Ten top books about comedy

Louis Barfe is expert on all aspects of the entertainment industry. He is the author of Where Have All The Good Times Gone? The Rise and Fall of the Record Industry (2004), Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light Entertainment (2008) and The Trials and Triumphs of Les Dawson (2012).

His new book is Happiness and Tears: The Ken Dodd Story.

At the Guardian he tagged a (UK-centric) top ten list of books about comedy. One of the classic titles on the list:

The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book by Eric Idle (1976)

Rutland Weekend Television, the Monty Python spin-off that inspired this book, remains unrepeated and unreleased on DVD. I found this before I’d seen even a frame of the series. It’s a masterpiece, not least the real cover wraparound hiding the fake cover for the Vatican Sex Manual and the libellous Who’s Who in Rutland, printed on brown parcel paper.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven readalikes for fans of Atwood's "The Testaments"

At B&N Reads Tara Sonin tagged seven books to read if you loved The Testaments, including:

The Farm, by Joanne Ramos

Possibly the most direct readalike on the list, this novel is about women who have children for other women in a place known as the Farm. The deal is this: a huge payday in exchange for nine months of your time growing a baby that, once birthed, will go to the person who paid for it. Jane agrees to be a ‘Host’, but soon realizes there’s another, hidden cost to this agreement: she can’t leave as long as she’s pregnant, or she forfeits the fee she so desperately needs to help her actual family, the one she loves beyond the walls of the Farm. An eerie, modern approach to similar questions addressed by Atwood’s novels.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven London novels by writers of color

J.R. Ramakrishnan is a writer and editor. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Electric Literature, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's, amongst other publications. Her fiction has appeared in [PANK] and Mixed Company.

At Electric Lit Ramakrishnan tagged seven novels that celebrate the 40% of Londoners who aren't white, including:

Small Island by Andrea Levy

Novelist Andrea Levy’s father arrived in the U.K. on the Empire Windrush, the ship which brought the first large group of colonial subjects from the West Indies in 1948. The Windrush generation helped build today’s Britain (and most certainly London, its language, and its culture). In Small Island, Levy tells the stories of Jamaicans, Gilbert and Hortense, as well as those of Queenie and Bernard, a white couple with whom they become entangled. Set in 1948, the novel moves between the characters, back to World War II, and across the world to India, and back to London with a twist at its end. Worth a read in light of the recent Windrush scandal. Another offering of Windrush stories to check out is the nonfiction Windrush: The Irresistible Rise Of Multi-Racial Britain by Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Small Island is among Virginia Nicholson's ten top books about women in the 1950s, Martin Fletcher's five best books on nations and lives in transition, and Gillian Cross's top ten books that throw everything you think you know upside down.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books recommended by Joseph Kanon

Joseph Kanon is the internationally bestselling novelist whose titles include: Los Alamos, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel; The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett; The Prodigal Spy; Alibi, which earned Kanon the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers; Leaving Berlin and The Defectors. He is also a recipient of The Anne Frank Human Writers Award for his writings on the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Kanon's new novel is The Accomplice.

At The Week magazine he recommended six books, including:

The Quiet American by Graham Greene (1955).

The best of Greene's 1950s novels is the story of an idealistic CIA agent whose naïveté precipitates a tragedy, told by the morally compromised British journalist who sets out to stop him. A lesson in good intentions leading to unexpected consequences, and a preview of the Vietnam disaster about to come.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Read the opening paragraph from The Quiet American.

The Quiet American is among Pete Buttigieg’s ten favorite books, Cat Barton's five top titles on Southeast Asian travel literature, Richard Haass's six top books for understanding global politics, Sara Jonsson's seven best literary treatments of envy, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's top ten classic spy novels, Tom Rachman's top ten journalist's tales, John Mullan's ten best journalists in literature, Charles Glass's five best books on Americans abroad, Robert McCrum's books to inspire busy public figures, Malcolm Pryce's top ten expatriate tales, Catherine Sampson's top ten Asian crime fiction, and Pauline Melville's top 10 revolutionary tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books set in New Orleans that go beyond Mardi Gras

J.R. Ramakrishnan is a writer and editor.

Her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Electric Literature, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's, amongst other publications. Her fiction has appeared in [PANK] and Mixed Company.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books set in New Orleans that go beyond Mardi Gras, including:

We Cast A Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

We Cast A Shadow is meant to be set in a white supremacist future America, where a black man is attempting to get his biracial son a “demelanization” procedure to secure the boy’s future. The opening scene of a soiree in a mansion on the “Avenue of the Streetcars,” however, reads as only ever so slightly out there. The unnamed narrator, a lawyer, notes: “She was one of the good ones, even if, as she once drunkenly admitted to me in a stalled elevator, she sometimes fantasized about wearing blackface and going on a crime spree. After shattering storefront windows and mugging tourists by the Cathedral, she would wash the makeup from her face, content in the knowledge that the authorities would pin her deeds on some thug who actually had it coming.” Ruffin, a former lawyer, paints the scene of the city’s Uptown surrealism with a mini museum of multicultural gods and a library that includes a title called The Hip Hop Ontologist’s View of Leda and the Swan, an especially intriguing title I’d love to borrow from the author. By bending reality without excess throughout, Ruffin’s sleight of hand with the peculiarities of New Orleans, which goes unnamed in the book, is even more hilarious. But what he cuts apart about race in America, now and in the book’s future setting (where the past is not even past in elements like the Dreadlock Ordinance and the Black Panther-like ADZE group), is unsurprisingly not easy.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about ice

Amy Sackville was born in 1981. She studied English and Theatre Studies at Leeds, and went on to an MPhil in English at Exeter College, Oxford. She is the author of The Still Point (which won the John Llewellyn Rhys award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize) and Orkney which won a Somerset Maugham Award.

Her newest novel is Painter to the King.

At the Guardian, Sackville tagged five of the best books about ice, including:

Tarjei Vesaas’s unsettling and lovely novel The Ice Palace, translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Rokkan, tells the story of an intense, half-understood bond between Siss and Unn, two schoolgirls. Full of longing and desire, “full of the unknown”, it is as dream-like and powerful as the frozen waterfall at its centre. Unn is lost, enchanted and disoriented by the chambers of this palace, by turns hostile and magnificent, and far too cold.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five amusing A.I. characters who should all definitely hang out

Deana Whitney has a Masters of Arts in Medieval European History and often credits her love of reading fantasy with her love of history. At Tor.com she tagged five "lovable and charming" fictional AI characters, including:

Marvin the Paranoid Android, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

A suicidal, deeply depressed robot might seem an odd choice for this list, but I think [Brandon Sanderson’s] M-Bot could help Marvin put his “brain the size of a planet” to good use and maybe feel marginally less depressed during their time together. Droll British humor is not everyone’s cup of tea, yet I really enjoy the snark Marvin brings to the HHGTTG books. I want to hug him, even though he would not enjoy it. Marvin is a survivor; he turns up when not expected and against the odds. He can also destroy any hostile robots by just talking to them. Marvin has an impressive set of skills that are totally not appreciated by the bipedal beings he typically has to support on the Heart of Gold.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy appears on Jeff Somers's list of seven books in which the "deep state" wields power, Jason Hough's list of favorite examples of creative faster than light (FTL) travel in fiction, Rachel Stuhler and Melissa Blue's top five list of books celebrating geek culture, Fredrik Backman's six favorite books list, Jon Walter's top ten list of heroes of refugee fiction, Becky Ferreira's list of the six most memorable robots in literature, Charlie Jane Anders's lists of the ten most unbelievable alien races in science fiction, eleven books that every aspiring television writer should read and ten satirical novels that could teach you to survive the future, Saci Lloyd's top ten list of political books for teenagers, Rob Reid's list of 6 favorite books, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of ten of the best bars in science fiction, Don Calame's top ten list of funny teen boy books, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best instances of invisibility in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven notable standup comedy memoirs

A MacDowell Colony and Hawthornden Castle Fellow, Leland Cheuk is the author of the story collection Letters From Dinosaurs (2016) and the novel The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong (2015), which was also published in translation in China (2018).

His newest novel is No Good Very Bad Asian.

Cheuk lives in Brooklyn and teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute.

At Electric Lit he tagged seven standup comedy memoirs that will make you laugh and cry. including:

Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets and Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong

“Don’t perform in heels. It’s not worth your calves looking 20% better.”

This one’s just came out and like my novel, also happens to be framed as a series of scandalous letters of advice to the comedian’s daughters. Though we’re complete strangers, I swear she stole my idea! When I was doing standup, I would treat myself by going to Comedy Cellar and seeing the soon-to-be stars and Ali Wong was one of them, and believe it or not, she was even raunchier back then.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top pet themed mysteries

V.M. Burns is the acclaimed author of screenplays, children’s books, and cozy mysteries, including the Dog Club Mysteries, the RJ Franklin Mysteries, and the Mystery Bookshop Series. Born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, V.M. Burns currently resides in Tennessee with her poodles. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Dog Writers Association of America, Thriller Writers International, and a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime.

Burns's new novel is Bookmarked for Murder.

At CrimeReads she tagged six of her favorite cozy mystery series that feature pets, including:

Laurien Berenson, A Melanie Travis Mystery, A Pedigree to Die For

The apparent heart attack that killed kennel owner Max Turnbull has left seven pups in mourning, and his wife Peg suspecting foul play. But the only evidence is their missing prize pooch–a pedigreed poodle named Beau. That’s when Melanie Travis, a thirty-something teacher and single mother is talked into investigating.

This fantastic series was one of the first dog-themed cozies I ever read and I fell in love with Berenson’s poodles along with her knack for weaving a good mystery.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six novels that capture Detroit, past & present

Jodie Adams Kirshner is a research professor at New York University. Previously on the law faculty at Cambridge University, she also teaches bankruptcy law at Columbia Law School. She is a member of the American Law Institute, past term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and technical advisor to the Bank for International Settlements.

Kirshner received a prestigious multi-year grant from the Kresge Foundation to research her new book, Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises.

At LitHub she tagged six novels set in Detroit that capture the feeling of the city’s present and past. One title on the list:

Angela Flournoy, The Turner House

Another recent debut novel, The Turner House, charts the lives of a family of thirteen siblings as they determine what to do with their family house on Detroit’s eastside. The book offers a slow-paced, character-driven exploration of complex family relationships, but, as in [Stephen Mack Jones's] August Snow, the city itself becomes a force driving events. The book vividly describes the family’s earlier migration to the city to escape the Jim Crow South, only to encounter housing and job discrimination there. In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the family must now navigate the city’s poverty and housing challenges. The family house has fallen to one tenth the value of its mortgage, and the garage is stolen for scrap metal.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top eyewitness accounts of 20th-century history

Charles Emmerson is an Australian-born writer and historian. He studied modern history at Oxford University and international relations in Paris. He is the author of The Future History of the Arctic and 1913: The World Before the Great War.

Emmerson's latest book is Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World 1917-24.

At the Guardian he tagged ten top eyewitness accounts of 20th-century history, including:

The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich

Alexievich is the meta-witness to the Soviet experience, eyewitness to the eyewitnesses. She turns memories into folk epics and gives human scale to the awful hugeness of the “Great Patriotic War”. Here are the stories of women often drowned by what the war had become in the 1980s USSR, the stale trumpet-blare of Communist legitimacy. Then she did the same for Chernobyl, the starting point of the Soviet Union’s unravelling, as important to the century’s end as its foundation was to its start. Literature is “news that stays news”, wrote Ezra Pound. This is what Alexievich has done for her eyewitnesses: imbuing their testimony with the power of literature, thus ensuring it remains relevant for all time.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven novels expectant parents should read

At Electric Lit Allison Gibson tagged eleven "novels that can illuminate common truths about parenthood by exploring the joys, challenges and, often, spectacularly flawed dynamics of the family experience," including:

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

In her masterful and much-celebrated novel White Oleander, Janet Fitch confirms every parent’s dark suspicion that with the responsibility of caring for a child comes the capacity to do tremendous damage. The story of a brilliant imprisoned poet, whose daughter ends up navigating adolescence in the foster care system, explores what it means to be both an artist and a parent — and what, if anything, can redeem the irreparable damage a parent’s choices have caused.

Read about the other entries on the list.

White Oleander is among Michelle Sacks's top five novels with complex and credible child narrators.

--Marshal Zeringue