I Only Laugh When It Hurts


Book Description

This series of nostalgic essays paints a bittersweet and vivid portrait of American life. Daniel Foxx grew up in 1940s South Carolina. Looking back, he relates important life lessons--some fun, some difficult--he learned as a child as well as those he learned as an adult. Foxx comes to the conclusion that growing up doesn't end when you reach 21, and that growing old comes with its own rewards. A former professor and the father of four sons, he tries to impart the value of his own hard-won knowledge to his children and, even harder, teach them about finding humor in difficult times.




Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain


Book Description

Chronic pain includes many types of conditions from a variety of causes. This book is designed to help those suffering from chronic pain learn to better manage pain so they can get on with living a satisfying, fulfilling life. This resource stresses four concepts: each person with chronic pain is unique, and there is no one treatment or approach that is right for everybody; there are many things people with chronic pain can do to feel better and become more active and involved in life; with knowledge and experimentation, each individual is the best judge of which self-management tools and techniques are best for him or her; and, the responsibility for managing chronic pain on a daily basis rests with the individual and no one else. Acknowledging that overcoming chronic pain is a daily challenge, this workbook provides readers with the tools to overcome that test. A Moving Easy Program CD, which offers a set of easy-to-follow exercises that can be performed at home, is also included.




Crying Laughing


Book Description

A tragicomic story of bad dates, bad news, bad performances, and one girl's determination to find the funny in high school from the author of Denton Little's Deathdate. Winnie Friedman has been waiting for the world to catch on to what she already knows: she's hilarious. It might be a long wait, though. After bombing a stand-up set at her own bat mitzvah, Winnie has kept her jokes to herself. Well, to herself and her dad, a former comedian and her inspiration. Then, on the second day of tenth grade, the funniest guy in school actually laughs at a comment she makes in the lunch line and asks her to join the improv troupe. Maybe he's even . . . flirting? Just when Winnie's ready to say yes to comedy again, her father reveals that he's been diagnosed with ALS. That is . . . not funny. Her dad's still making jokes, though, which feels like a good thing. And Winnie's prepared to be his straight man if that's what he wants. But is it what he needs? Caught up in a spiral of epically bad dates, bad news, and bad performances, Winnie's struggling to see the humor in it all. But finding a way to laugh is exactly what will see her through. **A Junior Library Guild Selection**




Inside Jokes


Book Description

Some things are funny -- jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed -- but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature -- aka natural selection -- cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.




Why Is My Child in Charge?


Book Description

Solve toddler challenges with eight key mindshifts that will help you parent with clarity, calmness, and self-control. In Why is My Child in Charge?, Claire Lerner shows how making critical mindshifts—seeing children’s behaviors through a new lens —empowers parents to solve their most vexing childrearing challenges. Using real life stories, Lerner unpacks the individualized process she guides parents through to settle common challenges, such as throwing tantrums in public, delaying bedtime for hours, refusing to participate in family mealtimes, and resisting potty training. Lerner then provides readers with a roadmap for how to recognize the root cause of their child’s behavior and how to create and implement an action plan tailored to the unique needs of each child and family. Why is My Child in Charge? is like having a child development specialist in your home. It shows how parents can develop proven, practical strategies that translate into adaptable, happy kids and calm, connected, in-control parents.




Hyperbole and a Half


Book Description

#1 New York Times Bestseller “Funny and smart as hell” (Bill Gates), Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half showcases her unique voice, leaping wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions with deceptively simple illustrations. FROM THE PUBLISHER: Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices. This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written. Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to. FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!




How to Live with Bipolar


Book Description

Do you have lots of questions about bipolar (formerly manic depression) but have no idea who to ask? Well, this is the perfect guide for you! With answers to 125 questions, this is a valuable resource for those suffering with bipolar disorder. Having a mood disorder can make life difficult to cope with. Sometimes you may be restless and full of energy, and other times you may feel empty and sad. But now you can get the help you need. If you suffer from bipolar disorder, you may ask yourself things like: How do I know if I have bipolar? What are some coping skills for depression? Can someone with bipolar have a normal marriage? How should I deal with a panic attack? Do you lack guilt while in a manic episode? With information taken from her over 800 answers on Quora, the author of this book is the top-viewed writer with 13 million views to date. She is also a Registered Nurse. The questions and answers in this book will deal with the most common queries that you may have about coping with bipolar, depression, mania, psychosis, anxiety and relationships. Reading this book, you'll feel like you're having an informal chat with a friend, thanks to the author's relaxed but informative approach. You will also be sharing her own personal stories of how she has dealt with bipolar. The advice in this book is presented in a friendly and sometimes humorous way. You'll also learn the coping mechanisms that are essential to living with a mental health condition. How to Live with Bipolar is the ultimate self-help book for people with bipolar depression, mania or psychosis. Through the education and advice contained in these pages, you'll also learn how to cope with anxiety and overcome feelings of hopelessness or inferiority. Don't let bipolar rule your life - take control of your mental health forever!




A Slap in the Face


Book Description

n A Slap in the Face, William Irvine undertakes a wide-ranging investigation of insults, their history, the role they play in social relationships, and the science behind them. He offers advice, based primarily on the writings of the Stoic philosophers, on how best to curb our own insulting tendencies and how to respond to the insults that are directed our way. A rousing follow-up to The Good Life, A Slap in the Face will interest anyone who's ever delivered an insult or felt the sting of one--in other words, everyone.




Hurts Like a Mother


Book Description

Amy overdid the Pinot at the parent potluck Brenda was concave from a post-partum nip/tuck At last—the book that truly feels your pain... Whether you’ve had a kid for decades or a few minutes, you know it can hurt— physically, emotionally, and, let’s just say it: like a motherf*&^%! In the vein of Go The F*ck To Sleep, this grown-up picture book parody of Edward Gorey’s classic The Gashlycrumb Tinies takes you on an A-Z journey through the perils of modern parenting as twenty-six moms succumb to hilarious and horrific child-care related fates. Hurts Like a Mother will make you laugh so you don’t cry (or die). The perfect gift to make the mom in your life laugh!




The Sense of an Ending


Book Description

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.