The bestselling, blockbusting, bumper book of humorous quotations rides back into town with 6,000 more hilariously funny quotes. From times past to the modern day, classic funnies to contemporary wit, The Funniest Thing You Never Said 2 delivers an unbeatable selection of fantastic and hilarious quotes on every subject under the sun. Featuring topics as diverse as celebrity to religion, and including a cast of quotees ranging from Oscar Wilde to Homer Simpson, there's something here for everyone with a sense of humour. 'I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.' - Samuel Johnson 'Glastonbury was very wet and muddy. There was trench foot, dysentery, peaches ... all the Geldof daughters.' - Sean Lock 'Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the goddamned people.' - Richard Nixon 'I've had more women than most people have noses.' - Steve Martin 'I have the simplest tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.' - Oscar Wilde 'Well, it's 1am. Better go home and spend some quality time with the kids.' - Homer Simpson 'All I know is I'm not a Marxist.' - Karl Marx 'I'm the pink sheep of the family.' - Alexander McQueen
Whether for the bathroom or bedside entertainment or as a work of reference or self-improvement, The Funniest Thing You Never Said is the biggest and best humorous quotation book there is--a complete one-stop shop of witty one-liners. Quotations are ordered not by A-Z, but by thematic categories: love, business, religion, celebrity, you name it, every category is covered. The collection includes all the classics from Oscar Wilde to Winston Churchill, Dorothy Parker to Groucho Marx, but also mines many new hidden gems from lesser lights and includes many contemporary quotes by everyone from Jilly Cooper to Jonathan Ross. A standard companion for new collectors, and a fresh perspective for serious quotation addicts.
This hilarious collection of humorous quotations, full of wisecracks and wit, snappy comments and inspired fantasy, has been specially compiled by the late broadcaster and raconteur Ned Sherrin, with a foreword by leading British satirist, Alistair Beaton. Now packed with even more quotes and covering more subjects than before, from Weddings to the Supernatural, Australia to Headlines. Find the best lines from your favourite jokesters and wordsmiths, add that extra something to a speech or presentation, or just enjoy a good laugh. 'A chair is a piece of furniture. I am not a chair because no one has ever sat on me.' Ann Widdecombe on the announcement that Parliamentary language will now be gender-neutral. 'No wonder Bob Geldof is such an expert on famine. He's been feeding off 'I don't like Mondays' for 30 years.' Russell Brand On deciding to run for governor of California: 'The most difficult decision I've ever made in my entire life, except for the one in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.' Arnold Schwarzenegger 'Wanting to know an author because you like his work is like wanting to know a duck because you like p--acirc--;t--eacute--;.' Margaret Atwood 'I am so sorry. We have to stop there. I have just come to the end of my personality.' Quentin Crisp, closing down an interview
The #1 New York Times bestselling (mostly true) memoir from the hilarious author of Furiously Happy. “Gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate.”—O, The Oprah Magazine When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it. In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives. Readers Guide Inside
#1 New York Times Bestseller “Funny and smart as hell” (Bill Gates), Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half showcases her unique voice, leaping wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions with deceptively simple illustrations. FROM THE PUBLISHER: Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices. This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written. Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to. FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
In this delightfully witty, provocative book, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"-from books that you've never heard of to books that you've read and forgotten-and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read-which became a favorite of readers everywhere in the hardcover edition-is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.
The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.
Self-publishing can be more rewarding than being published - creatively, financially, and in other respects - if you go about it the right way. You could well be confused, as many self-publishers are, by the multiplicity of options available to you. The good news is that you can now make your books visible and available to book buyers around the world at minimal cost. An ebook (PDF) edition of this book was made available worldwide at no cost, an edition for the Kindle, iPad, Nook, Sony eReader and other e-readers made available for GBP95.00, a paperback edition made available worldwide for GBP42.00. As a self-publisher, what are your options for new books? Should you choose an offset lithography print run, a digital print run, or maybe print-on-demand (POD)? Hardback or paperback, or other formats? Possibly an ebook too? And, crucially, how will you get your books distributed cost-effectively to buyers around the world? This book will take you through the options and explain their relative advantages and disadvantages. It provides guidance on selecting book topics with strong sales potential; writing distinctively; obtaining a professional critique of your work; writing content-rich non-fiction; writing in a number of genres; choosing between hardback and paperback and other formats; choosing the optimal printing method; book content formatting; book specifications; colour plate section options; distribution; print-on-demand ('POD'); order fulfilment; dealing with Amazon, Lightning Source, Nielsen, and Bowker; printers; copy-editors and proofreaders; typesetters; cover designers; photographers; pricing and marketing your books; and a whole lot more besides. The book includes a sample chapter from the author's international bestseller Two Men in a Car (a businessman, a chauffeur, and their holidays in France) along with the plate section from the book. Mike Buchanan, a British writer and former business consultant, is the author of eight books since 2008. He's been published internationally by a leading publisher (in English and Chinese editions), and he's self-published. He much prefers self-publishing for a variety of reasons. In January 2010, at the age of 52, he took early retirement and now writes and self-publishes full-time. He developed the model of 'commercial self-publishing' outlined in this book. The model has been designed to help self-publishers enjoy their writing more, increase their output of strong titles, and maximise their profits.
