“[Erma Bombeck] is marvelously funny, direct as a hypodermic, a virtuoso in the field of suburban living.”—Vogue It’s the exposé to end all exposés—the truth about the suburbs: where they planted trees and crabgrass came up, where they planted the schools and taxes came up, where they died of old age trying to merge onto the freeway and where they finally got sex out of the schools and back into the gutters.
The grass is always greener over the septic tank; If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?; Aunt Erma's cope book; Motherhood: the second oldest profession.
The hilarious #1 New York Times bestseller: Erma Bombeck’s take on marriage and family life is “fun from cover to cover” (Hartford Courant). Ever since she was a child, Er ma Bombeck has been an expert worrier, and married life has only honed that skill. She gets anxious about running out of ball bearings; about snakes sneaking in through the pipes; about making meaningful conversation on New Year’s Eve. Married life, she realizes, is an unpredictable saga even when you know exactly how loud your husband snores every night—and she wouldn’t have it any other way. In this crisp collection of essays, Bombeck shows off the irresistible style that made her one of America’s favorite humorists for more than three decades. When she sharpens her wit, no family member is sacred and no self-help fad is safe. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erma Bombeck including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
"America's irrepressible doyenne of domestic satire." THE BOSTON GLOBE Madcap, bittersweet humor in classic Erma Bombeck-style. You'll laugh until it hurts and love it! "Any mother with half a skull knows that when Daddy's little boy becomes Mommy's little boy, the kid is so wet, he's treading water. What do you mean you're a participle in the school play and you need a costume? Those rotten kids. If only they'd let me wake up in my own way. Why do they have to line up along my bed and stare at me like Moby Dick just washed up onto a beach somewhere?"
The #1 New York Times bestseller about one woman’s doomed quest for self-improvement by a writer “blessed with the comic equivalent of perfect pitch” (The Boston Globe). As far as Erma can tell, her life is going well. Her children speak to her, her husband smiles at her, and she’s capable of looking in a mirror without screaming. But her friends know better. No matter how happy Erma thinks she is, she’s in need of help, and the only way to fulfillment is a ten-foot stack of self-improvement books. From Sensual Needlepoint to Fear of Buying, Erma will try them all. One book recommends bringing roleplay into the bedroom, so she dresses up in her son’s football pads. She tries to meditate but gets stuck in the lotus position. She spends more time in the kitchen but only succeeds in melting her son’s retainer. No matter how hard she tries to improve her family life, her schemes keep backfiring. As she soon learns, you may not always be able to fix what’s not broken—but with enough self-help books, you can break anything you want. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erma Bombeck including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
For more than a quarter of a century, as the creator and proprietor of the National Grammar Hot Line, Michael Strumpf helped thousands of callers from every corner of the globe tackle the thorniest issues of English grammar. In The Grammar Bible, he answers the most common, the most insightful, and the funniest questions asked of him by students, editors, lawyers, doctors, and writers of all stripes. Professor Strumpf's unique question-and-answer sections follow concise but thorough explanations of the various elements of good grammar, from parts of speech to types of sentences; together, they comprise the ideal primer on speech and writing, showing readers how to express themselves more impressively. Whether you need a comprehensive review of the subjunctive mood or simply want to know which form of a verb to use, The Grammar Bible is a practical handbook that will enlighten, educate, and entertain you.
Identifying the likenesses between animals in the wild and human beings, another humorous reflection of the ridiculous side of life pokes fun at nutrition, talk shows, childbirth, and more. 500,000 first printing. $300,000 ad/promo.
"From the writers of the smash hit Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins comes a comic look at one of our country's most beloved voices. Erma Bombeck captured the frustrations of her generation by asking, "If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?" Discover the story behind America's most beloved humorist who championed women's lives with wit that sprang from the most unexpected place of all - the truth."
New York Times Bestseller: This anthology of Erma Bombeck’s most memorable and humorous essays is a tribute to one of America’s sharpest wits. When she began writing her regular newspaper column in 1965, Erma Bombeck’s goal was to make housewives laugh. Thirty years later, she had published more than four thousand columns, and earned countless laughs—from housewives, presidents, and everyone in between. With grace, good humor, and razor-sharp prose, she gently skewered every aspect of the American family. This collection holds the best of her columns—not just her famous quips, but also the heartbreaking observations that gave her writing such weight. In 1969, Erma wrote: “screaming kids, unpaid bills, green leftovers, husbands behind newspapers, basketballs in the bathroom. They’re real . . . they’re warm . . . they’re the only bit of normalcy left in this cockeyed world, and I’m going to cling to it like life itself.” With what Publishers Weekly calls her “infectious sense of human absurdity,” Erma Bombeck’s writing remains a timeless examination of the still-cockeyed world. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erma Bombeck including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
