Looking back at 2014, it isn’t such a heartwarming year to revisit. It was, however, a perfect year for escape and catharsis through comedy. So, here are highlights of the comedy-book genre — funny books by funny people.
Yes Please, by Amy Poehler (Dey Street)
Amy Poehler is a television star, writer and mother of two young children. She doesn’t have time to be our best friend or even casual acquaintance, on call for when life demands sage advice. Yet Poehler produced a book that packages what one might want to hear from her: honest thoughts on body image, divorce, ambition, sex and why she gave Hill ary Rodham Clinton that crazy laugh when she played her on “Saturday Night Live.”
The book is more revealing and a bit more raw than books by famous people usually are. “People don’t want to hear about your years of waiting tables,” Poehler writes, explaining that aspiring actors want a promise of instant success.
But that’s not true. Poehler discusses her waiting-tables-and-improv-in-the-wilderness years, and people should definitely want to hear it.
No Land’s Man, by Aasif Mandvi (Chronicle)
It takes a confident comedian to set someone else up to deliver the best joke. In his memoir-as-essays collection, Aasif Mandvi, a longtime correspondent on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” writes with the precision of someone who makes jokes on a tightly scripted television show. The well-chosen details recount painful episodes at times, from a British boarding school, to casting directors’ casual racism.
But there’s plenty of triumph, too — especially one moment involving a perfect rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”
It Won’t Always Be This Great, by Peter Mehlman (Bancroft)
What would the internal monologue of a Long Island podiatrist embroiled in community intrigue sound like if the good doctor had some of the neuroses and self-perception of “Seinfeld”? That question is what Peter Mehlman explores in his first novel.
Mehlman served as an executive producer on “Seinfeld” and is credited with coining such immortal Seinfeldisms as “yada yada” and “shrinkage.” Here he has brought sweetly funny family dynamics, with a side of low-stakes “Law & Order” plot, to life.
Science .. For Her!, by Megan Amram (Scribner)
Steal some inspiration for your 2015 resolutions from television writer Megan Amram, whose book includes “New Year’s Resolutions for Year 3014.”
In her skewering of everything, especially the way women’s magazines talk — “Fun ways to freeze your eggs!” — Amram layers a lot of jokes over wry commentary.
Some of the jokes are nuanced. And some of them are just the word “kale,” and variations of kale preparations, printed in bright pink.
Texts From Jane Eyre, by Mallory Ortberg (Henry Holt)
In “Pride and Prejudice,” Mallory Ortberg imagines how bad it would have gotten had Mrs. Bennet — the noodge on the subject of her daughters’ prospects for marriage — availed herself of all that modern technology has to offer in the way of parental advice.
Lots of LOLs.
