MobileRead July 09 book nominations

[pilotbob]

The nominations will run through June 28th.
Voting (new poll thread) will run for 5 days starting Jan 28.

Book selection category for February per the "official" club opening thread is:

July 09
Humor (can be from anywhere, including our library)

In order for a book to be included in the poll it needs THREE NOMINATIONS (original nomination, a second and a third).

This will be limited to no more than 10 books.

The floor is open to nominations.

Please if I miss one that got three... please let me know before I open the polling thread.

BOb - self-appointed vice president of the MRBC.

Thrice Nominated

My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
In this 1919 short story collection, P.G. Wodehouse’s beloved star characters, the very silly Bertie Wooster and his unflappable valet Jeeves, must face the perils of pushy relatives, swooning debutantes, and the hare-brained schemes of well-meaning friends.

This collection also features the fictional hi-jinks of another favorite Wodehouse character, the hapless Reggie Pepper, whose piles of money never seem to make up for his utter lack of intelligence. Wodehouse will keep every reader giggling at the wild adventures in which Reggie manages to find himself and the ridiculous dilemmas from which the lucky Bertie is rescued, without fail, by the ingenious Jeeves.

Topper by Thorne Smith
It all begins when Cosmo Topper, a law-abiding, mild-mannered bank manager, decides to buy a secondhand car, only to find it haunted by the ghosts of its previous owners--the reckless, feckless, frivolous couple who met their untimely demise when the car careened into an oak tree. The ghosts, George and Marion Kerby, make it their mission to rescue Topper from the drab "summer of suburban Sundays" that is his life—and they commence a series of madcap adventures that leave Topper, and anyone else who crosses their path, in a whirlwind of discomfiture and delight.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of The Dog) by Jerome K Jerome
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.

The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers, the jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

Augustus Carp, Esq. - Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Henry Bashford
It is customary, I have noticed, in publishing an autobiography to preface it with some sort of apology. But there are times, and surely the present is one of them, when to do so is manifestly unnecessary. In an age when every standard of decent conduct has either been torn down or is threatened with destruction; when every newspaper is daily reporting scenes of violence, divorce, and arson; when quite young girls smoke cigarettes and even, I am assured, sometimes cigars; when mature women, the mothers of unhappy children, enter the sea in one-piece bathing-costumes; and when married men, the heads of households, prefer the flicker of the cinematograph to the Athanasian Creed -- then it is obviously a task, not to be justifiably avoided, to place some higher example before the world.

For some time -- I am now forty-seven -- I had been feeling this with increasing urgency. And when not only my wife and her four sisters, but the vicar of my parish, the Reverend Simeon Whey, approached me with the same suggestion, I felt that delay would amount to sin. That sin, by many persons, is now lightly regarded, I am, of course, only too well aware. That its very existence is denied by others is a fact equally familiar to me. But I am not one of them. On every ground I am an unflinching opponent of sin. I have continually rebuked it in others. I have strictly refrained from it in myself. And for that reason alone I have deemed it incumbent upon me to issue this volume.

The Silence of Colonel Bramble by by André Maurois
Translated from the French by Thurfrida Wake; Verses translated by Wilfrid Jackson. Whitlock writes in the Introduction about The Silence of Colonel Bramble: Every English officer one met was chuckling over it, and pointing out Old So-and-so in its pages as the original of this or that type. It was a picture not only of the Lennox Highlanders, but of every regimental and brigade mess in the army.

[pilotbob]

Here's a couple I have been wanting to read:

How To Really Stink at Golf by Jeff Foxworthy
http://www.amazon.com/How-Really-Sti...5693273&sr=8-1

As a longtime golfer, Jeff Foxworthy has learned something important about the grand auld game: It’s not who has the highest score, it’s who has the least fun playing it. And now, in his hilarious primer How to Really Stink at Golf, Foxworthy shares his invaluable tips for a lifetime of horrible drives and putts.

• Get into the right frame of mind to play truly awful golf. Food poisoning or a killer hangover might be just the ticket to a robust three-digit score.

• Try to get to the course promptly at tee time to avoid the hassle of warming up: “You’re only gonna hit five good shots in the course of the day; why waste even one on the driving range?”

• The surefire way to screw up a great drive? As you walk to the tee, keep telling yourself, “Don’t screw up your drive.” If bad golf’s your goal, stress is your best friend.

• Avoid fun. “Fun = relaxed = low scores . . . and that’s something we want to avoid at all cost. If you have a good hole, shake it off.”

• Perhaps the most important element: Embrace the fact that you do stink at golf.

Cheating. Cursing. Avoiding fairways. Reckless cart driving. How to Really Stink at Golf covers it all, from selecting the correct putter to use on a 385-yard drive to prolonging your stay in the sand trap to picking the perfect foursome for spectacularly bad golf (“you, your ex-wife, your girlfriend, your wife”). With Jeff Foxworthy as your guide, even a scratch golfer can add ten, twenty, maybe thirty strokes to his or her score–and possibly more if you attempt to play the back nine, too.

I Am America and So Can You by Steven Colbert
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_ki...x=I+am+america

The funnyman host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report rants about things that are wrong with America, offering his “knee jerk beliefs” on everything from the liberal media to environmentalists. If we continue to secularize Christmas, he screeches, former carolers will become wandering, alcoholic bums, and insects will grow into giant, munching minivans. He advocates legalizing performance-enhancing drugs for athletes, since sports are entertainment. Taking on a blowhard persona, he attacks atheists—how could a god exist who created a group that so pisses him off? Atheists are more hated than gays, to whom we at least entrust our hair. Interspersed with Colbert’s shrill tirades are the voices of other characters, notably the more modulated tones of God, who claims to be fair since he does not intercede in the outcome of sports on which he bets. Patriotic drums, a mariachi band, and other music accompanies this hilarious audio. Colbert fans will approve. --Whitney Scott

BOb

[pilotbob]

Anybody?

[JSWolf]

I'm nominating Topper by Thorne Smith.

Thorne Smith is a master of urbane wit and sophisticated repartee. Topper, his best-known work, is the hilarious, ribald comedy on which the hit television show and movie (starring Cary Grant) were based.

It all begins when Cosmo Topper, a law-abiding, mild-mannered bank manager, decides to buy a secondhand car, only to find it haunted by the ghosts of its previous owners--the reckless, feckless, frivolous couple who met their untimely demise when the car careened into an oak tree. The ghosts, George and Marion Kerby, make it their mission to rescue Topper from the drab "summer of suburban Sundays" that is his life—and they commence a series of madcap adventures that leave Topper, and anyone else who crosses their path, in a whirlwind of discomfiture and delight.

As enchanting today as it was when first published in 1926, Topper has set the standard in American pop culture for such mischievous apparitions as those seen in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Heaven Can Wait, Beetlejuice, and Bewitched.

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

I'll second Topper

[Abecedary]

Howsabout some Wodehouse? Maybe someone more familiar with his work can suggest something in particular.

[lilac_jive]

How about My Man Jeeves for Wodehouse? It's been on my Reader but I haven't gotten to it yet.

[ruth1304]

I'll second My Man Jeeves.

[Abecedary]

Sounds good. I'll third My Man Jeeves.

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

I'll nominate Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of The Dog)
Summary shamelessly nicked from Wikipedia:

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.

The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers, the jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

Available here on MR as a rather spiffy epub, hand crafted by Zelda:

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Abecedary

Sounds good. I'll third My Man Jeeves.

Anyone have a good summary/abstract of this?

BOb

[Elsi]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Anyone have a good summary/abstract of this? {My Man Jeeves}

From Wikipedia:

My Man Jeeves (1919) — Four stories in a book of eight, all four reprinted in Carry on, Jeeves.

* "Leave It to Jeeves", (was reprinted in Carry on, Jeeves as "The Artistic Career of Corky"), originally published 1916.
* "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest", (was reprinted in Carry on, Jeeves), originally published 1916.
* "Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg", (was reprinted in Carry on, Jeeves), originally published 1917.
* "The Aunt and the Sluggard", (was reprinted in Carry on, Jeeves), originally published 1916.


Note that the only edition in the MobileRead library is a Sony .lrf file created by HarryT.

[Dr. Drib]

I nominate "Life With Father," by Clarence Day, Jr. (This is a book that I assembled sometime last year and is available here on MobileRead in an lrf format.)

This is a wonderfully funny autobiographical series of loving sketches about his father. It was made into an engaging and enjoyable family film, in 1947, starring William Powell and a very young Elizabeth Taylor.

This is fun read and is all about the love, misunderstandings, trials and tribulations of a loving father who thinks he runs the house - but he really doesn't.

I highly recommend this book.


Don

[Sparrow]

I'd like to nominate "Augustus Carp, Esq. - Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man" by Henry Bashford.

It's available in the MR ebook section - Patricia.

Library Journal - "Bashford's comic 1924 volume offers the mock autobiography of Augustus Carp, a self-aggrandizing, stuffy, puritanical oaf, who indulges in numerous vices in the name of Christianity, rationalizing his own weaknesses while condemning others for the same acts. Great fun."

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm nominating Topper by Thorne Smith.

I'll add a third nomination for Topper. I've been meaning to get around to it, but so many books, so little time.

In June I did manage to read King Solomon's Mines, so Topper in July would be good.