I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

I've enjoyed many of Nora Ephron's rom-coms. However, I am clearly not the target audience for this book. She talks about many of her experiences and concerns as an older woman in Manhattan. She is concerned that as she has aged, her neck does not look good in the fancy dresses she likes to wear. Her life centers in New York where even a move of a few blocks can change the way life would live. She has "first world problems". There is some humor, but it is hard to relate to.

The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Apocalypse: Expert Advice for Doomsday Situations

The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Apocalypse: Expert Advice for Doomsday Situations by David Borgenicht amd Joshua Piven

How would you handle the collapse of civilization. At first, the book purports to offer "survivalist" advice on gathering supplies. It gets more extreme as it discusses hoarding gold and building a hidden bunker. Then it goes off the deep end and turns pure comical. There are discussions of surviving widespread destruction from zombies, dinosaurs and aliens among others. This was probably more fun to write than it is to read.

The Constant Rabbit: A Novel

The Constant Rabbit: A Novel by Jasper Fforde

In an alternate Britain, animals have anthropomorphized and been given rights similar to humans. Things are complicated. Rabbits are treated poorly. They are criticized as indistinguishable sex-crazed beings that rapidly reproduce. The protagonist has a genetic variation that allows him to identify individual rabbits. He works as a "spotter". However, he also had a past friendship with a rabbit. If this were known he would be in trouble with his job (due to the anti-rabbit politics.) Foxes have key roles in government and are part of the force pushing to move rabbits out to an isolated colony. The protagonist rekindles the friendship with the bunny and discovers more about the bunny underground. He sees a fox attempt to kill a rabbit and kills the fox. He is brought to trial. His use of self-defense as rationale is rebuffed because the fox was allowed to act like and animal (rather than a human) when attempting to kill a rabbit. He was able to get off when his attorney said he was justified as being on a fox hunt. 

The book has obvious parallels to race and immigration. The animals are somewhat integrated into the new society, but still treated different from humans. They live split lives as animals and "people". Some organizations want to have nothing to do with some of these animals that are so different.

In the end, the rabbits feel they have had enough. They stop being anthropomorphized and go back to just being animals. The protagonist still sees his rabbit friend as a regular yard bunny.  Does this advocate immigrants going back home? Or just living with their old culture? Or is it just an interesting story?

Accomplice to the Villain

Accomplice to the Villain: Assistant and the Villain, Book 3 by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

The Villain makes a passing comment about the girl being his accomplice. That gives us a title. The books has a good deal of action, humor and romance. However, there are so many twists, turns and subplots that it is easy to get lost. The families of the villain are all interrelated and both hate and love each other. The end serves to just confuse the plot points. The frog prince seems to be more frog, but then seems to magically appear as a person at the end. The villain shouldn't have been the villain, but the girl should. Their relationship has stepped up a level, so does it really matter what they should have been? There are various conflicts, possible traitors and more along with a lot of one-liners. I still have not bought in to the necessity of what is going on. 

Assistant to the Villain: Assistant to the Villain, Book 1

Assistant to the Villain: Assistant to the Villain, Book 1 by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

A girl from a hard-up family takes a job as the assistant to "the villian". She tries to pass it off as a regular job to her family. In fact, it does closely resemble a regular job - except for the dead bodies. The Villain has a small corporate operation. The girl helps it run smoothly. The Villain realizes this when the girl quits after a misunderstanding and nobody knows what to do. He works to get her back. The two of them have various adventures that often involve family members and fall for each other.  However, they get caught by the king and capture him and seemingly kill the girl. The girl's dad had betrayed them with magical ink that allows him to see her documents she writes. Things end with a cliffhanger for the next book. The book is primarily humorous fantasy with a small dose of romance, thought I would not quite call it romantasy. It has a young adult or even big kid feel, though the bits of salty language put a damper on that. It seems like it has potential that it almost lives up to.

Psmith in the City

Psmith in the City by P. G. Wodehouse

Some blokes get a job in a city bank. They are not super keen on the job. On the other hand, they do like cricket. Due to some illnesses, one gets a chance to play cricket with a a club. He opts to skip work to do it and has the other help cover for him. There is some very dry humor in the book. It is now in public domain so there are various options available.

Cats' Letters to Santa

Cats' Letters to Santa by Bill Adler, illustrated by Paul Bacon

What would a cat ask Santa for? This humor book presents many cat letters to Santa. Some are attempts to bail them out for damage they have done by scratching, etc. In other cases, they may just want companionship. There are also various interactions with humans, dogs and other animals. One cat wants a new computer. He thought the mouse was a play toy, the fish screensaver was real and the computer a nice warm place to nap. There are many of these small letters that can be enjoyed in bite size chunks.

Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger

Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger by Louis Sachar

This a bunch of short stories that tie together the experiences at Wayside School. The school is bizarre and many strange things just happen without people being concerned. The school has ben built up instead of across, requiring kids to use stairs to get to classes. Elevators are finally installed, but to limit conflict, one will only be used for going up and the other only for going down. These elevators are thus used once, and never again. There is a substitute that is really nice, only somebody reports that she was cruel a long time back and is still after old homework. A teacher also goes after a cruel dentist for old homework and chases her out of town. There are plenty of other bizarre and humorous tales in the book.

Pippi Goes on Board

Pippi Goes on Board by Astrid Lindgren, translated by Susan Beard

Pippi continues her wackiness in the second book in Pippi Longstocking series. She is prone to telling exotic yarns. However, she will catch herself and then spin it to the truth, only to make an even more elaborate story. However, many of the seemingly elaborate tales seem to have some truth. She has plenty of gold coins and little regard for money. She goes shopping with her friends and buys candy and toys for all the children in town. She uses strength to throw bullies around and get them to stop their cruel activities. She takes her friends to an island to be "shipwrecked". Am empty bottle is important so they can write a message. They write one, but nobody rescues them, so they go home. Her dad appears near the end. He is the king of an island and comes back. Pippi is at the point of going with him, but at the last minute she decides to stay in town. Her dad throws her a new bag of gold coins before she leaves. The book straddles the realm between real and imaginary with things just believable enough.

Matilda

Matilda by Roald Dahl

As I was recently rereading Matilda, I was amazed at how faithful the movie adaptation is to the book. Most of the major plot elements and themes are present. Matilda is an extremely precocious little girl. Her parents are a used car salesman and a white-trash beauty queen. They could care less for intellectual achievement and actively fight against it. As a toddler, Matilda goes to the library herself to read. At school, the teacher wants her to go to a higher grade, but the headmistress, Trunchbull, will have nothing of that. Trunchbull runs a strict school and uses kid to practice her athletic skills. Matilda discovers she has some magical talent and uses that to help "defeat" Trunchbull and restore Matilda's teacher's rightful inheritance. Things look up from the school perspective. But then Matilda returns home to find her parents moving. (stolen car fraud had caught up with Dad.) The family is more than willing to let Matilda be adopted by her teacher making everyone happier. 

Dahl utilizes his over-the-top humor to tell a compelling story. The events are almost real, but have exaggerated events occur. It is sad when those with intellectual talent are brought down by their families or the educational system. It is great that Matilda could have a happy ending. What about others?

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

In the afterward, Twain mentions that this evolved as two stories. His initial focus was on two Italian twins. They later became minor characters as the book focuses on Pudd'nhead and Tom Driscoll. 

The book begins with Pudd'nhead. He went to a small town attempting to practice law. However, the people thought a joke he told made him sound stupid, so they declared him a Pudd'nhead and he could never get a law practice.

The story then pivots to Roxy and Tom Driscoll. Roxy is a slave that is 1/16th black. She has a child that is 1/32nd black that is born at the same time as her master's son. They look similar and she raises them together. One day she switches them. Her son ends up being raised as Tom Driscoll, while the master's son is raised as a slave. She is granted her freedom, but loses her savings in a bank failure. Her becomes an entitled man with a gambling problem who has little respect for her. She tries to ask for money from him, but resorts to blackmail to get it. Tom has lost most of his money and has resorted to stealing from townspeople. He often dressed as a woman to carry out the crimes.

Two Italian twins come to room in the town. They become famous in the town. However, they end up in conflict with Tom and his rich Uncle. Later Tom kills his uncle and frames the Italians. It seems a slam dunk case.

Then Pudd'nhead comes back into play and it turns into a crime book. He has collected fingerprints from his time in town. He is able to use this to match the fingerprint of Tom to the murder weapon. Furthermore, he identifies Tom's fingerprint as changing from his birth prints. He reveals that Tom is really the son of a slave.

The two boys switched as infants can now be returned to their true rolls. Alas, it doesn't work out well. Tom had spent his life as a slave and is illiterate. He cannot manage in white society. Meanwhile, black society shuns him since he is white. The slave boy was sentenced to prison. However, he was later restored to the estate as "property" and is sold down river.

The book shows the ludicrousness of long-term decisions based on short-term events. Wilson is forever a "Pudd'nhead" from one comment. "Single drop" race identification is fairly nonsense. With significant intermarriage it does not make sense to focus on single "races". Slavery based on race was destined to fail.

The Twits, The Minpins & The Magic Finger

The Twits, The Minpins & The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl

The Twits (1980)

The twits are a cruel couple who seem to always be fighting and playing mean jokes on each other.

The Minpins (1991)

Billy lives a controlled life. He ends up discovering the Minpins and then helps rid them of their enemies, making him well respected.

The Magic Finger (1966)

A girl has a "magic finger" which causes things to happen to people she is upset with. She has little control of the finger does. She sees some neighbors be cruel to animals as they are hunting them. When they get magic-fingered, they turn into the ducks and the ducks move to inhabit their house. After he experience, they get greater respect for animals and stop hunting for sport. At the end it is implied that another family will soon get the finger.

Magic Finger was my favorite of the books in this series. I got a little lost with Minpins.

Good Clean Knock-Knock Jokes for Kids

Good Clean Knock-Knock Jokes for Kids by Bob Phillips

The jokes in this book are clean, but "good" is up for debate. It is a quick book exclusively of knock-knock jokes. There are some jokes that are quite familiar. Others are more obscure. A few are a bit funny, but many are growners.

Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris

The author works primarily as comedian. A lot of the work involves traveling around the country and interacting with the audience. The pandemic made this challenging. He was glad to finally be able to get back out on tour again. The book is primarily narrated, but there are a few "live" sections that include the audience response.

The comedy in the book primarily deals with personal experiences in his family life. There are also plenty of observations related to culture and society. The pandemic caused a shortage of low-wage labor, and left some poor quality service workers. The different values from different parts of the country also provide source of humorous insights about things such as masks and guns. The death of his nonagenarian father also provided a source of humorous insights.

The humor is relatively clean, though his partner would have some of the content removed. The delivery is fairly relaxed. He is not wild and crazy. Part of the humor is with the calm way he observes interesting events.

There Is a Carrot in My Ear and Other Noodle Tales

There Is a Carrot in My Ear and Other Noodle Tales by Alvin Schwartz (Author), Karen Ann Weinhaus (Illustrator)

The book has a half-dozen stories of family doing stupid stuff. They go "swimming" in an empty pool. They think fireflies are mosquitos going to get them with flashlights. Grandpa believes a pumpkin is a horse egg. He asks for a refund when a "baby horse" ( a rabbit) runs away after the pumpkin rolls down a hill. The humor is fairly dry, but easy to get.

Funny All over: Riddles to Read Yourself

Funny All over: Riddles to Read Yourself (Hello Reader!, Level 2) by Kimberly Shapiro (Author), Larry Di Fiori (Illustrator)

This are simple jokes like "Why did the chicken cross the road". They are easy to read and include illustrations.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School

Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar

Wayside school was accidentally built "sideways", with 30 classrooms on 30 different floors. The stories in this book center on the classroom on the 30th floor. It is in the "just a little bit beyond normal" vein. In one story teacher turns kids she doesn't like into apples. However, they manage to get her to turn them back to kids and when she tries to turn them into apples again, they hold up a mirror. She becomes an apple. Later another school worker comes in and eats the apple. In another story, a kid races up and down from the 30th story to serve as the go-between for a simple conversation. There is a kid that comes in with a smelly rain coat. They make him take it off to see another, and keep doing that until they find it is just a dead rat - and dead rats are always sneaking into the classroom. In one, kids stereotype other kids by their names, even if the behaviour. There is plenty of "fun" in this book, but it does get a bit over the top.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

I was tempted to knock this one down a notch due to the narrator's voice, but I stuck with an 8. This is a reread from one I read a long time ago. Somebody finds himself in the land of King Arthur. He is able to utilize some of his knowledge of events (such as an eclipse) as well as technology to his advantage. However, it is a struggle for the people to adopt what is good for them. He sees people convicted on supposition without a chance of defence. Nobles see nobility as more important than qualification. The yankee uses some subterfuge to work around people's ingrown behaviors for what he sees as their good. He eventually becomes involved in a duel with nights. He uses his lasso to capture a few knights. Then after it is taken, he shoots others with his gun. This leads towards the people to more willingly adopt his technology. However, a few years later, the church has come in to assert its power. 

The book is part a time travel tale of "modern" technology in the past. However, it is primarily a cultural critique. Even if societies have access to knowledge and technology that can improve them, they still have cultural inertia. This inertia can lead to them clinging to past behaviors that impede them from living in a modern society that would benefit them.

The Marching Band Nerds Handbook: Rules from the 13th Chair Trombone Player

The Marching Band Nerds Handbook: Rules from the 13th Chair Trombone Player by DJ Corchin (Author), Dan Dougherty (Illustrator)

This book present a picture and a bit of text on each page describing some parts of marching band. I could relate to many from my time in band. Though some were a little bit modern or just plain "weird".

The Diary of a Nobody

The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

This is the diary of a clerk that thinks a lot of himself. He goes to various activities and expects to be treated as nobility, but is just treated as the average person he is. He has colleagues and family that have some adventures. There is an attempt to do a seance that was identified as a fraud due to answering nothing like what the question was. It feels very episodic with sections capable of being read on their own.