiction" includes:  The How to...series (of which Deck could easily be swapped for How to...Build a Loft in a college dorm room); The Giving Tree (to which I reacted with giggles, laughs, snorts, and head-shaking); Michael Collins Forced to Tell Students He Didn't Walk on the Moon; A Very Traditional Thanksgiving (which left me with a very satisfying smirk); Baby Genius; and Let's Make a Baby.

Beyond the humor, Engel also wields a sharp tongue that shows his mastery of language and word choice.  Definitely a book you want to sit some awkwardly quiet location where lots of people can see you reading it and hear you when you start laughing out loud.
3190563
Excellent for its sense of humor, mainly.  This is one of the funniest books I've read, and reminded me of Catch-22 for the variety of characters.  Russo describes them without laboring, so that halfway through the book, he has more than a dozen characters available for his protagonist to play off, and the ways he plays off them are hilarious.
The book has a funny combination of outlandish events and normal circumstance.  Some might think that the combination of events is too unlikely, but I'm willing to excuse it because the book is so much fun.  It's not completely without purpose either, it just doesn't feel weighty.
4243084
I rented this at the library.  Tim Dowling / this book is HILARIOUS!  I was chuckling, snickering, and laughing throughout the book.  My daughter thought I was losing it.  Dowling just has a way with words.  Hes lived in England half of his life (the 2nd half), so he speaks/writes a lot like a Brit.  Which can seem somewhat pretentious since hes an American, but I guess if you live in another country long enough, you pick up some of their sentence structure, and of course, phrases.  He has a very good vocabulary (had to look up a couple of words), and the way he puts words together in what hes confessing is just hilarious to me.  Or maybe its only funny to me because Ive been married too long

He proclaims its not a self-help book, though there is a lot of wisdom in it.  E.g. The Seven Ways In Which You Might Be Wrong:  (The Wrongness of):
1. Omission
2. Not Listening
3. Forgetting Your Original Purpose [argument point]
4. Underestimating Your Partners Emotional Investment in the Issue
5. Making It All About You
6. Offering an Ultimatum
7. Being a Bit of a Cock

Some examples of his writing:

Chapter 2  Are You Compatible?
Most relationships are themselves just a very slow way of discovering that you are incompatible.  Or the other person may come to believe that you are incompatible, while you still think you're both perfectly compatible.  That, of course, it the worst sort of incompatibility.

Chapter 4  How to Be Wrong
Take a moment to cast your eyes round my domain: this blasted promontory, wracked by foul winds, devoid of life, of cheer, of comfort.  This is my special place  my fortress of solitude.  Ive been coming here on and off for the last twenty years.  Welcome, my friend, to the moral high ground.

Chapter 8  The Forty Guiding Principles of Gross Marital Happiness
24. Remember:  marriage isn't all good.  Like anything ultimately beneficial, marriage has some unwanted side effects.  It can leave participants feeling hemmed in, held back, and harried. []  You will be happier once you understand that this works both ways.  When you're feeling resentment, for example, it helps to bear in mind that you are also, at some level, resented.

28. Own your stupidity.  Self-awareness is a reliably endearing trait, and over time your spouse will come to admire your willingness to recognize precisely when you have been/are being an idiot.  In fact an objective grasp of your own stupidity is almost preferable to not being stupid in the first place, and its much, much easier.

Dowlings writing makes me want to go find and read his other books.  Im going to try to get my husband to read this book.  Hes resistant  he thinks I want him to learn something from it, but really, I just think its a funny read.  (OK, yes, I secretly hope he learns SOMEthing from it!)
4559575
Funny, pictures are hilarious. Uniquely written.
2654355
I picked up Phil Rosenthal's "You're Lucky You're Funny" for research, as I needed a bit of background info for a novel I'm writing. My intention was to skim it and move on. After one page, however, I knew I wasn't putting down this book until I'd read every delicious word. It's not only hilarious, but so charming I feel like I've just spent a vacation with a favorite friend. A very smart, very funny favorite friend. Plus, it taught me more about the inside world of sitcoms than I'd even hoped.

But even if you're just in it for the laughs, this book is worth the price. Hell, the fruit-of-the-month story alone is enough to make me recommend it. And that's not even the funniest part (for my money, it's his description of the "all-inclusive" vacation from hell).

I read this in hardcover, but see that it's also available in audio format, which I think might be a lot of fun, as well. I listened to a clip, and Phil Rosenthal has a delightfully anachronistic Old New York accent--kind of a cross between Top Cat and Nicely Nicely from Guys and Dolls. So whether you read or listen, you're in for a great trip.

-Ellen Meister, author of Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA
2766482
I'm picky about what I read and often stop reading books after a few chapters.  If I'm not loving them, they're not worth the time.  I like 'em smart and humorous, and this one was a hoot.  I laughed out loud several times, but the big, stupid smile on my face for the entirety of my wait at the doctor's office was rather embarrassing. Couldn't be helped. The book's really freaking funny.
4299575
I rarely write reviews and I rarely find a book that I think is actually funny but I LOVED this book and laughed out loud many times. Schaachi's book is filled with a mix of self-deprecating, dry humor and wisdom beyond her years that I find impressive for a 26(?) year old. Her discussion of race and gender is timely, bold, and on point. I purchased it because I heard an interview with Scaachi on NPR and thought she sounded interesting and smart and, I'm glad I did. Naturally, my favorite person in this cast of characters is Scaachi's dad, who is hilarious. Best of luck to you, Scaachi. Your book deserves all of the positive reviews it can get. And for the idiot who thinks the reviews are fake, if I'm not mistaken, you should be able to click on the name of the reviewer to see all of their reviews.
264695
This book is smart and engaging. The pacing is fantastic! Jimmy is arrogant, but he is never off-putting or cruel. He seems very real. Lena is fearless and smart. There is such a great balance of humor and angst here. The story sparkles with wit and emotion!
4435947
So funny, cute, and adorable, yet so insightful on the human condition. I recommend this to anyone who's a free-thinker, but also who enjoys a good laugh while doing so. Benjamin Bautz has a great talent for linking philosophy with comedy, and I urge everyone to read this book :)
2816403
I just got done reading MP Johnsons Berzerkoids anthology, and I feel like my brain is going to crawl out of my ears to get a hot girlfriend and a hip new job, like a barista for orphaned stars or maybe a fluffer for alien pornographers. Wowzers.

Berzerkoids is high-energy and wryly zany. Its plots are largely dream-like, often feeling improvisational until the details fall into place and a fuzzy outline of the storys logic emerges. Like a good joke or serial killing, Berzerkoids is rarely predictable, yet each piece feels inevitable in the after math.

The prose is crisp, at times even melodic. Reading Berzerkoids out loud is a delightful experience, rhythmic and percussive, like Tae Bo for your lips and glottis. At times, Id have to re-read silently after getting sucked into Berzerkoids phonetic fury, consciousness disappearing in the wet bellows of my mouth.

MP Johnsons monsters are truly beautiful, in language if not in visuals. Bodies become their own kind of vocabulary. MP Johnson warps and wields the human body like a sommelier enabling winos. Maybe deep down you're just a sadist with a loose grasp of reality- but when you read Berzerkoids, you see everything that can really be! The people of Berzerkoids are unlovable, doomed, misbegotten and messily mutated yet even as they're torn to bits by the jaws of reality, theres a sense of triumph in hearing their stories.

Occasionally, through all the anus-faced action figures and otherworldly caterpillars, real melancholy bubbles through. Most of the perspective characters in Berzerkoids are bent inside, and Johnson pulls you into their viewpoint just enough to cringe in recognition. At times Berzerkoids goes along for several pages, crafting a character so sympathetic you actually just want them to get the boy/girl and settle down somewhere nice, as if you were reading one of those boring books where people are well-adjusted and nobody gnaws off any of their own appendages. At other times youll find yourself rooting for the characters even while their shortcomings rage around you. Sure, he turns small mammals inside out, you might find yourself saying, but I want him to be the best at turning small mammals inside out.

Berzerkoids is a taut, cleanly articulated hellscape of hideous beasts and heinous s***birds. More than anything- more than gore-glee, sexy eyebrows, or refined appreciation for a well-realized demon, Berzerkoids sucks you into the space between nostalgia and promise. Its characters are haunted, hungry and trembling. The past is inaccessible, the future obscure, and guts pulsate in the middle.
3171658
Juska's deeply pleasurable novel transcends its chick-lit trappings. Packed with hysterical pop-culture references and moments of genuine insight, it's the kind of book that will have you both nodding your head and laughing out loud. You don't need to be a child of the '80s--or a female--to appreciate such high-quality, flat-out fun writing.
1764639
This book is funny and smart.  As others have noted, it isn't War & Peace, or Ulysses, either.  More like a very adult, edgy comic book.  However, this male-written female perspective on males and other females really rings true (or else the women I work with and to whom I am often invisible have been putting me on all these years).  This turned out to be the most fascinating aspect of the book, and I think it is no small achievement.
4585703
This is a brilliant, funny, zany, laugh-out-loud book, a dizzying roller coaster of situations, conversations, and narrations in the life of Ira Fleckenstein. Throw in bits of Greek mythology, Proust, Virginia Woolf, Burt Bacharach, the Pope, Plato, and Yiddish humor, add long strings of thesaurus-like prose, and you have WHY LOVE. I loved loved loved this book.
Alice S, retired Brown University professor
4417432
Georges life is highly organized, right down to his meticulous financial arrangements for his retirement. Everything is thrown into disarray when he loses his job as an accountant, and his search for gainful employment leads to humiliation and self-doubt. Will he find his true calling as a telephone psychic?

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know George, a persnickety, materialistic, highly rational middle-aged man. Some readers might find the initial set-up a little slow, but stick with it, because rewards will follow. The disastrous job interviews are wonderfully absurd and they really make you feel for poor George as he becomes increasingly desperate. One of my favorite comic episodes in the whole book is the avant-garde interview for the telephone psychic job. The subsequent fish-out-of-water scenes where down-to-earth George gets to know his free-thinking colleagues and gets to grips with his unusual job are a delight.

The humor and the pathos of his personal transformation keep you turning the pages, as he travels along a bumpy road to understanding himself and his place in the world. The cast of supporting characters are an amusing bunch, aiding and abetting him on his journey. I particularly like the development of his awkward relationships with his parents and his son, and the role Mimi plays in his discovery of love.

A witty and warm tale.
1408943
I thoroughly enjoyed this very funny book. Its set in a delightfully odd place which is populated by a bunch of even odder characters and it tells the story of Bob Bobbins unlikely rise to fashion-fame. Along the way he runs into trouble in the form of Veronica van Hausen, the high priestess of fashion.

The author plays with language in a uniquely comic way to deliver this surreal fantasy set in Titan, a living city with its own sense of humor. The characters are a triumph. My personal favorites are Ponder and Primal, Bobs useless shop assistants. Theyre a bit like Laurel & Hardy but much dumber. And then theres Detective Dan whose attempts to detect the identity of the assassin involve hiding in a dustbin and dressing in a palm tree costume. And who can forget Clyde the butcher turned fashion guru with his range of off-the-stomach blood stained butchers aprons. All his comic creations poke fun at the real world. I could carry on with a long list of weird and wonderful characters but I suggest you read the book; you won't regret it.

Great stuff! Thoroughly recommended. Looking forward to the next Titanic Tale.
4083562
I can't work out if Karl Wiggins is a genius or walking encyclopaedia or a bit of both. What I do know is that he is very funny. He approaches his subjects with an eye for the ridiculous, letting us know the basis of a philosopher's/famous person's belief before revealing his own thoughts on the matter with the poise and wit of a stand-up comedian delivering a killer punch-line.

His asides and quirky remarks catch the reader unawares, adding to the delight of encountering them. The humour is natural, uncompromising and seems to polarise readers in the way that the best comic writers do - you either love the author's books or hate them. I love humour that points out the absurdity of belief systems as well as the validity, and this book does that and a lot more - it is both informative and mocking in the sense of exposure of the Emperor's new clothes in the morality tale, and I found it refreshing and entertaining.

Well worth five stars and recommended for anyone who wants a less serious view of life!