Download or read book Before and Laughter written by Jimmy Carr and published by . This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *A memoir and self-help manual by one of the country's most treasured comedians - for anyone who feels stuck in a rut but doesn't have the tools or self-belief to shake things up* In his mid-twenties, Jimmy was bored, boring, unfulfilled and underachieving. He wasn't exactly depressed, but he was very sad. Think of a baby owl whose mum has recently died in a windmill accident. He was that sad. This book tells the story of how Jimmy turned it around and got happy, through the redemptive power of dick jokes. Written to take advantage of the brief window between the end of lockdown and Jimmy getting cancelled for saying something unforgivable to Lorraine Kelly, this book is as timely as it is unnecessary. Because you might be interested in Jimmy's life but he's damn sure you're a lot more interested in your own, Before & Laughter is about both of you. But mainly him. It tells the story of Jimmy's life - the transformation from white-collar corporate drone to fake-toothed donkey-laugh plastic-haired comedy mannequin - while also explaining how to turn your own life around and become the you you've always dreamt of being. At just £20, it's cheaper than Scientology, quicker than therapy, and significantly less boring than church. Before & Laughter contains the answers to all the big questions in life, questions like: · What's the secret to happiness? · Is Jimmy wearing a wig? · What happened with that tax thing? · What's the meaning of life? · Is Jimmy's laugh real? · Can those teeth bite through vibranium? And for readers in the West Country: yes, there are pictures (actually, sorry, there are no pictures, but there's a book about a hungry caterpillar you'll love). Because it's Jimmy Carr - recently scientifically proved to be the funniest comedian in the UK - there are jokes, jokes and more jokes throughout. If laughter really was the best medicine, the NHS would be handing out this book in Nightingale Hospitals. Fascinating, thoughtful and insightful - are all words that appear in the book.
Download or read book Only Joking written by Jimmy Carr and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain’s hottest young comedian presents a seriously funny, up-close look at joking matters—from the social origins of laughter, to the art and craft of humor, to why we can never remember the punch line—featuring over 300 jokes. As the host of the hit game show Distraction (now in its third season on Comedy Central) and one of the premier stand-up acts working today, award-winning comedian Jimmy Carr has won over millions of fans around the world with his trademark rapier wit, laced with "exquisitely economical and perfectly timed one-liners" (The Guardian). For this book he teams up with friend and fellow comedy writer Lucy Greeves to take an in-depth look at where humor comes from and how it works, through exploring its purest form: the joke. Only Joking begins with the mechanism of laughter—how it happens and why even infants do it—then delves into the power of the punch line, exploring the basics of all jokes, from the use of shock and surprise to advanced stand-up techniques such as the "pull-back/reveal." Carr and Greeves go on to explore taboo humor, jokes that bomb, and the psychology of finding something funny. They look into the long-standing connection between politics and humor, and discuss the survival prospects for contentious jokes in the current political climate. Throughout the book they conjure up a supporting cast of colorful joke enthusiasts, from Sigmund Freud to Lenny Bruce, and discuss their influence on the jokes we tell today. Surveying across national, ethnic, and gender divides, this rollicking analysis of why joking will always be close to the human heart is an irresistible exploration of humor that makes clear why we need a good laugh now more than ever.
Download or read book The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh written by Helen Rutter and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When life is funny, make some jokes about it. Billy Plimpton has a big dream: to become a famous comedian when he grows up. He already knows a lot of jokes, but thinks he has one big problem standing in his way: his stutter. At first, Billy thinks the best way to deal with this is to . . . never say a word. That way, the kids in his new school won’t hear him stammer. But soon he finds out this is NOT the best way to deal with things. (For one thing, it’s very hard to tell a joke without getting a word out.) As Billy makes his way toward the spotlight, a lot of funny things (and some less funny things) happen to him. In the end, the whole school will know -- If you think you can hold Billy Plimpton back, be warned: The joke will soon be on you!
Download or read book The Sound of Laughter written by Peter Kay and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-07-15 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Kay's unerring gift for observing the absurdities and eccentricities of family life has earned himself a widespread, everyman appeal. These vivid observations coupled with a kind of nostalgia that never fails to grab his audience's shared understanding, have earned him comparisons with Alan Bennett and Ronnie Barker. In his award winning TV series' he creates worlds populated by degenerate, bitter, useless, endearing and always recognisable characters which have attracted a huge and loyal following. In many ways he's an old fashioned kind of comedian and the scope and enormity of his fanbase reflects this. He doesn't tell jokes about politics or sex, but rather rejoices in the far funnier areas of life: elderly relatives and answering machines, dads dancing badly at weddings, garlic bread and cheesecake, your mum's HRT... His autobiography is full of this kind of humour and nostalgia, beginning with Kay's first ever driving lesson, taking him back through his Bolton childhood, the numerous jobs he held after school and leading up until the time he passed his driving test and found fame.
Download or read book Cry Until You Laugh written by Kim Sorrelle and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2015-03-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are so many things that we do not have control over, things that we would not ever choose: cancer, loosing a spouse, tragic accidents. But we can choose how we will handle these things. Joy is a choice that anyone can make but not everyone knows how. Facing cancer, becoming a widow, loosing the future as the author saw it made her recognize that she had to choose a way to deal with the present.
Download or read book Monologue written by Jon Macks and published by Blue Rider Press. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Jon Macks is one of the greatest comedy writers of all time."—Chris Rock A hilarious, revealing look behind the history and culture of American late-night TV, by a longtime comedy writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Ever since Johnny Carson first popularized the late-night talk show in 1962 with The Tonight Show, the eleven p.m. to two a.m. comedy time slot on network television has remained an indelible part of our national culture. More than six popular late-night shows air every night of the week, and with recent major shake-ups in the industry, late-night television has never been more relevant to our public consciousness than it is today. Jon Macks, a veteran writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, takes us behind the scenes of this world for an in-depth, colorful look at what really makes these hosts the arbiters of public opinion. From the opening monologue—what’s funny, what’s dangerous, what’s untouchable—to the best vs. worst guests, Macks covers the landscape of late-night comedy and punctuates the narrative with hysterical personal anecdotes, shining the spotlight on some of the very best late night jokes, and drawing from more than half a million of his own jokes written over the span of twenty years. With an insider’s expertise and a laugh-out-loud voice, Macks explains how late-night TV redefines the news and events of any given day, reshapes public opinion, and even creates our national zeitgeist.
Download or read book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting written by Milan Kundera and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York Times Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.
Download or read book Laughter written by Anca Parvulescu and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-08-27 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovering an archive of laughter, from the forbidden giggle to the explosive guffaw. Most of our theories of laughter are not concerned with laughter. Rather, their focus is the laughable object, whether conceived of as the comic, the humorous, jokes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, or the ludicrous. In Laughter, Anca Parvulescu proposes a return to the materiality of the burst of laughter itself. She sets out to uncover an archive of laughter, inviting us to follow its rhythms and listen to its tones. Historically, laughter—especially the passionate burst of laughter—has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. Returning laughter to the history of the passions, Parvulescu anchors it at the point where the history of the grimacing face meets the history of noise. In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's “falling into disrepute,” as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? Parvulescu points to a gallery of twentieth-century laughers and friends of laughter, arguing that it is through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism. Looking back at the century from this vantage point, Parvulescu revisits four of its most challenging projects: modernism, the philosophical avant-gardes, feminism, and cinema. The result is an overview of the twentieth century as seen through the laughs that burst at some of its most convoluted junctures.
Download or read book This Time Together written by Carol Burnett and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This touching and hilarious memoir is 100 percent Carol Burnett—funny, irreverent, and irresistible. Carol Burnett is one of the most beloved and revered actresses and performers in America. The Carol Burnett Show was seen each week by millions of adoring fans and won twenty-five Emmys in its remarkable eleven-year run. Now, in This Time Together, Carol really lets her hair down and tells one funny or touching or memorable story after another. In engaging anecdotes, Carol discusses her remarkable friendships with stars such as Jimmy Stewart, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant, and Julie Andrews; the background behind famous scenes, like the moment she swept down the stairs in her curtain-rod dress in the legendary “Went with the Wind” skit; and things that would happen only to Carol—the prank with Julie Andrews that went wrong in front of the First Lady; the famous Tarzan Yell that saved her during a mugging; and the time she faked a wooden leg to get served in a famous ice cream emporium. This poignant look back allows us to cry with the actress during her sorrows, rejoice in her successes, and finally, always, to laugh.
Download or read book Laughter Yoga written by Madan Kataria, M.D. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could you use a good laugh? This definitive guide by the founder of the worldwide laughter yoga movement will show you how to giggle your way to good health! Bring laughter into your life at any time of day--no special equipment needed, no new wardrobe, no expensive classes, not even a sense of humor! Laughter yoga is all about voluntary laughter--how you can learn to laugh even in the absence of humorous stimuli, and reap the extraordinary, scientifically proven benefits, which include stress reduction, pain relief, weight loss, heightened immunity, and, especially, enhanced mood: If you act happy, you'll become happy--your body can't tell the difference! Children laugh more than 300 times a day, adults fewer than fifteen. But it's easy to start laughing again. The exercises in this book combine voluntary laughter with yogic breathing to give you a full body-mind workout. And it turns out that laughter is the fastest way to reduce stress and the best kind of cardio: Ten minutes of hearty laughter is equal to thirty minutes on the rowing machine. With Laughter Yoga, join the growing worldwide movement and discover how laughter really is the best medicine. A PENGUIN LIFE TITLE
Download or read book Hand Lettering for Laughter written by Amy Latta and published by Page Street Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find Your Happy Place with Fun Fonts, Whimsical Doodles and Clever Quotes Get ready to giggle your way through these clever hand lettering designs with bestselling author Amy Latta, back from her books Hand Lettering for Relaxation and Express Yourself: A Hand Lettering Workbook for Kids. Whether you’re lettering for the first time or brushing up on your skills, you’ll be highly entertained as you create your own works of witty, hand lettered art. Draw, doodle and dream right in the book on high-quality paper that will make your designs pop. With tons of ideas for special hand lettered projects like pillow covers, gift tags and personalized signs, it’s easy to share the laughter. Be careful: It’s contagious! Keep the fun going with these other books in Amy Latta's bestselling hand lettering workbook series: - Hand Lettering for Relaxation - Hand Lettering for Faith - Express Yourself: A Hand Lettering Workbook for Kids
Download or read book Surprised by Laughter written by Terry Lindvall and published by Thomas Nelson Inc. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surprised by Laughter looks at the career and writings of C. S. Lewis and discovers a man whose life and beliefs were sustained by joy and humor. All of his life, C. S. Lewis possessed a spirit of individuality. An atheist from childhood, he became a Christian as an adult and eventually knew international acclaim as a respected theologian. He was known worldwide for his works of fiction, especially the Chronicles of Narnia; and for his books on life and faith, including Mere Christianity, A Grief Observed, and Surprised by Joy. But perhaps the most visible difference in his life was his abiding sense of humor. It was through this humor that he often reached his readers and listeners, allowing him to effectively touch so many lives. Terry Lindvall takes an in-depth look at Lewis's joyful approach toward living, dividing his study of C. S. Lewis's wit into the four origins of laughter in Uncle Screwtape's eleventh letter to a junior devil in Lewis's The Screwtape Letters: joy, fun, the joke proper, and flippancy. Lindvall writes, "One bright and compelling feature we can see, sparking in his sunlight and dancing in his moonlight, is laughter. Yet it is not too large to see at once because it inhabited all Lewis was and did." Surprised by Laughter reveals a Lewis who enjoyed the gift of laughter, and who willingly shared that gift with others in order to spread his faith.
Download or read book Leading with Love and Laughter written by Zina Sutch and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leadership has for too long been treated as a function and not as a relationship. Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone argue that successful leadership must be based on love (altruism and empathy) and laughter (positive emotions and joy). Science tells us that humans are deeply wired for empathy and compassion and that our emotional selves help us make better decisions and motivate others. However, the tactics we use to train leaders bear little reflection of these advancements; we're still creating competent but emotionally distant leaders who “manage human assets” and lead by setting goals, deadlines, and deliverables. Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone hope to flip a light switch and illuminate, above all else, that leadership begins with heart and soul. Too many training programs reduce leadership to an equation, matrix, or acronym. But leadership is a relationship. It's one human helping another. The most successful leaders show they genuinely care about their employees and are, well, fun. It's just like any relationship. In seven succinct chapters, the authors show that people lead best when they tap into their genetically driven human nature to love and nurture, connect and trust. Leading with love and laughter offers powerful dividends: tighter teams, stronger performance, improved morale, greater trust, more creativity, and even better health. While Sutch and Malone cite the science and offer examples, tips, and practices, their larger purpose is to reintroduce the warmth of human interaction and emotion as the foundation of what leadership is all about.
Download or read book Laughing Matters written by Phil Callaway and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find Out What’s So Funny When Nothing’s Funny Sometimes life just stinks—people disappoint, bad things happen, and hardship comes. Laughing Matters is a collection of stories that shows the difference between those who resign and those who rejoice when reality bites. Readers will be encouraged to choose joy, to find hope, and to discover the abundant life Christ offers all who follow Him. Author and humorist Phil Callaway—once described as “Dave Barry with a message”—employs his revealing and hilarious style to remind readers that, “it’s always darkest just before the fridge door opens.” Do you resign or rejoice when reality bites? Sometimes life just stinks. People disappoint. Bad things happen. Hardship comes in double helpings. The last thing you want to do is laugh. So let hilarious humorist Phil Callaway show you—as only he can—that some of the darkest times are those just before the fridge door opens. *** ** *** ** “Everything Phil Callaway writes is full of life because he’s discovered a fabulous secret: The joy of Christ doesn’t go away, even when life is a mess.” Luis Palau, President of the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association “Phil really knows how to get in touch with his spiritual funny bone.” Janette Oke, Bestselling author “One page into this book and I’m quaking with laughter. Callaway has the uncanny ability to uncover the funny in any situation and report it with inspirational wit.” Paul L. Maier, Coauthor of The DaVinci Code: Fact or Fiction? “This book is an excellent source of encouragement for anyone in the midst of a crisis who may be asking God that hardest question of all: ‘Why?’” Martha Bolton, Author of Cooking with Hot Flashes and Didn’t My Skin Used to Fit? Story Behind the Book Phil Callaway wrote this book after a five-year journey he and his wife embarked upon when she began having seizures. He discovered that when life throws you curve balls, juices lemons in your eyes, scrunches you in a knuckle sandwich…the last thing you want to do is laugh. And at the moment we realize that life can just plain stink, “this book helps us know where to go from that point,” he says. Celebrities like Dave Dravecky, Barbara Johnson, Gloria Gaither, and Joni Eareckson Tada have endorsed Callaway’s positive approach to trials. “Everything Phil Callaway writes is full of life because he’s discovered a fabulous secret: The joy of Christ doesn’t go away, even when life is a mess,” says evangelist Luis Palau.
Download or read book Laughter Out of Place written by Donna M. Goldstein and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-09-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the author's experience in Brazil, this text provides a portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas - a portrait that challenges much of what we think we know about the 'culture of poverty'. It helps us understand the nature of joking and laughter in the shantytown.
Download or read book The Laughing Monsters written by Denis Johnson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Denis Johnson's New York Times bestseller, The Laughing Monsters, is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game. Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless. Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago. Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko's fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland—but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.
Download or read book Ayoade on Top written by Richard Ayoade and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Ayoade - in this foren, perhaps one of the most 'insubstantial' people of our age, takes us on a journey from Peckham to Paris by way of Nevada and other places we don't care about. It's a journey deep within, in a way that's respectful and non-invasive; a journey for which we will all pay a heavy price, even if you've waited for the smaller paperback edition. Ayoade argues for the canonisation of this brutal masterpiece, a film that celebrates capitalism in all its victimless glory; one we might imagine Donald Trump himself half-watching on his private jet's gold-plated flat screen while his other puffy eye scans the cabin for fresh, young prey."
