Posts tagged with humor
Catherine Clark
I know very little about this woman. She lives in Minneapolis, and she has a very pretty website. Her books Truth or Dairy and Wurst Case Scenario are fun stuff--the rambling journals of a self-...
Eoin Colfer
Eoin Colfer is one of the many, many fine authors to have been relegated to the "If you loved the Harry Potter books, try ___" list, which always irritates me because it seems like so many o...
Jennifer Crusie
Jennifer Crusie ties with Lisa Kleypas for the number one spot on my “Best Romance Novelists Currently Writing” list. While the two authors may seem to have little in common (Crusie writes sharp,...
Janet Evanovich
When I was poking around Ms. Evanovich's website I came across the following quote, and since I can't imagine a better description of her heroine than the following line, I'm just going to steal i...
Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones's Diary is one of those mega-successful books, like the Harry Potter series or Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mysteries, that it's just plain stupid not to at least try. Besides b...
Louise Fitzhugh
Louise Fitzhugh’s 1964 novel Harriet the Spy introduced readers to a new type of children’s book: a post-Dick and Jane story where everybody, including the heroine, was pretty screwed up. Everyth...
Chris Fuhrman
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Chris Fuhrman’s first and only novel, opens with the following paragraph:“By eighth grade, Jesus Christ had been bone meal and rumors for most of 1,974 years, bu...
Neil Gaiman
Despite the fact that he's always photographed dressed up in black t-shirts and leather jackets, looking like he'd be happier with a skull in one hand, Neil Gaiman is actually capable of being a t...
Elizabeth Gaskell
The only one of Mrs. Gaskell's books that I have read is Wives and Daughters. I thoroughly enjoyed it--it has the sprawling plot and occasional heavy-handed moralizing of a Dickens novel, enliven...
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Like the books of Judith McNaught, the plots of Susan Elizabeth Phillips's books all-too-frequently hinge on some (at best) very questionable sex. Unlike Judith McNaught (who honestly doesn't see...
Daniel Pinkwater
Daniel and Jill Pinkwater are my idols. Their collaborations (he writes, she illustrates) have produced some of the weirdest, funniest little kids’ books on the planet (including The Hoboken Chic...
Julia Quinn
While I have enjoyed every Julia Quinn book currently in print, I do have some ongoing problems with her writing: she's nowhere near as well researched as, say, Lisa Kleypas, and I find many of he...
Louise Rennison
Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson books (the series that begins with Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging) combine the agonizing adolescent dorkiness of Sue Townsend’s early Adrian Mole diari...
Lewis Carroll
Like Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll's books are too-often critiqued in the context of his private life. Highly intelligent, talented, and socially ambitious, Carroll's romantic inclinations were ...
Diana Wynne Jones
I read The Lives of Christopher Chant and Charmed Life as a child, loved them, and then lost track of the author. Re-discovering Diana Wynne Jones as an adult has been a delight. While I find th...
Garrison Keillor
If you read nothing else by Garrison Keillor, at least read the "99 Theses" footnote in his book Lake Wobegon Days. If you discover that you too appreciate the glory of meandering, Midwestern Lut...
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl is best known for his cheerfully creepy children's classics, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches an...
Jill Pinkwater
Daniel and Jill Pinkwater are my idols. Their collaborations (he writes, she illustrates) have produced some of the weirdest, funniest little kids’ books on the planet (including The Hoboken Chic...
Nick Hornby
Having read Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, I can understand why The New Yorker asked him to be their pop music critic. Many people feel this was mistake, but you can see why they made it: Hor...
Stella Gibbons
Far too little is known about Stella Gibbons. She was English, she has a nephew who has been struggling to get her the recognition she so richly deserved, and she clearly understood just how ripe...
William Goldman
If you've only ever seen the film version of The Princess Bride, you owe to yourself to check out the totally kickass book it was based upon. My copy (with the complete title: The Princess Bride:...
Georgette Heyer
I firmly hold the following to be true: Georgette Heyer was an amazing writer.She is tragically underappreciated (particularly here in the United States).The fact that no one has made a film vers...
Jane Austen
Jane Austen is my favorite author. Her books are dazzlingly, astonishingly good. She took one simple plotline and turned it into six completely unique novels. There is no resemblance between the...
Douglas Adams
Obituary writers across the globe must have had a field day when Douglas Adams died. It was a short life, but he packed a hell of a lot of action into his forty-nine years.The Hitchhiker's Guide ...
Isaac Adamson
The first thing that attracted me to Isaac Adamson’s 2001 novel Tokyo Suckerpunch: A Billy Chaka Adventure was its gloriously lurid pink-and-yellow cover art, which, along with the book’s title, s...
Evelyn Waugh
Satirical novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote novels that were wickedly funny, sharply critical, and slightly insane. Like his contemporary Graham Greene (who considered Waugh to be the greatest novelist...
Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith, author of the completely awesome Bone series, is the comic book world’s answer to J.K. Rowling: the kind of writer who is so staggeringly entertaining that almost anybody, regardless o...
Leonard Wibberley
While the wildly prolific Irish-American writer and journalist Leonard Wibberley wrote about, oh, a bazillion books and articles, only one of them has survived the ravages of time and become a Wor...