Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

I opened Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh for the first time while waiting for my son to be released from his piano lesson. Two minutes later, tears running down my face, shaking with silent, uncontrollable laughter, I was praying that my son and his teacher wouldn’t emerge from the studio to find me in convulsions. Despite the potential social awkwardness, despite my son’s impending mortification—I couldn’t stop reading. Brosh is just that painfully hilarious.

Fortunately, the uncontrollable laughing-out-loud did wear off after ten minutes, to be replaced with slightly more repressible chuckles and the ability to wipe my eyes, blow my nose, and take a short break from the book. Thank goodness—but I think I love her! Her totally idiosyncratic point of view, her peculiar stick figures, her ability to express the bizarre thought-processes of a completely unsocialized five-year-old or a brain-cell-challenged canine are awe-inspiring. And she has this incredible ability to describe unusual, socially unacceptable and therefore usually swept-under-the-rug emotional realities.

Hyperbole and Half is a collection of biographical illustrated stories which won the Goodreads Readers’ Choice Award for Best Humor of 2013. The subject matter ranges from light (eating Grandpa’s whole birthday cake) to heavy (struggling with depression,) but in each case, Brosh’s voice is distinctive, throwing a dark zany glow on every situation. Oh, and there are quite a few f-bombs. This is not a cartoon book for the kiddies, although mature older kids could certainly appreciate the absurd black humor.

Get on our holds list, and if you can’t wait, check out Brosh’s blog, http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/.

James Thurber

I was introduced to James Thurber about seven years ago and have since made a point of reading him at least once a year. I am trying to go through his canon slowly, seeing as how he’s dead and all. Thurber is the humor writer to whom all others are compared, including David Sedaris, Bill Bryson, and Calvin Trillin. (Actually, all three authors have won the Thurber Prize for American Humor.) He was one the first employees at the New Yorker, starting in 1927 as an editor and later adding cartoons to his repertoire when his friend and coworker E.B. White (Charlotte’s Web, anyone?) found some of his wadded-up drawings in the wastebasket and had them published. He was a profound dog lover and often featured them in his work. (The “Thurber Dog” is a definite icon.)

Thurber stories are funny in a way that transcends to some extent the time period in which they were created, which is to say that his subjects are often universal: family members’ peccadillos, unruly children and pets, and marital discord. (I do tend lose him when he writes about his hired men and women; skip those stories or just take them for what they’re worth as remnants of a bygone era.) The Scary, Controlling Wife features in many of his pieces, and while I might be tempted to be a tad indignant about it (being a very understanding sort of wife myself), I find myself laughing instead.

Read Thurber for his appreciation of the absurd, for his evident love of language and wordplay, and for his unique way of seeing the world. For a good sampling, pick up The Thurber Carnival and be sure to read “The Night the Bed Fell” and “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox”.

Where’d you go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

In a tiny upper-crust community in Seattle known as Galer Street, the Fox/Branch family resides in a not-so-renovated old school on a blackberry-covered hill. Bernadette Fox, (wife, mother, genius architect), spends her days being ever-so-eccentric, rearranging her pots and pans to catch all the leaks dripping from her ceilings. At Galer Street School, she’s the one and only non-volunteering Mommy, and the other Galer Street Moms adore gossiping about her peculiar reclusive ways. Elgin Branch, (father, husband, creator of the fourth most popular TEDtalk of all time), loves his work so much he might as well live at Microsoft rather than simply running one of its most promising divisions. And then there’s Bee, little Bee, their extraordinary fourteen year old girl, who has been promised a trip to Antarctica in return for perfect grades throughout middle school.

Laugh-out-loud funny in a witty and satirical way, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? is the story of how this family crumbles under attacks from within and without: and perhaps how it puts itself back together. Documented with emails, letters, and FBI files, it is daughter Bee’s attempt to show the truth of what happened and who is in the wrong, and also her attempt to get extra credit to make up for all that time missed from school while in Antarctica. (The format and tone remind me of the best of the Spellman Files books, by Lisa Lutz—if you like those, definitely check out Bernadette.)

I found the first third of the book a bit dull, but judging by the number of raving reviews out there, I may just be too critical. Bernadette’s character eventually gets fleshed out, but for a while at the beginning she seems “eccentric” only in that she can afford to act on her slightest whim. Her arch-enemy, the uberMom of Galer Street, is the mean popular girl from everyone’s high school, all grown up. Backstabbing clique novels aren’t my thing—I didn’t get drawn in until the series of circumstances snowballed into something a little more interesting.

Semple has been a screenwriter as well as an author, and her credits include writing for such TV shows as Arrested Development, Mad about You, and Ellen.

It's a big enough umbrella

Alexia Tarabotti, heroine of Soulless, is not your typical English rose. Cursed with Mediterranean skin like her Italian father, an ample figure, a large appetite and... er...nose, she is resigned to spinsterhood.

Miss Tarabotti goes to a ball and is chagrined to find that there is nothing to eat but watercress! Really, how cheap can a host be? Never one to suffer, Alexia orders a treacle tart in the library, where to her irritation she is interrupted by an ill-mannered and ill-informed vampire. He is not properly introduced when he attempts to dine on Miss Tarabotti; nor is he conversant with her special talent.

Miss Tarabotti, in a world of normal people and supernatural people (those who have excess soul), is unique: she has no soul at all. When she touches a supernatural, they become normal.

In her attempt to discourage this ignoramus with her trusty umbrella, Miss Tarbotti accidentally kills him. She is soon enmeshed in a mystery of unknown proportions. Hive Queens, mad scientists, disappearing vampires, rogue vampires, werewolves, and that paragon of imperial power herself, Queen Victoria, all whirl in a merry-go-round of plot twists and surprises.

This first novel by Gail Carriger was a delight to read. Soulless is a wild combination of comedy of manners, paranormal romance, alternative history, urban fantasy, and steampunk. I loved the comic tone of this book. With all the ponderous, ominous paranormal novels out there, this one stood out for sheer fun!

Nobody compares to Bernie

Not long ago I read a mystery novel whose narrator was a burglar. It wasn't a bad book; but when I finished it, I put it down thinking, "You, sir, are no Bernie Rhodenbarr."

Who is Bernie Rhodenbarr? He's a burglar, a smart-alec, an amateur detective, and the protagonist of a wonderful series of mysteries by Lawrence Block. Like the hero of that other book, he loves to break into other people's homes and steal things. He wants to live an honest life, but the thrill of burglary is too great for him to give up. In each book, he sets up a score - and then things go wrong. He'll be somewhere he doesn't belong when a murder takes place, for instance; or maybe the person who hired him to do the job will double-cross him. Bernie will solve the crime, get away with the loot, and stay out of prison one more day.


My favorite is The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, in which Bernie is hired to steal a rare book and finds himself framed for murder. The first five pages of this book are possibly the greatest first five pages of any mystery I've ever read.

The plots of these books are not terribly plausible, but they're worth reading for the snappy dialogue and for Block's terrific, economical descriptions: "He was a stout man, florid of face, jowly as a bulldog, with thinning mahogany hair combed straight back over a glossy salmon scalp ... His eyebrows were untamed tangles of briar; beneath them his eyes (brown, to match his outfit) were keen and cool and just a trifle bloodshot."

These books are fast-paced, improbable, and extremely fun. The titles in the series are:

Burglars Can't be Choosers
Burglar in the Closet
The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling
The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza
The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian
The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams
The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart
The Burglar In the Library
The Burglar In the Rye
The Burglar On the Prowl

Tim Gunn makes it work.

I rarely watch television, and I never read self-help or advice books. And yet, when a new advice book came out by a television personality, I seized it with a glad cry. The book is Gunn's Golden Rules by Tim Gunn, the co-host of Project Runway.

If you haven't seen Project Runway, a.k.a "My Favorite Show," it's a reality show that brings together a group of beginning fashion designers. They are given design challenges, which they must complete in a severely limited period of time, sometimes using odd materials. (In the first season, designers had to make outfits out of materials found at a grocery store; the winning garment, pictured here, was woven from corn husks.) Then there's a fashion show, and we get to see the beautiful, hilarious, and/or awful creations of the designers. Each episode, one designer wins, and one is eliminated.

The show rewards hard work, creative thinking, and persistence. Group challenges emphasize teamwork and interpersonal communication. Excuse-making, back-stabbing, and whining are almost as severely discouraged as sloppy craftsmanship and poor taste.

The show's courteous, responsible tone is consistently set by the designers' mentor, Tim Gunn, an impeccably-suited teacher from Parsons School of Design. See a mashup of Gunn's style here:

Gunn's Golden Rules is, on its surface, a book about manners. His rules include "Take the high road," "Be a good guest or stay home," and of course, "Make it work." Nothing cutting-edge there. What makes Gunn's Golden Rules a must-read for me are the behind-the-scenes Project Runway tidbits and the dishy anecdotes about people in the fashion industry. Among these is the now-famous story of Vogue editor Anna Wintour being carried down several flights of stairs by her bodyguards.

Gunn is not a brilliant prose stylist, and you'll find no deep insights here. But Gunn is exactly the sort of person you want to be friends with, share drinks and gossip with, get advice from, and maybe even introduce to your mom. In other words, he is delightful, and his book is lovely, silly fun.

Creature sleuths

We here at the Newport Library hope that if anyone ever commits a crime against us, the matter will be investigated by human beings. But we cannot deny the growing popularity of mystery novels with animal detectives.

(I'm not talking about mysteries where a human detective has a helpful animal companion; I mean the ones where animals are sentient, and actually do the detecting.)

Here is a quick rundown of the ones we know about.


The Midnight Louie mysteries by Carole Nelson Douglas: Midnight Louie is a black cat.

The Joe Grey series by Shirley Rousseau Murphy: Joe Grey is a gray Manx cat.

The Cat Detective series by Gilbert Morris: Jacques and Cleo are a black cat and a ragdoll cat, respectively.

Dog Gone It by Spencer Quinn: Chet is a mixed-breed dog.

The Mrs. Murphy series by Rita Mae and Sneaky Pie Brown: Mrs. Murphy, a tabby cat, is aided in her detections by Pewter, a gray cat, and Tee Tucker, a corgi.

The Cottage Tales by Susan Wittig Albert: human author Beatrix Potter solves the mysteries, but the books are populated by a variety of cats, squirrels, rabbits, and other creatures, who talk, and some of whom wear hats and waistcoats.

The Unscratchables by Cornelius Kane: Max "Crusher" McNash is a bull terrier; Cassius Lap is a Siamese cat. They investigate crimes in a world populated only by animals.

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann: A flock of sheep investigates the murder of their shepherd.

The Dinosaur Mafia mysteries by Eric Garcia: Los Angeles private eye Vincent Rubino is a Velociraptor disguised as a human.

Are there any other animal detectives missing from this list? Let us know in the comments!