Distance from Loved Ones


James Tate - 1990
    "Mr. Tate is an elegant and anarchic clown. A lord of poetic misrule with a serious, subversive purpose."-John Ash, New York Times Book Review "Tate brings to his work an extravagantly surrealistic imagination and a willingness to let his words take him where they will. Nonchalant in the midst of radical uncertainty, he handles bizarre details as though they were commonplace facts. [Tate's poetry draws upon] so rich a fund of comic energy that is may well prove an antidote to the anxiety some readers feel with poems that refuse to lend themselves to instant analysis."-David Lehman, Washington Post Book World

50 Wittiest Tales Of Birbal


Clifford Sawhney
    His encounters at Emperor Akbar`s Court are legendary.Birbal`s close friendship with Akbar earned him many enemies. Birbal survived countless murder attempts.Numerous stories have been spun around these plots.These stories were passed on from generation to generation. And the legend of Birbal grew.Unicorn Books presents 50 Birbal stories in this collection for children.Some Interesting Tales:*Akbar and Birbal`s First Meeting*Pulling the Emperor`s Whiskers*The Egg Trick*Stone Flowers versus Real ones*How to retrieve a ring*Unlucky ProfessionsAbout the author:Clifford Sawhney, has over 20 years experience in the print media, corporate communications and publishing industry.His writings have appeared in the Hindustan Times, Discover India, Life Positive, Parade, Parenting, Clarity, Debonair, Hotel & Food Service, Rave, e-Commerce, The Diplomatist, Training & Management and other periodicals.This book is his second venture for Unicorn Books after The Funniest Tales of Mullah Nasruddin.

Silver Dolphins: The Emblem of the Enlisted Submariner


Richard Hansher - 2015
    The author doesn't pull any punches describing the good, the bad, the funny and the just plain ridiculous of the Submarine Service. Besides a wealth of information about what it's like to serve on a submarine, you'll meet real life characters like Tongue, Snake and Button Butt John. Did submarines make them rude, crude, and crazy. Or does the Submarine Service act as a magnet for every nut in the Navy? One thing is sure, after two months underwater, and with their back pay in their back pocket, Sub Sailors are as wild as cowboys after a cattle drive. Bar the doors and hide your daughters. Every reader owes it to themselves to use Amazons "Look In" feature to take a peek inside this unique and entertaining book.

Don't Eat the Puffin: Tales From a Travel Writer's Life


Jules Brown - 2018
    Get paid to travel and write about it.Only no one told Jules that it would mean eating oily seabirds, repeatedly falling off a husky sled, getting stranded on a Mediterranean island, and crash-landing in Iran.The exotic destinations come thick and fast – Hong Kong, Hawaii, Huddersfield – as Jules navigates what it means to be a travel writer in a world with endless surprises up its sleeve.Add in a cast of larger-than-life characters – Elvis, Captain Cook, his own travel-mad Dad – and an eye for the ridiculous, and this journey with Jules is one you won’t want to miss.

A Pointless History of the World (Pointless Books Book 5)


Richard Osman - 2016
    Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman, two of the world's foremost experts on Things Before Their Time[3] take you on a step-by-step journey through history.From the Big Bang to the Fall of the Roman Empire, from the Ice Age to the Evolution of Language, from Henry VIII to Last of the Summer Wine: all of civilisation is here. A publishing first, this thoroughly comprehensive and highly ambitious quest through Time and Space is interspersed with questions for all the family from TV's most popular tea-time quiz show, Pointless. This is Alexander and Richard's biggest book yet.The book no historian can afford to be without[4], it comes complete with introduction and footnotes[5]. [1] Highly selective[2] Largely cobbled together from what we can remember from school [3] That's not even a thing[4] Under no circumstances to be used for reference[5] Um...

Stop Meowing and Go the F*ck to Sleep


Rosa Silva - 2017
    The struggle is real. Anyone who is a cat lover knows that the cat rules the roost, and that certainly doesn’t change at bedtime. You might be ready to sleep, but you can bet that kitty is ready for just about anything but some shut-eye. Release your frustrations with a good laugh as you read along with Rosa and her struggle to get her cat to Stop Meowing and Go the F*ck to Sleep! Stop Meowing and Go the F*ck to Sleep is a funny bedtime book for all the desperate cat parents out there. If you have experienced the nightmare of having a kitty who won’t let you have a good night’s sleep, this is the book for you. It’s the perfect gift for crazy cat lovers who appreciate hilarious insights into the feline nature.

Cactus Tracks and Cowboy Philosophy


Baxter Black - 1997
    Now this complete illustrated collection of the commentaries that have aired on NPR?s Morning Edition presents Black?s latest dose of medicine for animal and human alike. Ranging from a riotous account of two cowboys chasing down a cow in the nude to a very touching piece about a rancher who loses his wife to cancer and finds out the true worth of his friends and neighbors, Cactus Tracks & Cowboy Philosophy brings together Black?s best-known and most adored work.

The Real Inspector Hound & After Magritte


Tom Stoppard - 1969
    The first of the plays, The Real Inspector Hound, is the longer of the two; here the author has created a looking glass comedy of great suspense and intrigue about two drama critics. The second play, After Magritte, is 'a surrealist comedy in detective form-or is it a comedy in surrealist form? A husband and wife argue whether the figure they saw in the street was a one-legged football player with the ball under his arm, or a man in pajamas with a tortoise under his arm. The play shows that Stoppard is as amusing and clever as always.'

High-Status Characters: How The Upright Citizens Brigade Stormed A City, Started A Scene, And Changed Comedy Forever


Brian Raftery - 2013
    Oral history of the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Five Minutes to Kill: How the HBO Young Comedians Special Changed the Lives of 1989’s Funniest Comics (Kindle Single)


Fred Stoller - 2017
    The Young Comedians Special produced some of the most recognizable—and bankable—comedic stars of all time, including Sam Kinison, Bob Saget, Jerry Seinfeld, and Judd Apatow. But what about the ones who didn’t exactly make it?In Five Minutes to Kill, actor and comedian Fred Stoller—the Kindle bestselling author of 2012’s My Seinfeld Year—tells the story of the Young Comedians Special in 1989. He and five other talented, then-unknown comics took the stage with the hopes that their five-minute sets would propel them to fame and fortune. Some, like David Spade and Rob Schneider, hit it big; others didn’t. By turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, Five Minutes to Kill is the bittersweet story of what happened to six of America’s funniest people after their first big breaks.

Human Achievement


David Shrigley - 2002
    Human Achievement collects new truths, anxieties, and amusements from the mundane to the surreal in an addictively strange and entertaining picket-sized primer that welcomes the uninitiated and rewards the faithful.

Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme


Calvin Trillin - 2008
    And it carries through to the vote that made Barack Obama the forty-fourth president of the United States.

How to Stay Bitter Through the Happiest Times of Your Life


Anita Liberty - 2006
    But I wrote a lot of good poems.”So maintains Anita Liberty, the caustically funny New York City performance artist who was going along happily healing her hurt by hating and humiliating her detestable ex-boyfriend on stage and in print until the unthinkable happened: she had a good date. And one good date deserves another. And another. And another. And, all of the sudden, Anita Liberty finds herself in a predicament. Getting dumped launched Anita’s career–Will falling in love finish it? Who’s more important: her devoted audience or her newly devoted boyfriend? And on top of everything, Hollywood won’t stop calling and Anita can’t figure out if It wants a serious commitment or just a little bit of no-strings-attached fun. From digging mercilessly into the minutiae of her new relationship to dramatically torching every professional bridge she crosses in L.A., Anita refuses to let a big load of bliss get dumped right in the middle of her career path.“He said that my work was amazing and hilarious and smart and that he can’t wait to see me perform.So I had sex with him.”“My boyfriend asked me to change my look.To something other than contemptuous.”{BARGAIN} Whatever Hollywood ends up paying me for the rights to the story of my life.“It’s easier to go back to fantasizing about perfection . . .than to accept that perfection is just a fantasy.”“Boyfriend thinks I’d rather be right than happy.Boyfriend’s right.But I’m not telling him that.”Through blog entries, film scenes, poems, and to-do lists, Anita Liberty documents the perils and pitfalls of dating, sex, relationships, artistic success, and the kind of true love that sucks the creative life out of you to the point where you just end up staring at a blank computer screen and thinking gooey thoughts about your new boyfriend even though you should be writing.

The Poems 1921-1940


Langston Hughes - 2001
    The Weary Blues announced the arrival of a rare voice in American poetry. A literary descendant of Walt Whitman ("I, too, sing America," Hughes wrote), he chanted the joys and sorrows of black America in unprecedented language. A gifted lyricist, he offered rhythms and cadences that epitomized the particularities of African American creativity, especially jazz and the blues. His second volume, steeped in the blues and controversial because of its frankness, confirmed Hughes as a poet of uncompromising integrity. Then in the 1930s came Dear Lovely Death (1931) and the radical A New Song (1938). Poems such as "Good Morning Revolution" and "Let America Be America Again" made his pen one of the most forceful in America during the Great Depression.

AKBAR AND BIRBAL: TALES OF HUMOUR


Monisha Mukundan - 2015
    In this lively collection, learn how an ordinary young man, Mahesh Das, became the beloved Raja Birbal we all know today, and how he uses his famous wit, time and again, to build a ‘celestial palace’ for Emperor Akbar, order a census of crows, trap a thief using a magic bamboo, and much more.Replete with wisdom and wit, and brought to life by Tapas Guha’s beautiful illustrations, this clever collection of stories also offers valuable life lessons hidden beneath its humour.