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| Live Right and Find Happiness |
Bill Maher has some very interesting guests on Real Time with Bill Maher. Wouldn’t it
be great to take them on vacations with you? Maher’s guests may have other plans,
but you can at least take their books on your vacation.
Here are some books great for reading on the beach. Or save
them for a rainy day. The sound of the rain is do relaxing as it muffles the
usual noise that surrounds us—it’s perfect for enjoying a good book.
I like to read something funny on the beach, something with
short chapters so it is easy to put down when another activity beckons. A
suspense novel with a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter is too hard to
put down.
Dave Barry
Dave Barry, a Pulitzer Prize winning humorist and former
nationally syndicated columnist for The
Miami Herald, is the perfect beach read. Maher said that Barry is “reliably
entertaining.” His most recent book is Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beeris Quicker.) He then added a second sub-title--Life Lessons and Other
Ravings from Dave Barry–because Dave Barry just does not know when to stop.
(And that is a good thing.)
What better topic could there be for vacation reading than
happiness. Every essay in the book is new, never-published- before hilarity
about growing up, raising children, and living life in general, especially
living life in Florida. (I did my own humorous essay on this: 20 Reasons Not to Move to Florida.)
You probably won’t learn anything from this, but you will
have a lot of laughs, and isn’t that what vacations are for?
Dave Barry appeared on the 4/10/15 show. To read more about
this appearance, CLICK HERE.)
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| Fresh Off the Boat |
Eddie Huang
Eddie Huang is the host of the series Huang’s World and proprietor of BaoHaus, a famous NYC restaurant.
He’s also the author of Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir which is now successful TV series on ABC.
Huang cautions that you should not expect his book to much
like the TV show. Huang is unhappy with the show because he feels it is full of
stereotypes. On Maher’s show he said, “It’s the same stories as on every other
show, with yellow faces.”
This book, recounting the story of Huang’s Korean immigrant
family in Orlando, Florida, has been called bawdy, rowdy, and hilarious. Dwight
Garner, writing in the New York Times
describes it as a “surprisingly sophisticated memoir about race and
assimilation in America…as much James Baldwin and Jay-Z as Amy Tan…It’s a book about
fitting in by not fitting in at all.
Maybe you’ll want to go to a Korean restaurant for dinner. If
you are in New York City, try the author’s restaurant, BaoHaus. You can travel
to Korea on your vacation vicariously.
Eddie Huang appeared on the 4/25/15 show. To read more about
this appearance, CLICK HERE.)
Charles M. Blow
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| Fire Shut Up in My Bones |
Vacation time is a great time for laughs, but maybe you want
something a little more serious. A vacation gives you time to think while you
are away from the pressures of daily life.
Charles M. Blow is a journalist and op-ed columnist for The New York Times who writes about
politics, public opinion, and social justice. He is the author of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, a memoir of a black man growing up in Louisiana.
This memoir has been called “luminous,” profoundly moving,"
and “heart-stopping.” It’s a brilliant and honest piece of writing that
explores race gender class and sexuality. (Blow is bi-sexual.)
Charles M. Blow appeared on the 9/26/14 show. To read more
about this appearance, CLICK HERE. To
see a video clip of Charles M. Blow discussing his book CLICK HERE
