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NonfictionHumor

One is silver and the other’s gold

Review by Amy Scribner

Julie Klam admits from the outset of Friendkeeping that she is a middle-aged person who uses the term “BFF” without irony. In other words, she takes her friendships very, very seriously, and tends to them like the treasures they are. It is significant that her most meaningful friendships date back to “prehistoric times, when people had big Michael Douglas Wall Street cell phones, with no texting and no personal computing or e-mail, IMing, tweeting or Facebooking. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; in order to communicate, we actually had to pick up the phone and call each other.”

This book is about what makes friendships work or fail, and why they are as essential to our happiness as love, or chocolate, or “Dallas” coming back on TV. Klam is funny. Not cute or amusing, but laugh-out-loud, borderline too-much-information funny, whether she’s writing about what to do when you hate your friend’s boyfriend or reminiscing about the time she, er, needed a hand in the restroom during her wedding reception. When she recalls how she and her friend Jancee stood in the toilet stall, laughing so hard no sound came out of their mouths, you will likely be doing the same.

This book is about why friendships are as essential to our happiness as love, or chocolate, or "Dallas" coming back on TV.

Klam also is not above admitting to her occasional less-than-friendly moments, which keep the book nicely balanced. When her aggressively vegetarian friend visits, “she walks into my kitchen, she picks up every box, can, or package and scans the ingredients, shaking her head and slapping her forehead, tsking, muttering in Yiddish,” Klam writes. “Sometimes if I know she’s coming over I’ll stop at the deli and get a box of pink Hostess Sno Balls just to give her a little something to do.”

It seemed Klam had found her niche as an essayist with two fine collections (2010’s You Had Me at Woof and 2011’s Love at First Bark) that were ostensibly about dogs, but were really about life, love and purpose. With Friendkeeping, Klam proves that she is no one-trick pony (or pooch).

Julie Klam admits from the outset of Friendkeeping that she is a middle-aged person who uses the term “BFF” without irony. In other words, she takes her friendships very, very seriously, and tends to them like the treasures they are. It is significant that her…

NonfictionHumorFamily & RelationshipsEssays

Mother and daughter tell it like it is

Review by Amy Scribner

The premise of this newest essay collection by mother-daughter writing team Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella may be shaky—that moms and daughters the world over are best friends who sometimes get on each other’s nerves—but why quibble? Scottoline and Serritella, who tag team a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer called “Chick Wit” and had a hit with their last combined effort, My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space, are seriously funny and seriously honest.

As always, Scottoline is at her acerbic, slightly off-color best when she ponders life as a middle-aged single mom with a houseful of unruly pets. Her take on how declining hormone levels equal lost sex drive: “Whether you’re married or not, this is excellent news. Why? Because you have better things to do and you know it. Your closet floor is dusty, and your underwear drawers are a mess. Your checkbook needs balancing, and it’s time to regrout your bathroom tile. Get on it. The bathroom, I mean.”

Serritella, 25, is still finding her own voice, an understandable situation given that her mother is an internationally best-selling novelist with 25 million copies of her books floating around. Many of Serritella’s essays mimic her mother’s trademark one-liner style, and even the topics she tackles (pets, her lack of a boyfriend) echo Scottoline’s choices. The Harvard grad obviously has chops—she just needs a little seasoning.

Despite the pair’s obvious mutual love and admiration, Best Friends, Occasional Enemies never lapses into schmaltz. Quite the opposite. You’re not getting any giving-birth-is-a-miracle musings from Scottoline. “Childbirth is not beautiful,” she writes. “Children are beautiful. Childbirth is disgusting. Anyone who says otherwise has never met a placenta. I’m surprised ob-gyns don’t have post-traumatic stress from seeing a few of those a day.”

What you will get, though, are sweet, funny, clear-eyed observations on the pleasures and pitfalls of family.

The premise of this newest essay collection by mother-daughter writing team Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella may be shaky—that moms and daughters the world over are best friends who sometimes get on each other’s nerves—but why quibble? Scottoline and Serritella, who tag team a column…

NonfictionHumorEssays

How to laugh at a ludicrous life

Review by Pete Croatto

Initially, it doesn’t appear that Merrill Markoe’s latest essay collection, Cool, Calm & Contentious, features a theme. She revisits her embarrassing, sometimes tragic teen years, engages her dogs in conversation and speaks (very briefly) at a truly dreadful college career fair in Lafayette, Louisiana. But a connection emerges as the pages pass: Markoe’s goal is to find the absurdity in everyday life. That, coupled with her sharp wit, makes her writing sublime—and surprisingly educational.

Markoe, a novelist and essayist who was the first head writer for “Late Night with David Letterman,” isn’t content just to mine situations for laughs. Anyone can mock; it takes real talent to illuminate. And Markoe is skilled—and fearless—in retracing the missteps both large and small in her life.

Her youthful misinterpretation of Jack Kerouac’s works—“I knew that what I had to do to join my artistic destiny was to get roaring drunk”—becomes a warning about the dangers of co-opting a culture based on highlights. A writing assignment to cover an all-women’s whitewater rafting trip becomes personal for Markoe, who learns the value of doing something different. Her remembrance of her late, hypercritical mother contains its share of chestnuts—the woman’s travel diaries read like a never-ending bad review of the international scene—and a key revelation: Mom was a textbook narcissist. Markoe does thank her mom for urging her to learn about narcissism. It made her equipped to live in Los Angeles.

In each essay, there’s a sense that Markoe wants to impart a lesson to readers; indeed, some chapters could double as courses in common sense, including “How to Spot an A**hole.” Yet she never resorts to the kinds of know-it-all proclamations of fluffy life advice usually dispensed on a talk show set. By being herself, Markoe’s straightforward tales of navigating the annoyances of life are genuinely helpful—and legitimately funny.

Initially, it doesn’t appear that Merrill Markoe’s latest essay collection, Cool, Calm & Contentious, features a theme. She revisits her embarrassing, sometimes tragic teen years, engages her dogs in conversation and speaks (very briefly) at a truly dreadful college career fair in Lafayette, Louisiana. But…

NonfictionMemoirHumorEssays

The idiot girl sleeps tonight

Review by Heather Seggel

Idiot Girls and other fans of writer Laurie Notaro most likely know what they’re getting themselves into with her latest collection, It Looked Different on the Model. This reader’s first warning sign came when the table of contents provoked a laugh attack that very nearly resulted in coffee out the nose. Things only got more perilous—and hilarious—from there.

Notaro and her husband recently relocated from Phoenix to Eugene, Oregon, and many of the pieces here reflect the culture shock of being surrounded by so many eccentrics. It’s not just the woman who takes out one breast at a picnic despite there being no hungry infant within a half-mile radius, or the young man discovered napping on Notaro’s lawn with a line of ants traversing his face. As if that weren’t enough, all her husband’s friends are graduate-level English majors! Just try being Anna Nicole Smith for Halloween in that crowd: blank stares all around.

The eccentricity doesn’t limit itself to humans, either. When her dog’s shrieking becomes overwhelming, Notaro buys a bark translator to better understand its needs. Suddenly modest, the dog won’t perform on cue, leading to a bark-off between Notaro and her husband, followed by competitive analysis of the translations. At least she bought the device while conscious; one of the funniest pieces here is about Notaro’s adventures with Ambien, combining sleep with online shoe-shopping and eating Devil Dogs in bed. Buyer’s remorse? Eater’s remorse? Ha. “There was just no contest. I like sleeping, so if a Twinkie or Devil Dog had to die every now and then at the hands of a teeth-gnashing night-eater, I was cool with that.”

Each piece stands on its own, but they’re even funnier together, since Notaro will build on the premise of one essay in another. For instance, we know she takes Ambien and wanders the halls eating snack foods, so when her husband starts finding little star-shaped chocolate imprints on his pillowcase, she’s certainly the most obvious suspect. When she catches the perpetrator in the act, it’s priceless . . . and disgusting. No spoilers here; read for yourself, but wait half an hour after eating, lest you literally bust a gut laughing.

Idiot Girls and other fans of writer Laurie Notaro most likely know what they’re getting themselves into with her latest collection, It Looked Different on the Model. This reader’s first warning sign came when the table of contents provoked a laugh attack that very nearly…

NonfictionPop CultureHumorArts & Culture

The awesomeness of awkward

Review by Abby Plesser

Picture this: a family, dressed in matching denim, lying on top of one another by the ocean. Or think of two parents sweetly kissing their newborn—except the baby is screaming out in terror. Or imagine a mother and father posed casually for a snapshot with their kids . . . with their pet snake wrapped around all of them. These photographic gems—and many, many more—are chronicled in the hilarious, uncomfortable and yes—awkward—book, Awkward Family Photos. 

Mike Bender and Doug Chernack had no idea what a goldmine they’d struck when they started their website, awkwardfamilyphotos.com, in 2009. They figured they would post some funny pictures from their families and friends’ families, and pass the website around as a joke. Then people started checking out the site by the hundreds, then thousands, then millions—and a phenomenon was born. Lucky for us, Bender and Chernack have created a greatest hits album from their collection of awkward and awesome family photos in Awkward Family Photos. You’ll see some of your favorites from the website, but also dozens of new, ridiculous family snapshots. It’s all here, from holiday cards gone awry to wacky wedding portraits to awful graduation photos and beyond. To make it even funnier, Bender and Chernack have included photo captions, as well as stories from the people in the photos. If you think your family is awkward, you’re probably right, but Awkward Family Photos proves that it could be much, much worse.

Picture this: a family, dressed in matching denim, lying on top of one another by the ocean. Or think of two parents sweetly kissing their newborn—except the baby is screaming out in terror. Or imagine a mother and father posed casually for a snapshot with…

NonfictionHumorArts & Culture

Read this—just for the pun of it

Review by Jillian Quint

While the master punster might consider himself a-word winning and totally wit the times, apparently the trend in contemporary humor is to maintain that we’ve long ago out-groan such base verbiage. Or so says John Pollack in his new book The Pun Also Rises, which seeks to explain, esteem and indeed redeem the age-old act of wordplay.

Pollack, who once served as a presidential speechwriter and freelance foreign correspondent, got his punning start at an early age, when he surprised his (apparently easily impressed) parents with the assertion that “bears go barefoot”—a statement that set him on a lifelong quest for snippy quips and double entendre. The book opens, in fact, with Pollack’s recount of his 1995 O. Henry World Championship Pun-Off win, which had him battling competitors in categories like football and airplane parts to make the most (and funniest) puns in the given subject. Many of the resulting punch lines are lame (“I guess if I’m going to B-52 next week I’m never going to C-47 again”), but Pollack’s overarching message comes through: punning is as much about training one’s brain to work a certain way as it is about the actual jokes one produces.

From there, the book goes on to explain the origins and anatomy of the pun, including the nuances between the different kinds (homonyms, word order, etc.) and how they’ve evolved throughout history (Bard-buffs will be interested to learn that Macbeth features one of the first recorded knock-knock jokes, for instance).

Pollack is at his best, however, when explaining the way the brain works as it hears, mishears, and contextualizes wordplay. Something that might seem like an easy cognitive leap—the simultaneous understanding of the words “tents” and “tense” for example—actually requires highly complicated brain functions, he shows, and often our appreciation of punning is directly related to the reward of “getting” the second, less-immediate contextual clue.

The Pun Also Rises loses steam in later chapters, as Pollack seeks to elevate wordplay to unnecessarily noble or subversive levels. This isn’t to say that punning hasn’t been used to political and social ends, but simply that the value in this small, quirky and impassioned book comes not from the author’s defense of his subject, but rather from the joy he takes in dissecting the pun itself.

 

While the master punster might consider himself a-word winning and totally wit the times, apparently the trend in contemporary humor is to maintain that we’ve long ago out-groan such base verbiage. Or so says John Pollack in his new book The Pun Also Rises, which seeks…

NonfictionHumor

YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE*

Review by bookpagedev

The airlines are getting chintzier all the time, but for the moment there’s still at least 15 minutes of diversion provided by the well-worn in-flight magazine and SkyMall catalog found in the seat pocket in front of you. For most of us, the collection of high-priced bizarre and luxury items in the latter is just last-resort reading material on long flights, but for the members of the Kasper Hauser Comedy Group, SkyMall provided pure inspiration. Dan Klein, James Reichmuth, John Reichmuth and Rob Baedeker must have spent a good hour-long flight coming up with the spoofs in SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From a Plane.

The team has dreamed up items like the Reality-Canceling Headphones ( You can still hear things such as the microwave going off but not babies or the doorbell or dogs ), the Whore-ganizer ( Keep your sex contacts separate from your friend, family, and business numbers and sort by city ), Medical Test Results Fortune Cookies, the Hybrid Magnet ( will convert’ your gas guzzler into a fuel-efficient vehicle ) and the Mistresses of the White House Doll Collection. Purveyors include The Image Sharpener, Probletunity Knocks, J. Crewcifix, Mouth Full O’ Shitake and Heavy Petter. Now, for some real fun, slip a copy of SkyMaul to one of your fellow passengers and see if they notice. *An occasional look at some of the stranger books we receive.

The airlines are getting chintzier all the time, but for the moment there's still at least 15 minutes of diversion provided by the well-worn in-flight magazine and SkyMall catalog found in the seat pocket in front of you. For most of us, the collection of…
NonfictionHumor

Half-baked slices of life

Review by Lacey Galbraith

According to Jen Yates, author of the hilarious new collection Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong, “A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate.” For Yates, the pursuit of the hilariously mis-decorated cake is “about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.”

When she began blogging at CakeWrecks.com in May 2008, Yates’ intentions were modest. She wanted a place to collect photos for baking inspiration, as well as a way to share the occasional laugh with family and friends. She never imagined so many readers would respond to her signature wit, or that in less than a year, tens of thousands of people from around the world would be regularly visiting her site for sugary highs (and lows).

Many of the photographs in Cake Wrecks are taken “on the front lines” in bakeries and submitted by CakeWrecks.com readers. But this book isn’t “just the blog put to paper,” Yates assures us, for there is “lots (and lots) of new, never-before-seen Wreckage” to be had—75 percent of the book, to be exact.

Even better, Yates provides the history behind many of the cakes on display. There’s the story of the one that started it all—it read “Best Wishes Suzanne/Under Neat that/We will miss you”—and this reader’s personal favorite, the sprinkled and space-age wonder that is Darth Vader cradling a sleeping and pink-ribboned baby girl.

It’s all here, each wreck a disaster of hilarity. In Cake Wrecks, Yates proves there’s plenty of the weird, wonderful and truly great to go around.  

According to Jen Yates, author of the hilarious new collection Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong, “A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate.” For Yates, the pursuit of the hilariously mis-decorated cake is “about finding the funny…

NonfictionHumor

Scottoline’s wit and wisdom

Review by Amy Scribner

Some of the best books are the ones in which it’s clear the author had as much fun writing the book as you do reading it. Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog is one of those books. Best-selling mystery writer Lisa Scottoline (Look Again, Lady Killer) also writes a regular Sunday column, “Chick Wit,” for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Here, she has compiled about 70 of the funniest, smartest and most poignant dispatches (plus a few new essays) into one deliciously exuberant collection.

A single (and happily so, referring to her ex-husbands as Thing One and Thing Two) mother of a college-age daughter, Scottoline lives with four unruly dogs and two cats. Add one feisty octogenarian mom and Scottoline’s brother Frank, who is gay and lives in Miami, and she has a vibrant cast of characters to populate her columns.

But what really makes this collection so addictive is Scottoline’s way of capturing everyday moments, dissecting them and coming up with unexpected and slightly off-kilter observations about life. When daughter Francesca comes home from college for the summer, Scottoline notices that she’s gotten used to having the house to herself:

“Francesca’s become a vegetarian, so we go food-shopping all the time. We’re in the market, squinting at labels and scanning for magic words like cruelty-free. What’s the alternative? Pro-cruelty? Obviously she’s right, but all of a sudden, I’m spending too much of my life around produce. Plus, I’m carb-free, which means that we agree only on celery. . . . You get the idea. My daughter has disturbed my empty nest, and she’ll be home all summer. And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

There’s a reason the book is subtitled “The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman.” Scottoline is an ordinary woman, and unlike the fast-paced legal thrillers she’s best known for, in this book she’s going to tell you all about what kind of tattoos she’d get if she were brave enough, why she dreads magazine subscription notices and her deep thoughts on Jennifer Aniston’s hair. And the funny thing is, it’ll make you think.

Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

Some of the best books are the ones in which it’s clear the author had as much fun writing the book as you do reading it. Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog is one of those books. Best-selling mystery writer Lisa Scottoline (Look…

NonfictionHumorAnimals

Wild things

Review by Deanna Larson

Animal Life is the ultimate armchair expedition for wildlife enthusiasts. Compiled in association with the American Museum of Natural History and captured by some of the world's best wildlife photographers, this coffee – table safari is full of action – packed close encounters with some of the world's most exotic and familiar species. Broken into three massive sections – the Animal Kingdom, Animal Anatomy and Animal Behavior – the book uses the most distinctive or spectacular examples to illustrate every aspect of life in the wild, from birth and development, sexual rivalry and raising young, play and learning, and society and intelligence to predation, scavenging, hunting, camouflage and deception. Unforgettable pictures include a brown trout leaping out of a stream, mouth gaping, to eat a damselfly, a flock of oxpeckers sucking blood from the back and ears of an African buffalo, giraffe in combat and a short account of how the Marsh Warbler learns its song. But nature can be harsh as well, graphically illustrated by a mother cheetah bringing back small or injured prey for her babies to practice the kill, and a grey heron stepping on the head of a flock mate before dining on its flesh.

For the birds

A mouse-devouring predator with an injured wing makes a strange but fascinating soul mate in Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl. When Caltech biologist Stacey O'Brien is asked to adopt a four – day – old barn owlet by her research department, she is wary of raising an unreleasable wild animal in her living space. But the chance to observe bird behavior outside the lab intrigues the ethologist. "After all, theoretical scientists do not require a lab," she writes, "only a piece of paper, a pencil, and a fantastic brain." Quickly, O'Brien is killing the many live mice the bird needs to grow into a striking 18 – inch predator that flutters into her heart, her researcher's brain and every corner of her life. Wesley imprints on the scientist as he sleeps next to her in a box on a pillow, and matures to swoop with his talons and pounce on prey (O'Brien lifts one tiny foot to find a smashed spider). He fills her bathroom cupboards with strips of old magazines, calling her to them with a nesting cry. O'Brien has this remarkable feathered creature as her companion for nearly 20 years, through illness and other challenges, bonding girl and bird in a true love story that crossed species and confounded expectations. "He was my teacher," she writes, "my companion, my child, my playmate, my reminder of God."

Any bird lover who has refilled a feeder on a cold December morning, or gone out to the backyard to try to find the owl hooting at midnight and wondered, who else is as crazy as me, will find good company in The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology. Prize – winning writer/ornithologist Tim Birkhead turns the long and disjointed history of birds into an accessible, engaging look at the beauty, songs, behavior and balletic ability of this ancient species. Inspired by the work of 17th – century British biologist John Ray, Birkhead takes a fresh look at bird behavior and ecology with entertaining stories based on the observations and discoveries of scientists, biologists and bird lovers throughout history. Footnotes, a glossary, index and bibliography will appeal to the amateur ornithologist, but the tales and illustrations will thrill any birdwatcher curious about those who gather the information they use to learn about the lives of their feathered friends.

Counting sheep

Beautiful Sheep: Portraits of Champion Breeds is a shepherd's Playboy, filled with gorgeous specimens swathed in every type of wool coat, perched on delicate, downy legs. Farm veterinarian and professor Kathryn Dun, who descends from a family of Scottish sheep breeders (she helped deliver Dolly, the cloned sheep), presents rams and ewes from the ancient herding cultures of the world, evolved to match the landscape: cotton – cloud Oxford Down soft as the Cotswold hills, the long lustrous ringlets of the English Wensleydale, the shaggy black Hebridean of rugged Scotland, with its ribbed horns. The origin and distribution of each breed, as well as its distinguishing features and uses, is included. While sections on sheep history and the show scene in the British Isles would most likely interest only sheep breeders, herding dog fanciers and agrarians, the photos of sheep posing against a canvas backdrop by Paul Farnham are like stunning Dutch still lifes, with the sheep's glassy stare reminding viewers of the time when hardy, healthy livestock were the lifeblood of any village or community.

Pet projects

Happy Dog, Happy You: Quick Tips for Building a Bond with Your Furry Friend and Happy Cat, Happy You: Quick Tips for Building a Bond with Your Feline Friend feature an adorable retro design packed with genius shortcuts to bring out the "doggone best" and "feline finest" in a pet relationship. Arden Moore (The Dog Behavior Answer Book, The Cat Behavior Answer Book) concentrates on simple essentials for a quality life with tips on raising, training, housing and feeding a dog or cat, along with healthful recipes. Happy Dog also includes excellent tips on canine sports and exercising and traveling with a dog; Happy Cat tackles multi – cat households as well as cat – proofing a house and caring for feline senior citizens.

Grandma always said homemade is better, and that goes for pets as well. Jessica and Eric Talley, founders of Bubba Rose Biscuit Company, have created delicious recipes that a canine bubbe can make or bake in The Organic Dog Biscuit Cookbook. This gorgeous compact hardback features 100 illustrated recipes for organic treats and entrees including Teenie Weenie Banana Barkinis, "Asnackadopoulis" (feta cheese, oats and spinach), Honey Mutts (honey and oat biscuits), Energy Barks, Muddy Paws (carob treats), and Pupeyes (spinach biscuits). Some low – fat and meat – , grain – and gluten – free recipes are included along with helpful sidebars on super foods for dogs and nutritional no – no's. While the book's super – simple recipes repeat many of the same ingredients, your pooch will never tire of these wholesome foods.

Read it for the LOLs

Does "I Can Has Cheezburger?" sound like the Queen's English to you? O hai, welcum LOLcat fan! Visitors to the website icanhascheezburger.com add funny "capshuns" to snapshots of cats in a wacky feline pidgin language. The site has become a worldwide sensation and social networking hub with millions of visitors, and LOLspeak now extends to wedding vows and even a Bible translation. I Can Has Cheezburger? A LOLcat Colleckshun collects 200 classic pairings from the site – Do Not Want and Oh Noes! are here – plus gigglesome new "kittehs." These constructs land squarely in the category of "you had to be there," but picture this: a ginger cat hides in an empty aquarium, and says: K … i redy. u may add fishies nao. If such LOLcat mischief strikes you as hilarious, this is a colleckshun you won't want to miss.

Animal Life is the ultimate armchair expedition for wildlife enthusiasts. Compiled in association with the American Museum of Natural History and captured by some of the world's best wildlife photographers, this coffee - table safari is full of action - packed close encounters with some…

NonfictionHumor

Another side of college life

Review by bookpagedev

On the other hand, The CollegeHumor Guide to College is the book a graduate might get from a friend who’s already in college an ironic, inside look at college life today. Written by Ethan Trex and Streeter Seidell, two columnists from CollegeHumor.com, a website that posts funny photos, cartoons and videos from college students across the country, this book is nothing if not irreverent. Instead of presenting the parent-sanctioned aspects of college (Finding Yourself! Education!) The CollegeHumor Guide focuses on the side of college life that many high school graduates are looking forward to (Parties! Spring Break! Alcohol!). Though the language and subject matter are over-the-top at times, the authors have their tongues firmly in cheek, gently mocking the hard-partying college student lifestyle even as they give advice on living it. Take their comments on Spring Break: Spring Break is all about knowing your limits, then pushing past those limits. But it’s not just about partying the guide also helps you interpret course names and find homework help ( Haitian and Asian sound alike, so you want to verify which one he is before forcing him to do your math homework. ). If you want your recent grad to put you on their cool list, this book might be the perfect gift.

On the other hand, The CollegeHumor Guide to College is the book a graduate might get from a friend who's already in college an ironic, inside look at college life today. Written by Ethan Trex and Streeter Seidell, two columnists from CollegeHumor.com, a website…
NonfictionHumor

Tall tales from the woods

Review by bookpagedev

Prepare for the kind of laugh that starts deep in your belly and lingers on the lips, distilling into residual chuckles that punctuate the silence of your armchair. Patrick McManus’ new collection of essays, The Bear in the Attic, is that kind of book. McManus’ humor is inspired by the forests and streams of his native Idaho, a world in which hunting and fishing are the sports of gods, and one doesn’t look for finer entertainment anywhere else. Much of the author’s wit derives from his mythic lack of success at these recreations. He bags so few deer that his hunting friends are convinced his presence on a hunt is bad luck. McManus also updates old hunting and fishing jokes lying about the size of your fish; the ways in which the old, sage hunter gets the neophyte to do all the work under the guise of teaching him; and the neophyte’s hunt for the mythical sasquatch. But the old pro is at his best when he is spinning long, elaborate yarns with sophisticated twists that require the reader to follow carefully and put two and two together to get five or six. His title story, The Bear in the Attic, starts out with the apparent kidnapping of a young girl. Turns out the kidnapper is her grandfather (the author, of course). To entertain her, granddad promises to tell her about a bear in an attic. He begins with the story of how McManus’ cowardly cousin goes AWOL from the U.S. Army by hiding in his parents’ attic. He does so in collusion with his mother, though his father never knows a thing until the FBI raids the place and takes the young man off to lockup. But what does all this have to do with a bear? McManus’ granddaughter asks. The storyteller then spins off into the sequel in which his uncle brings home a bear cub. McManus’ aunt thinks the pup is cute and adopts it. The bear cub calls her Mawmaw. Eventually, the animal is opening the refrigerator himself, downing whole bags of dog food at one sitting and occupying the uncle’s favorite chair. Pretty soon, the bear isn’t so cute, but when he wants to hibernate in the attic, Mawmaw doesn’t have the heart to refuse him. Is this just a funny story involving wildlife or a metaphor for child-rearing? The reader will have to draw his own conclusions. McManus doesn’t supply any more clues. If you go far enough back in the tradition of storytelling, the skillful liar like Ulysses is also the greatest storyteller. McManus freely admits that he stretches the truth to get a good tale.

Hunters and fishers learn the art of creative lying. After all, admitting that you caught only a small fish or clean missed that deer is just a little too dreary. McManus takes the campfire hyperbole to new levels of magic, and the reader is always the winner. Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

Prepare for the kind of laugh that starts deep in your belly and lingers on the lips, distilling into residual chuckles that punctuate the silence of your armchair. Patrick McManus' new collection of essays, The Bear in the Attic, is that kind of book. McManus'…
NonfictionMemoirHumor

The Year of Living Biblically

Review by Sarah White

In The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, A.J. Jacobs takes a year to read and study the Bible while attempting to make sense of and follow the rules in the book. The result is less satisfying than 2004’s The Know-It-All, a chronicle of his quest to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica in one year, but the book is entertaining and educational for those who have wondered about the stranger side of the Bible.

Jacobs guides readers through some of the more puzzling (and, today, often ignored) parts of scripture, such as those that say a man can’t touch a menstruating woman or those requiring animal sacrifice and circumcision. Biblical field trips to Jerusalem, an Amish farm in Pennsylvania and Jerry Falwell’s immense church in Lynchburg, Virginia, bring context to his journey as Jacobs struggles to learn what it means to lead a biblical and spiritual life.

Jacobs has described himself as being Jewish “in the same way that the Olive Garden is Italian,” so this quest to follow the Bible while not believing in God often seems contrived. When he stops shaving and starts wearing tassels on his clothes, it feels like he’s just going through the motions. Even as he tries to understand why these rules were written, it comes off as though he thinks the Bible is simply a rulebook that should be followed mindlessly and to the letter.

Of course this is meant to show the folly of fundamentalists who say everything in the Bible must be interpreted literally and yet don’t stone adulterers or avoid clothing made of mixed fibers. It also provides some understanding about parts of the Bible that most people question.

While there are some moments of grace here—times when Jacobs feels more connected to his fellow man, sees the beauty in Ecclesiastes or is comforted by the power of prayer—this is not a conversion story. In the end, Jacobs isn’t any more religious, but he is changed by his journey.

 

In The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, A.J. Jacobs takes a year to read and study the Bible while attempting to make sense of and follow the rules in the book. The result is…

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