Tag Archives: authors: dave barry

Lessons From Lucy

authors, humor, memoir, non-fiction March 2, 2022 Leave a comment

I started reading Dave Barry back when I was a kid, I think more than twenty years ago at this point, and probably closer to twenty-five.

Barry is a humorist and satirist, and has weekly columns in addition to his books, which I’ve also read, and I used to follow him when he live blogged ’24’ during it’s latter and most ridiculous seasons. As with the best humorists, Barry has a gift for taking the mundane and making it funny.

This particular book deals with Barry’s observation this his dog, Lucy, despite her advanced age, is always happy. Barry sets about trying to determine how to be happier by taking lessons from his pooch, such as ‘Make New Friends’ (which Barry fails at when he realizes he can’t overcome his general dislike for most humans), ‘Don’t Stop Having Fun’ (in which his membership in a marching band is validated) and ‘Pay Attention to the People You Love’ (even if your brain isn’t always listening).

As a dog lover, I was very excited to read this book, and it didn’t disappoint.

The sentimental but still hilarious Lessons From Lucy: The Simple Joys of an Old, Happy Dog was a sheer delight. I listened to and read part of it in Maine, hiking through Acadia National Park and between meals in hotel rooms. The book, filled with Barry’s wit was a truly touching look at the happy-to-be-here, live-in-the-moment life dogs live along side us, always glad to see us and always there to make us smile, even in the hardest moments of our lives.

Funny, heartfelt, and poignant, Barry’s work is a tribute to Lucy, and to all dogs. As a dog lover, it made me laugh. As a human, it made me tear up. Enjoy.

Favorite Authors

reading habits July 22, 2015 Leave a comment

Ernest Hemingway’s birthday was yesterday, and it isn’t a secret that Hemingway is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read several books by him, but not all of them.

This got me to thinking:

Can your favorite author(s) really be your favorite author(s) if you haven’t read all his/her books?

I have read five of Hemingway’s books – A Farewell To Arms, For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea and a compilation of all his short stories. I have a couple of his others that I haven’t gotten to yet. I didn’t even like The Old Man and the Sea. No joke, I hated it. I still consider Hemingway one of my favorites.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is another of my favorites. I haven’t read all his books either. I have read The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and Damned. I have a couple of others too that I haven’t read yet.

I’ve read two of Shirley Jackson’s books and one short story, and BOOM, she’s one of my favorites…even though I haven’t read all her stuff either.

I’ve read only part of Daphne DuMaurier’s collection. The same goes for Stephen King, Dave Barry, Agatha Christie, and Harper Lee (at least for the next few days).

The only of my favorite authors I’ve read ALL of is J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith.

So, my question stands. Can your favorite author(s) be your favorites if you haven’t read their whole collection? What if you hated part of it (like me, with Hemingway)?

I don’t have a conclusion on this one. If anyone has any thoughts, I would love to hear them.

The Funny Thing Is…

humor May 4, 2015 Leave a comment

It took me way too long to read this book.

I read it on my kindle, because I use my kindle when I’m doing cardio (elliptical, stationary bike, whatever) if I’m not catching up on TV (OMG I WATCH SO MANY ‘CRIMINAL MINDS’ RERUNS). And I brought it with me on vacation. And it STILL took me forever.

The thing about Ellen Degeneres’s The Funny Thing Is… is that it wasn’t very funny.

Don’t get me wrong, it had some chuckle worthy moments, and I like Ellen a lot (and my sister is obsessed with Ellen, so I’d be afraid not to like her). I could even hear her voice reading most of the book, but I just didn’t think it was THAT funny.

Maybe I need to see her face, because so much of comedy isn’t spoken, but this book wouldn’t be as funny as I hoped. There were some chuckle moments. The weekend brunch part? The talking butterfly daydream? hahahaha. But a lot of the book just…fell flat.

What I do like about Ellen, that often goes unmentioned but that I do like, and continues here in The Funny Thing Is… is that she can be funny without being mean. Don’t misunderstand me, I find that being mean can be very funny. Take for example, Tosh.0. I know that’s not a book, but it’s the best example I have of what I’m talking about. Tosh.0 can be hysterically funny, but it is incredibly mean spirited. Mean comedy gets tired after awhile. It’s incredibly repetitive, but also (in my opinion) the laziest form of comedy, and it shows if you watch it enough. It’s easy to make fun of people. If making fun of people was all there is to comedy, we could all do comedy. I’ve never seen Daniel Tosh live, so I can’t speak to his standup, but his TV show is definitely that.

Ellen doesn’t just make fun of people endlessly, she makes real life funny. It’s true. Why in hell can I not open a pair of scissors without a pair of scissors but can pop open a lightbulb no problem? These are the sorts of real life, every day mundane things that Ellen can highlight and make hysterical and does a fantastic job with. She’s to be admired in this way, because finding the funny in routine things is much harder than making fun of people, at least in my opinion.

But overall, it was only an okay read. It was chuckle worthy, but not laugh out loud hilarious.

The funniest books I’ve ever read are by Dave Barry. They’re called Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs and Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States. Those books had me hysterically laughing…even in public. Consequently, I compare all “funny” books to them. If I’m not laughing in a public place and unable to stop myself, the book may be amusing but it wasn’t funny.

So I guess that’s where I’m at with The Funny Thing Is…. It was amusing but it wasn’t LOL-worthy. Ellen is a great entertainer and I wouldn’t mind reading her other books, but if given the opportunity, I’d rather see her live/watch her show.

Meme: 10 Books That Have Stuck With You

fiction, humor, memes September 16, 2014 Leave a comment

This meme is going around on Facebook, and I thought I’d share my list here.

In your status, list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take more than a few minutes, and do not think too hard. They don’t have to be the “right” books or great works of literature, just books that have affected you in some way.

01. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
02. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
03. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
04. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
05. Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
06. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
07. Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs – Dave Barry
08. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
09. Rebecca – Daphne DuMaurier
10. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

I’ll Mature When I’m Dead: Dave Barry’s Amazing Tales of Adulthood

non-fiction June 6, 2011 Leave a comment

This was the first book I read on my new Kindle!

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From Amazon:

Some people may wonder what this subject has to do with Dave Barry, since Dave’s struggled hard against growing up his entire life-but the result is one of the funniest, warmest, most pitch-perfect books ever on that mystifying territory we call “adulthood”.

In hilarious,  brand-new pieces, Dave tackles everything from fatherhood, new fatherhood (“Over the next five years, you will spend roughly 45  minutes, total, listening to songs you like, and roughly 127,000 hours  to songs exploring topics such as how the horn on the bus goes* [*It goes: ‘Beep! Beep! Beep!’]”), self-image, the battle of the sexes, celebrityhood, technology, parenting styles, certain unmentionable medical procedures (“There is absolutely no reason to be afraid of a vasectomy, except that: THEY CUT A HOLE IN YOUR SCROTUM.”), and much more.

Going to the Bahamas, I had a $20 giftcard to use to buy a new book with my Kindle, which I’d take with me instead of the actual books. And I chose to buy this book, for one reason and one reason only: when I first picked up in Barnes & Noble (pre-buying it for the Kindle) I saw there was a made up 24 script that he wrote.

When 24 was on the air, Dave Barry would live blog it. Hilariously. So I decided I would add it to my Amazon wishlist, and when I got the Kindle, and was going to be spending a week at the beach, I decided this would be a great beach book.

It was. I blew through it (way faster than my other title). And it was really funny. But it wasn’t my favorite Dave Barry book ever, even with the hilarious 24 plot. My favorite Dave Barry books remain Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States and Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs.

The essay I enjoyed most was his essay about being 50 and having to endure a colonoscopy – which is, he says, one of the few times he’s tried to make a serious point with one of his essays. I got the point. It was a good point. I’m glad I’m still 28 years away from my first “required” colonoscopy.

There was an essay on healthcare, which was amusing, but because of the current situation with it I found it kind of sad. And then, of course, my favorite essays were the 24 script and the Twilight parody chapter he did. It was pretty funny – I also got the impression that he read actually read Twilight in order to write said parody, which I appreciated.

I think I missed the more touching moments of parenthood essays. I’m not much into parenthood. I haven’t experienced it, I don’t really want to experience it, etc…

There was an essay on being a minor celebrity which was pretty priceless, where he described that they made up their own VIP platform after not making it to the second level of VIP-ness. Cracked me up.

Overall, I enjoyed this book enough to recommend it. I was laughing in public enough to get asked what I was reading on a number of occasions. Great, fast beach book.