Humor Classics

In his first published work in prose, James Joyce paints vivid portraits of the people of Dublin, his city of birth, in a collection of stories whose larger purpose, he said, was to depict a "moral history of Ireland". From the first story, in which a young boy encounters death, to the haunting final story involving the middle-aged Gabriel, the book gives an unflinching and realistic portrayal of "dear, dirty Dublin" in the early 20th-century.

Taniya Sexton is an ordinary downtrodden girl with authority issues. Having the working day from hades, she is sucked from our reality and into the fifth dimension when summoned to wage a war. Instantly she's elevated to god status and is worshipped as the almighty god Amrak.

Jacob Greene was a sweet boy raised by a loving, tight-knit family... of cultists. He always obeyed, and was so trusted by them that he was the one they sent out on their monthly supply run (food, medicine, pig fetuses, etc.). Finding himself betrayed by them, he flees the family's sequestered compound and enters the true unknown: college in New York City. It's a very foreign place, the normal world and St. Mark's University. And then his estranged sister arrives in town to kick off the apocalypse....

Prince Charming must work overtime when he becomes embroiled in a plot involving an evil sorceress, an enchanted castle, an angry dragon, and three beautiful damsels in distress. In this hilarious fairy tale parody, Prince Charming is getting tired the constant need to Slay and Rescue.

For Max Schreiber, World War II was an idyll. It is the return home to Connecticut that feels like entering a combat zone. Ridiculed by his wife and daughter, bored by his legal practice, Schreiber spends his evenings drinking and eating alone, hoping that when he goes to sleep he will dream of France and Micheline, the beautiful young woman who may have broken his heart but at least made him feel alive.

As intricate as a house of mirrors, Nabokov’s last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899), whose life bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, though the two are not to be confused (?).

If Asher Hearst had a superpower, it would have to be his ability to take a punch, laugh it off, and keep on swinging. So yeah, immortality comes with a few perks. As a college student slash small-time fixer, he's about to take a job that's best left to the pros. A proposition by a dryad to save witches from the Inquisition is a first, but he isn't one to balk when the odds are stacked against him. Especially not while he's drinking on someone else's dime.

John the Revelator awakens in a cave with no memory of his prior life. Guided along El Camino de la Muerte by a demented madman and a philosophical giant, John sets out on a quest to fill in his blank slate and slough off the rot of his soul. Part dark comedy road trip, part spiritual quest, and part horror story, Sloughing Off the Rot is literary alchemy about John's transformation from repugnant wretch to reluctant hero.

Rejoice! A new messiah has come, and her name is Julie. Born to Murray Katz, the solitary (and celibate) keeper of an abandoned lighthouse on the Jersey shore, our protagonist arrives on Earth boasting supernatural abilities evocative of her divine half-brother, Jesus. As a child, she revels in her talent for walking on water, resurrecting dead crabs, and treating fireflies as luminous alphabet blocks. But after she reaches adolescence, her life becomes as challenging and ambiguous as any mortal’s.

Nine stories narrated by Pertie and one by Jeeves. In an American voice for easy listening by Americans with occasional American words used for more obscure English ones with a bit of the halting style of comic dialogue. Number two in the Jeeves series.

In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

The Wonderful Visit tells the story of an angel who finds himself unexpectedly marooned on Earth. Wells used John Ruskin's remark that an angel appearing on earth in Victorian England would be shot on sight as the inspiration for this tale of a celestial being who is completely out of place in human society. Ironically, the angel's first confidant and protector is a clergyman, who never recovers from the eventual and inevitable disappearance of the angel. Wells dwells in detail on the contrast between the idealism of the celestial visitor and the discourtesy of his hosts.

Hard Times fu pubblicato nel 1854, e tratta della società inglese e della rivoluzione industriale. La città di Coketown, in cui è ambientato il romanzo, è il simbolo della disumanizzazione da parte della società industriale che riduce i lavoratori da esseri a forza lavoro (il testo inglese definisce gli operai Hands, che è stato tradotto letteralmente come Mani, per rispettare la scelta stilistica). Nella famiglia protagonista della storia viene impartita una educazione in cui la fantasia viene messa al bando e colpevolizzata.

Ein Nordamerikaner entdeckt das alte Europa! 1878 unternahm Mark Twain eine Reise durch Europa, die ihn nach Deutschland, in die Schweiz, nach Frankreich und Italien führte...

Im zweiten Teil von Mark Twains Bericht über seine Reisen in Europa geht es in die Schweiz. Zwar liegt das, was der Autor dort beschreibt, gut 120 Jahre zurück, aber manches hat durchaus Wiedererkennungswert...

"Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno" è la raccolta di tre popolarissimi racconti ("Le sottilissime astutie di Bertoldo", "Le piacevoli et ridicolose simplicità di Bertoldino" e "Novella di Cacasenno, figliuolo del semplice Bertoldino"), i primi due scritti da Giulio Cesare Croce e l'ultimo da Adriano Banchieri, pubblicata per la prima volta nel 1620. I racconti riprendono e rielaborano novelle antichissime, in particolare la medievale Disputa di Salomone con Marcolfo.

College senior Patty Wyatt is a fun-loving, headstrong, and intelligent girl who gets herself into mischief and learns valuable lessons, both in and out of the classroom. Written in 1903, this is Jean Webster’s first of many great American novels.

First published in 1895 this classic tale of three friends taking a boating holiday on the Thames is as fresh as ever and creates a unique blend of humorous travelogue and historical information; even pausing at times, amidst the comedic mishaps, to reflect eloquently upon life and its sufferings.

Listed in the BBC's "100 Novels That Shaped Our World", Psmith, Journalist takes Wodehouse's immaculate hero to the apparently dull city of New York, where he takes command of twee family periodical Cosy Moments, converts it to the yellowest of yellow journals, and embarks upon a crusade to unmask the owner of the notorious Pleasant Street tenements. But soon the staff of Cosy Moments find themselves dodging ambushes and assassination attempts, as the mysterious tenement owner tries to put them out of business - permanently; and war breaks out among New York's notorious street gangs.

The dragon investigation quest is a lot bigger than Team Stone could imagine. This is but the first step of a mandatory mission...for those to be back. Sigh. The Falcon, one of five "players" or dimensional interlopers makes his debut, and it's not exactly a warm welcome. With Stone Mode recharging, Clyde must take on his journey like every man. Well, he does have an amazingly powerful team to watch his back.