Take Bill Maher’s Guests on Your Vacation (Summer 2015)

Live Right and Find Happiness

by  Catherine Giordano

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.)  

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

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

 

Take Bill Maher’s guests on your vacation. Explore three very different points of view. If you can’t go on a vacation, take a staycation. These books will serve you well either way.