Tag Archives: humor

Life Among the Lutherans, by Garrison Keillor, Holly Harden (ed.) *****

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Garrison Keillor is one of the funniest men alive. Most people who follow his work do so from his Prairie Home Companion, a show carried on NPR and at least for a time, also on the Disney cable channel in the USA.

But obviously, he writes, and he does it a lot; there is quite a bit of overlap between his radio bits and what he publishes. Usually his best work doesn’t stray too far from that track.

This little gem is a case in point. Each little chapter (3-5 pp. each generally) is almost certainly one of his monologues, and they are worth purchasing. Some of us are better at appreciating his work in print, anyway. This compact volume moves, as is typical of the writer, between gut-splittingly funny, to wry, to poignant. He is able to blend these in a bittersweet way nobody else I can think of does.

The first three selections are among the most hysterical. A convention of Lutheran ministers comes to Lake Wobegon; I won’t give you more than that, it would ruin it. I love his Norwegian bachelors, the herdsmen, and at one point, I looked at my husband, who is a Japanese citizen, and realized that in his reticence and solitude, he just could be a closet Norwegian, and maybe also a closet Lutheran. After all, as Keillor points out, a lot of Lutherans don’t really believe in a god, but it’s awkward to come out and admit it.

If you are a very serious-minded Lutheran, this book may offend you. If you are completely new to Keillor, just be aware that he isn’t truly reverent about very much.

But for his fans, and of course I am one, that’s where his genius lies.

Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation, by Adam Resnick *****

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Humor is a risky genre. A romance or historical fiction can be a little dull, wander a bit, and perhaps get away with it, but when something isn’t funny, it really just isn’t. Happily, that is not a problem for Mr. Resnick, who has been writing humor for others, including David Letterman, for a good long while, but not as much as himself. Here he is. Thanks for the free book, Blue Rider Press, but thanks even more to Adam Resnick, because there is seldom anything any of us need more than a good laugh.

Despite the title, Resnick’s dark humor does not wander so far down the path of alienation as to lead to misogyny. If you have ever desperately wanted not to attend a party, speak to a neighbor, or pretend to be in a good mood when you really aren’t, this is your book.

Favorite chapters were “An Easter Story”, “Booker’s a Nice Guy”, “Scientology Down Under”, and “The Strand Bag”. However, nothing here strikes me as filler; the quality of the writing is consistent throughout.

For every teacher’s inservice I endured in which all of us were solemnly reminded that sarcasm is never appropriate when speaking to students (yeah, right), this book serves as vindication.

In fact…at the end of the school year, it is a cherished tradition to gift one’s teacher. If you have a child or grandchild between grades kindergarten and high school graduation, you’ll need a copy of this book for the last day of school. Give the hard cover edition to show you have class, and that you respect education. If your child inscribes it, the teacher may remember him or her up the road apiece. Just a consideration.

Do it now.

Liberty, by Garrison Keillor *****

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LibertyKeillor is best known for his radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, on NPR. I have read many reviewers (not from the mainstream media, but amateurs like me, who review on amazon and goodreads) who insist that Keillor is only funny when he delivers the lines himself, and that once you put his work in print, the humor is lost.

Nonsense!

I like reading Keillor’s novels, though the collections of quirky philosophy and bits of his radio work set in print are worth a gander as well. This one is set in the home town he has made known to many of us. (If you haven’t read or heard anything by Keillor, you may still enjoy it, but I recommend reading his classic material first. Lake Wobegon Days is a nice launch-point). In some places it is dry and droll; at other times, I found myself doubled over and gasping for breath. And to be frank, I am not that easily amused.

In fact, I laughed out loud on the first page. People often say, and tritely so, “I couldn’t put it down”, and what they mean sometimes is that they read it often until it was done, and they really enjoyed it. But I genuinely never put this book down unless it was strictly necessary. It was an awesome weekend. I was recovering from surgery and had to be sedentary, and this cheered me up considerably. It is not poignant in the way the L.W.D. is; this is just plain FUNNY. It hit my funny bone from a sort of blind spot and then kept rolling.

Life is serious business, and most of us just don’t laugh often enough. Studies show that laughter actually helps us live longer. But if you get this book and laugh your way to a massive MI, and the last thing you remember is something this hilarious, I still say it’s the best way to go out.

Get the book right away; the Fourth is just around the corner!

How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane, and Other Lessons in Parenting from a Highly Questionable Source, by Johanna Stein ****

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This is the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time! If you are a parent (really, of any vintage), and especially if you are a mother, you can’t really miss here. Favorite passages brought back oh, so many memories. The childbirth segments brought back exactly four memories, and the Pitocin drip made me wince with what the trendy folk are calling “muscle memory”. And thank you to Net Galley for the free read!

Who in the world, besides this woman, would think to save her placenta to use in a practical joke?

Other great favorites had to do with the Binky Fairy and of course, of course the airline puppet.

The only thing that kept this from earning my fifth star–which indicates, as far as I am concerned, that it is among the best of its genre–were the footnotes. On an e-reader, footnotes pop up in the middle of the text or wherever, and slightly lighter colored print didn’t work for me. It’s jarring. Use the best material in those footnotes in the text, and just cut the rest of them. The book can stand on its own without them.

For the reader, my advice is to get this one on actual paper. It will be funnier if you don’t have to decode it. And there is no doubt whatsoever: Stein is searingly funny!