Books — Self-Help Humor

Self-Help Humor

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Author: Neil Pasricha

Sometimes it's easy to forget the things that make us smile. Sometimes it's tempting to feel the world is falling apart. But awesome things are all around us:

Popping bubble wrap
The smell of rain on a hot sidewalk
The other side of the pillow
Hitting a bunch of green lights in a row
Waking up and realizing it's Saturday
Fixing electronics by smacking them
Being the first table called up to the dinner buffet at a wedding
When the cashier opens a new lane at the grocery store
The moment at a concert after the lights go out and before the band comes on stage
When you're really tired and about to fall asleep and someone throws a blanket on you
Sleeping in new bedsheets
Finding an old mix tape
Intergenerational dancing
High-fiving babies
Bakery air
Snow days

The Book of Awesome reminds us that the best things in life are free. Based on the award-winning, multimillion hit blog 1000awesomethings.com, it's a high five for humanity and a big celebration of life's little moments. With wise, witty observations from #1 international bestselling author Neil Pasricha this treasure trove is filled with smile-inducing musings that make readers feel like kids looking at the world for the first time.

AWESOME!

Product Description

The Book of Awesome presents simple pleasures for a younger, hipper generation. From the smell of gasoline to fixing electronics by smacking them to the extra time you get when the clocks roll back, The Book of Awesome reminds readers of little things that make us smile everyday.

Entries include: Old dangerous playground equipment, Wearing underwear just out of the dryer, Being the first table called up for the dinner buffet at a wedding, Watching The Price Is Right when you're home sick, When the vending machine gives you two things instead of one, The first shower you take after not showering for a really long time, When cashiers open up new checkout lanes at the grocery store, Sleeping in new bed sheets, Waiters and waitresses who bring free refills without asking, and hundreds more.

Some entries are short and others expand into wonderfully funny and astutely observant essays. As well, there are many photos from award-winning Canadian photographer Sam Javanrouh complementing the text of this "universal high five for humanity."

Awesome Stuff
(Click on Images to Enlarge)

Bakery air...

High-fiving babies...

Well-timed bus arrivals...

The smell of rain...

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Naked Lunch, 50th Anniversary Edition

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Author: William S. Burroughs

Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, a book that redefined not just literature but American culture. An unnerving tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangiers, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as interzone, its formal innovation, formerly taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution have exerted their influence on the work of authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film and media generally. Naked Lunch: The Restored Text includes many editorial corrections on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and an appendix of 20 percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the first published version. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of this classic of our culture.

"He was," as Salon's Gary Kamyia notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and obsessively rendered as Blake's."

Why has this homosexual ex-junkie, whose claim to fame rests entirely on one book--the hallucinogenic ravings of a heroin addict--so seized the collective imagination? Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a Tangier, Morocco, hotel room between 1954 and 1957. Allen Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies burst onto the scene, rescued the manuscript from the food-encrusted floor, and introduced some order to the pages. It was published in Paris in 1959 by the notorious Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962; the landmark obscenity trial that ensued served to end literary censorship in America.

Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol. Read it and see for yourself.

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Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life

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Author: James Martin

“Between Heaven and Mirth will make any reader smile. . . . Father Martin reminds us that happiness is the good God’s own goal for us.” —Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York

From The Colbert Report’s “official chaplain” James Martin, SJ, author of the New York Times bestselling The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, comes a revolutionary look at how joy, humor, and laughter can change our lives and save our spirits. A Jesuit priest with a busy media ministry, Martin understands the intersections between spirituality and daily life. In Between Heaven and Mirth, he uses scriptural passages, the lives of the saints, the spiritual teachings of other traditions, and his own personal reflections to show us why joy is the inevitable result of faith, because a healthy spirituality and a healthy sense of humor go hand-in-hand with God's great plan for humankind.

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You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

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Author: David McRaney

An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name.

Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us—but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human.

Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. But often these stories aren’t true. Each short chapter—covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency—is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.

Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.

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Survivor: A Novel

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Author: Chuck Palahniuk

“A wild amphetamine ride through the vagaries of fame and the nature of belief.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Tender Branson—last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult—is dictating his life story into Flight 2039’s recorder. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. But before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah. Unpredictable and unforgettable, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak: a mesmerizing, unnerving, and hilarious satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world.

Some say that the apocalypse swiftly approacheth, but that simply ain't so according to Chuck Palahniuk. Oh no. It's already here, living in the head of the guy who just crossed the street in front of you, or maybe even closer than that. We saw these possibilities get played out in the author's bloodsporting-anarchist-yuppie shocker of a first novel, Fight Club. Now, in Survivor, his second and newest, the concern is more for the origin of the malaise. Starting at chapter 47 and screaming toward ground zero, Palahniuk hurls the reader back to the beginning in a breathless search for where it all went wrong. This time out, the author's protagonist is self-made, self-ruined mogul-messiah Tender Branson, the sole passenger of a jet moments away from slamming first into the Australian outback and then into oblivion. All that will be left, Branson assures us with a tone bordering on relief, is his life story, from its Amish-on-acid cult beginnings to its televangelist-huckster end. All of this courtesy of the plane's flight recorder.

Speaking of little black boxes, Skinnerians would have a field day with the presenting behavior of the folks who make up Palahniuk's world. They pretend they're suicide hotline operators for fun. They eat lobster before it's quite... done. They dance in morgues. The Cleavers they are not. Scary as they might be, these characters are ultimately more scared of themselves than you are, and that's what makes them so fascinating. In the wee hours and on lonely highways, they exist in a perpetual twilight, caught between the horror of the present and the dread of the unknown. With only two novels under his belt, Chuck Palahniuk is well on his way to becoming an expert at shining a light on these shadowy creatures. --Bob Michaels

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Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay: And Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom

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Author: Stefanie Wilder-Taylor

The moment the second line on the pee stick turns pink, women discover they've entered a world of parenting experts.

Friends, family, colleagues, the UPS delivery guy -- suddenly everybody is a trove of advice, much of it contradictory and confusing. With dire warnings of what will happen if baby is fed on demand and even direr warnings of what will happen if he isn't, not to mention hordes of militant "lactivists," cosleeping advocates, and books on what to worry about next, modern parenthood can seem like a minefield.

In busy Mom-friendly short essays, Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay delivers the empathetic straight dirt on parenting, tackling everything from Mommy & Me classes ("Your baby doesn't need to be making friends at three months old -- you do! But not with people you'll meet at Mommy & Me") to attachment parenting ("If you're holding your baby 24/7, that's not a baby, that's a tumor"). Stefanie Wilder-Taylor combines practical tips with sidesplitting humor and refreshing honesty, assuring women that they can be good mothers and responsibly make their own choices. A witty and welcome antidote to trendy parenting texts and scarifying case studies, Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay provides genuine support, encouragement, and indispensable common-sense advice.

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10 1/2 Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said

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Author: Charles Wheelan

“A book filled with so much wisdom that I have no choice but to recommend it.”—Craig Wilson, USA Today

The antidote to those cotton-candy platitudes that are all too familiar to anyone who’s ever worn a mortarboard, Wheelan’s 10½ head-turning aphorisms—backed up by a PhD in public policy and extensive social science research—set the record straight. Readers everywhere agreed, turning a Dartmouth Class Day speech that had gone viral into a best-selling book.

Whether praising the time “wasted” in fraternity basements; mentioning that, frankly, the worst days of your life still lie ahead; or simply asking that graduates avoid wreaking the kind of havoc that others before them have, Wheelan softens his candid conclusions with good-natured charm and tales of unconventional success. With cartoons sprinkled throughout to keep things light, this volume makes a perfect gift for graduates of all ages. 15 illustrations

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He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

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Author: Greg Behrendt

For ages women have come together over coffee, cocktails, or late-night phone chats to analyze and obsess over the puzzling behavior of men. Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo are here to say that—despite good intentions—it’s an utter waste of time. Men are not complicated, although they’d like women to think they are. And there are no mixed messages. The truth may be: He’s just not that into you.

Straightforward and sensible, He’s Just Not That Into You educates otherwise smart women on how to tell when a guy just doesn’t like them enough, so they can stop wasting time making excuses for a dead-end relationship.

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Stuff Every Man Should Know (Pocket Companions)

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Author: Brett Cohen

This pocket-sized companion features everything a man should know (but probably doesn’t)

Including:

     • How to Cast a Fishing Rod
     • How to Make the Perfect Martini
     • How to Negotiate a Raise
     • Five Pick-Up Lines in Five Different Languages
     • How to bet on Horses
     • How to Give a Great Massage

Plus wardrobe tips, advice on car maintenance, jokes for every occasion, fitness exercises, grilling instructions, and much, much, more!

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Why You're Not Married . . . Yet: The Straight Talk You Need to Get the Relationship You Deserve

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Author: Tracy McMillan

This paperback edition includes an exclusive conversation between Bill and Giuliana Rancic, hosts of NBC’s Ready for Love, and Tracy McMillan, one of its expert matchmakers. This new relationship show features three of America’s most eligible guys searching for their soul mates.

If you’re looking to get married and you’re not, there’s most likely a very good reason: you. Hey, you’re certainly not a bad person! You just haven’t yet become the woman you need to be in order to have the partnership you want. That’s where this book comes in. Based on her wildly popular Huffington Post article, Tracy McMillan’s Why You’re Not Married . . . Yet dishes out no-holds-barred practical wisdom for women hoping to head down the aisle. And this new edition features even more candid advice and sisterly insight. McMillan points out the behaviors that might be in your blind spot and shows you how to adjust them to get the relationship you deserve. Do any of these chapter headings sound familiar?

• You’re a Bitch: How defensiveness can hide behind a tough exterior, and why being nice is never a sign of weakness.
• You’re a Liar: How to stop lying to men—and get honest with yourself—about the kind of relationship you really want.
• You’re Selfish: The big secret about marriage: It’s about giving something, not getting it.

A funny, insightful guide, Why You’re Not Married . . . Yet will change your life and the way you think about relationships, and it may very well lead you down the aisle.

“Very wise . . . Give this book to every single girlfriend [you] have.”—Marie Claire

“Equal parts BFF, boot-camp instructor, and relationship guru, Tracy McMillan will change the way you think about yourself and your relationships. This book is for every woman out there who wants to have a great marriage.”—Ricki Lake

Q&A with Tracy McMillan

What inspired you to write the Huffington Post essay that eventually landed you a book deal?

One of my TV writer friends suggested I write and perform an essay for this popular Los Angeles staged-reading series called Sit-n-Spin. I was trying to figure out what to write about, and I went back to the old writer's maxim: write what you know. It's always suggested that you write something that only you could write. So I asked myself, what can only I write about? And the answer was: Well, you've been married three times, you could write about that.

And it was true. I know all about choosing and building the kind of relationship that leads to marriage. And I saw a bazillion girls who seemed to HAVE NO IDEA how to do that. So I wrote a funny, biting, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, but super-true breakdown of why I felt chicks weren't getting married. And I called it Why You're Not Married. Eventually, I decided to publish it in the Huffington Post. I was shocked--and not shocked--when it went massively viral. I'm just saying what millions of people--including chicks who aren't married--already know.

Why do you believe in marriage?

I think relationships in general--and marriage in particular--is the ultimate yoga. Nothing challenges a person to expand like being asked to love an actual, real-live, totally flawed human being. And marriage makes you do that. (It's what makes parenting so challenging, and valuable, as well.) But, just to be clear, this book could just as easily be called WHY YOU'RE NOT IN A LONG-TERM, COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP… YET. I don't think there is necessarily anything more awesome about marriage per se. I'm not a fundamentalist in any way.

What I'm talking about when I talk about marriage, and the thing I really believe in, is that something psychological that happens--for better or for worse, depending on the character of the people involved--when you take away the "outs" in a situation. People are tested. And there is something about commitment itself that actually creates the possibility of success against very tall odds. It's the difference between, say, swimming in a pool and swimming in the ocean with a shark after you. In the shark scenario, you're going to try a teensy bit harder.

You say that you wrote this book while you lived this book--can you explain?

I got into a new relationship shortly after the piece in the Huffington Post appeared. I hadn't been in a relationship in more than a year and what I got to see first-hand is that no one is just "finished" being a bitch, or crazy, or shallow, or anything else I talk about in this book. It's more like each chapter is about a different pitfall that most women will face in their relationships--yes, some chapters apply more than others, but still. We all have all of this stuff. A person has to practice not being a bitch--I have to wake up and practice it again today just like I have to brush my teeth again today. And tonight. That's also why this book is not about being mean to women--it's about being honest with ourselves about the kinds of attitudes and behaviors that block our ability to love ourselves and other people more fully.

What do you think is the #1 thing women do wrong out in the dating world?

Probably the number one thing women do wrong in the dating world is lie to themselves about what they really want from a man and whether they can really date a guy casually. In my experience, about 93% of the women over say, 27 who are having sex with a guy would actually like to be in a relationship with that guy. But if there's a sense that the guy is not open to that, they'll often just jump in now and hope he'll eventually commit later. I don't see this happen very often. In the process, the woman often ends up getting really hurt--though it can be hard to admit that. We wish we could just date and have sex casually, but many many of us just can't. It has nothing to do with morality, we just don't seem to be able to. And there's nothing wrong with that.

What's the best dating advice you ever received?

No one really told me much about dating. I sort of figured out a lot by trial and error. But probably the thing that has helped me the most is when I started being really honest with men. Especially about the friends-with-benefits situation. I learned how to say, I would LOVE to just be friends with benefits. But I've come to the conclusion that I can't. I will be drunk-dialing you for sure about three weeks after I start having sex with you. So if you're not interested in that, you should probably pass. Of course, some dudes PASS. And that was painful, especially in the beginning. But the good news is that a lot of them don't. And the ones who don't, you know are at least somewhat willing to entertain the notion of a committed relationship. It's like getting pre-qualified for a mortgage. Not approved. No one's actually giving out the hundreds-of-thousands of dollars. But you know that, somewhere down the line, you might.

If women take away one thing from Why You're Not Married... Yet, what would you want it to be?

Hope. I think a lot of women feel upset and a little hopeless about why it is they haven't been able to create the partnership they desire. I can guarantee this book will give you insight into what's going on in your relationships. Whether you're single, married, or a man! But even more importantly, I'll give you a way to get from where you are, at least one or two or seventy baby steps toward where you're going. Because I really believe that every woman who wants to can start building a wonderful relationship from where she is right now. That's what this book is all about.

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