Posts filed under “Books & Literature”
NOW IN PRESS.
New theological treatise by the Rev. Bob-Bob Lee: On the Moral Duty of Excluding Traffic from the Merging Lane. Limited edition, gilt-edged, bound in morocco, signed by the author, and blessed by the Holy Spirit. Keep the Christ in Xmas by ordering from your local Christian bookstore now.
A NEW BOOK.
Dr. Boli’s Anthology of American Humor is exactly what the title would lead you to believe: more than 300 pages of the best humorous writing by the best American writers from pre-Colonial times to 1922.
Many of these pieces are not available in print anywhere else. A few of them have probably never been anthologized before.
The selections themselves are in the public domain, of course, but Dr. Boli has added interesting and entertaining introductions to each writer. The book has been literally years in preparation—not because it could not have been done in a week, but because Dr. Boli’s method was to add a piece here and there as he ran across things that amused him.
Nevertheless, you may have this valuable work absolutely free in PDF form. You’ll be able to see every page of the book exactly as it appears in print: in fact, you will be seeing the very file from which the book is printed. Then, if you like the book and think a printed copy would be just the thing to give your Aunt Eleanor for Christmas, or a valuable addition to your bathroom furnishings, you can go ahead and buy it.
This is what we call a marketing experiment.
Download or view the PDF file here; then buy the book here.
Here is a list of the authors represented—some familiar, some (we hope) unfamiliar and waiting for you to discover them:
An Ojibwe Myth
Benjamin Franklin
Francis Hopkinson
Hugh Henry Brackenridge
Salmagundi
Washington Irving
James K. Paulding
Major Jack Downing
James Fenimore Cooper
Fanny Fern
James Russell Lowell
Oliver Wendell Holmes
John Phoenix
Orpheus C. Kerr
Artemus Ward
Abraham Lincoln
Josh Billings
Mark Twain
Julia A. Moore
Max Adeler
Will W. Clark
Bill Nye
Eugene Field
Ben King
Robert J. Burdette
George Ade
Billy Baxter
Wallace Irwin
Franklin Pierce Adams
Gelett Burgess
Carolyn Wells
Elbert Hubbard
Bert Leston Taylor
Heywood Broun
Dorothy Parker
Robert Benchley
Ring Lardner
Some of these writers will be making guest appearances here in the coming weeks.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
THE LANGUAGE OF LATTE.
Habitués of cafés in the city know that the ingredients of a latte form a secret cryptographic means of communication. If you receive a drink different from the one you ordered, you may be sure that someone is trying to tell you something.
Caramel. Inertia.
Cinnamon. Thou wilt regret thine indifference.
Eggnog. I share your aversion to crickets.
Gingerbread. Ungenerous but to a certain extent desirable.
Hazelnut. I prefer architecture of the Corinthian order.
Pumpkin. Behold to what small dimensions a massive gourd may be reduced.
Mocha. Inner worth sustained by sugar and caffeine.
Peppermint. Period of changeable weather, followed by dry and cool.
Vanilla. I may tell you in confidence that I am one of the directors of the Nigerian State Bank in Lagos, and I have need of your assistance in a certain financial transaction.
White Chocolate. Insipidity.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: My hair is limp and lifeless. I asked a doctor what to do about it, and she said that my hair was lifeless because it was already dead. So I slapped her and asked a hairdresser what to do about it, and he said that my hair was starved for vitamins. He gave me—by which I mean sold me—an expensive vitamin-fortified shampoo to use, but after a month there’s no improvement. What can I do? —Sincerely, A Woman with Limp and Lifeless Hair in Marshall-Shadeland.
Dear Madam: If vitamins have not been of any use, it is probably because your hair is intellectually starved. Your hair, after all, has to sit up there on your head all day with nothing to do, and you never give it a book. It is a simple creature, and its intellectual needs are correspondingly simple. A few Fenimore Cooper novels, shredded and pulped, may be made into a sort of paste; apply this to the hair and let it dry, then chip it off with a hammer and chisel (you may want to ask for help with this part). Rinse and repeat as needed. Dr. Boli does not warrant absolutely that this technique will improve your hair; but it will certainly improve sales of Cooper’s novels, which have been in a bit of a slump recently.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
DR. BOLI’S TALES OF MYSTERY AND CURIOSITY.
Who murdered the butler with the Archbishop’s cane?
Where is the missing case containing $35,462,817.98 in cash?
How will the Speaking Sticks speak again after years of silence?
What brilliantly conceived unbreakable cipher encodes Sir Margaret St.-John Cassowary’s memoirs?
What strange conspiracy has replaced a man’s wife with an exact double?
Since the beginning of his celebrated Magazine, Dr. Boli has delighted his readers with mysterious tales that lead them in unexpected directions. He believes that “unexpected” is a safe word to use in this context. Now here are half a dozen of the best in one volume, including the complete novella The Case of the Missing Case, which features Dr. Boli himself (though fictionalized in the interest of plausibility) as one of the primary characters.
If you have a mystery-lover on your Christmas list, Dr. Boli’s Tales of Mystery and Curiosity is the gift you have been looking for. If someone on your list hates and despises mystery stories, the book will make a suitably amusing gag gift. If someone on your list is illiterate, here is a book with several illustrations in it.