Book recommendations

AB you're a pretty funny gal. I can't recommend this enough.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... understanding philosophy through jokes by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein

I've nearly wet my pants 2 or 3 times. For a man to admit that, well...

[quote=Anastasia Beaverhausen]Funny how? Like a clown??



+1! That is a great scene. Just in case people don't know it. Yes that is you, with all do respect.

VoodooNYC wrote: A few things I just finished that I really enjoyed:

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos
Belong To Me by Marisa de los Santos
The new Wally Lamb is good but about 100 pages too long.
And if you've never read any Carl Hiaasen you need to. Hilarious.

I just remembered I know you in real life. You can borrow whatever you want, dollface.

I like Wally Lamb, but I don't like buying hardcovers (too big).

Well, I don't know you but hows abouts "Sweet and Low: A Family Story", by Rich Cohen of the Sweet-n-Low people. He's a very funny Jew telling the story of his disinheritance from the Sweet-n-Low fortune, with bits of history about Brooklyn and the Navy Yard area, sugar, the mob and Al D'Amato thrown in for good measure. I think it even has aspartarme in it.

Christopher Moore's "A Dirty Job" is hilarious. If you liked the show Dead Like Me, it is a similar idea.

http://brooklynpubliclibrary.org/what_to_read.jsp

I'll second Bel Canto.

vidro3 wrote: [quote=Mougar]I'll second Bel Canto.

didn't it make you want to get into opera? and also learn like 18 languages?
I've tried and failed at both so it only made me wistful.

Anastasia Beaverhausen wrote: No-Longer-Ambiguous Mougie!

wait a minute . . .

if you like YA/coming of age/coming out novels, I kiss girls is awesome. just read it, was laughing and crying on the bus. also, changing jamie is great, though nowhere near as funny. more a typical coming of age/coming out book. lots of tragedy and reality. I have enjoyed the installments in the twilight series thus far.

and if you like reading about seriously hot sounding guys doing seriously hot guy sounding things, anything by richard morgan is appropriate. warning, though, the books are hyper-violent and, excluding market forces, sci-fi/military-tech. and market forces is still sci fi, just not that degree.

george rr martin is great but there's not a damn thing funny about his books. however, if you buy the series thus far (I forget the order, but if you google them or go to amazon you can find them. heck, if you have a car, you can go to LI and I'll authorize you to get the text file rips I have in storage, since my copy of the first book is both a first edition and signed (grrm could not believe someone traded me that book for the paperback copy, considering the value) so you can't read that copy) you'll be occupied for a few months. just ... suspend disbelief and curse bad editors.

I loved Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; it's about a close friendship between two women in China, I think in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Very moving.

I also really liked People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, a historical novel about the Sarajevo Haggadah, with a contemporary storyline about a Australian woman who restores it. My book group read it, and we had a good discussion.

I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel by Suzanna Clarke. Sort of Harry Potter meets Jane Austin set during the Napoleonic wars . . .

Alafairnadia hates it though, so don't listen to her about it