Tag: Comedy

Strong Female Character

Strong Female Character is the autobiography of Fern Brady. I love Fern Brady. If you don’t know her, she’s a comedian from Bathgate in West Lothian, Scotland. I first encountered her on the Wheel of Misfortune podcast that she created with co-host Alison Spittle. I loved her blunt humour. I loved her even more when she appeared on Taskmaster and wrote a song about why she should be crowned Queen of the Taskmaster house. Her autobiography explains how she came to be the strong female character of the title. My love for her has increased now I’ve read her book. The telling is raw in its honesty, as is Brady in her comedy.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 4

Delicacy: A Memoir About Cake and Death

Delicacy is an examination of what it’s like to grow up as a tall, clever, quiet, funny woman in the UK. Katy Wix shares moments of trauma from her adolescence and adulthood and explains how cake has become associated in her mind with the awfulness of life. Cake is ever present, as a treat, a comfort, a distraction. It’s often eaten in stressful circumstances. Possibly more often than it’s eaten simply for pleasure.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 8

And Away…

I love Bob Mortimer. I always have. In the Reeves and Mortimer partnership, he’s the unassumingly funny shy bloke to Vic’s bombastically funny shy bloke. Bob’s sound. I’m prepared to watch anything that Bob’s on, because he’s silly like Terry Jones was silly, and wriggles with the giggles of it all in the same way. The man’s a delight.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 6

Where the Wild Ladies Are

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Read 04/05/2021-16/05/2021

Rating 5 stars

Where the Wild Ladies Are, Matsuda Aoko’s collection of short stories, translated into English by Polly Barton, is a reimagining of different traditional Japanese folk tales as told in kabuki plays and the comedic tradition of rakugo. Matsuda introduces a feminist slant to the stories, which I enjoyed.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 15

Six Degrees of Separation: from The Outsiders to In Cold Blood

It has been a while since I last did a Six Degrees chain. Life got a lot busy over the summer, and I haven’t been reading as many books as usual, never mind keeping up with my fellow bloggers. But here I am, only five days late (what do you mean, more like four months late?), and to celebrate, I’m going to do things properly this time, and not count the first book in the chain as part of my six. Hooray!

The Outsiders by S E Hinton is the start of this month’s Six Degrees book chain. I’ve never read it or seen the film, so let’s see where I end up. Continue reading →

Posted on by Jan Hicks 3

Animal

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Read 16/06/2018-27/06/2018

Rating: 5 stars

I love Sara Pascoe. I think she’s one of the funniest people working in comedy. I follow her on Twitter. I love her on QI and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order. I’m going to see her live for the first time in October.

I borrowed her book Animal from the library after I saw a quote from it Tweeted by Pascoe, which I’ll talk about later. I thought it was going to be a straightforward memoir of Pascoe’s life and adventures as a funny feminist woman in the male centric world of British comedy. It is, in a way, but it’s also so much more than that. Continue reading →

Posted on by Jan Hicks 5

Yes Please

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Read 30/01/2017-03/02/2017

Rating: 3 stars

This book is wondrously eclectic.

I like Amy Poehler. Or rather, I like Amy Poehler’s performance as Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation. That’s the only thing I’ve seen her in. I like her in that enough to have bought her autobiography.

When it came up as my next read in The Reader’s Room Winter Challenge, I cheered. Out loud. The house was empty but for me and the cat, so it was okay. I cheered because it had been a bewilderingly frightening weekend of watching and reading the news coming out of America, and I needed a book that would lift my spirits. Continue reading →

Posted on by Jan Hicks 0

Gumption

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Read 20/01/2017-24/01/2017

Rating: 4 stars

Watch out, because this is a long one. Gumption has fed my brain and I’ve had lots of thoughts as a result. I’ll start with this one: O, Nick Offerman, how I love your drollness.

There are so many great things in this book. I didn’t agree with all of Offerman’s opinions, but I agreed with and enjoyed the majority. He talks sense but he doesn’t preach. He entertains but he doesn’t diminish the seriousness of what he’s saying.

Offerman appears in one of my favourite TV shows of recent years, Parks and Recreation. He plays Ron Swanson, a small c conservative man with a deep love for the outdoors, manual labour and meat. He’s everything I shouldn’t love, but he’s a joy.

Offerman shares many of Ron’s characteristics, except he is more free in the expression of his sense of humour and far less conservative. In this book, Offerman takes a look at the lives of significant figures in American culture and explains why they mean what they do to him. It covers politics, art, slow living, responsibility to the planet, to animals and to other human beings, and provides insights into Offerman’s own philosophy of life. It’s both interesting and funny. Continue reading →

Posted on by Jan Hicks 4