humor

Hardcover. NY, Clarion Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Robins are the most familiar and beloved of all birds, found throughout North America and celebrated as one of the first signs of spring. But there's a lot about them that most people don't know! In this visually stunning picture book that features comic-book panels combined with painterly illustrations, Eileen Christelow tells the story of two young robins' first year, and reveals plenty of little-known facts that are sure to captivate young naturalists. Narrated with humor and filled with kid-pleasing details, this fascinating account of how robins grow up includes an Author's Note, Glossary, More About Robins, and Sources. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 32 pages illustrated in color by David Shannon. SIGNED BY SCIESZKA. From the minds of Scieszka and Shannon comes a tale of a quixotic robot determined to conquer the earth. The only problem is that the earth he lands on is a suburban kitchen and he is three inches tall. Robot Zot, the fearless and unstoppable warrior, leaves a trail of destruction as he encounters blenders, toasters, and televisions. But when he discovers the princess...a pink cell phone...his mission takes a new course. Robot Zot must learn how to be a hero - in the name of true love.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday/Dolphin, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 191 pages. Collects articles, interviews, photos on The- Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time-Players: Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Bill Murray and some of the guests: Candice Bergen, Steve Martin, Paul Simon, Lily Tomlin, more. Photos by Edie Baskin. Filled with bios and photos in color and b & w of the early days of Saturday Night Live. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, William Heinemann, 1st, 1922, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Unpaginated, a series of tipped-in color plates. Blue cloth covers w/ gilt lettering. Light edge wear to covers, spine darkened. Light yellowing to end papers. Else a clean, tight copy. A humorous tribute to the Rossetti family and their circle, including Wilde, Ruskin, Millais, Ford Madox Brown, Swinburne, et al. Twenty two color plates mounted on art paper with amusing descriptive tissue guards.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st US, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 142 pages. Humoroue instructions for the man living on his own. Cartoons by Quenin Blake. Book is clean, very good, dust jacket is worn, chipped.

Hardcover. NY, George H. Doran Company, 1sr, 1914, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth boards with gilt titles and a mounted paper label on the front board. Illustrated by John T. McCutcheon. A humorous vintage travel guide to the American West. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Franklin Center PA, Franklin Library, 1st thus, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, Limited edition. Brown leather with elaborately decorative 22Kt gold gilt embossed to the front and rear covers and to the spine, gilt embossed titles, rules and decorations to the nicely hubbed spine, sewn head and tail bands, all page edges fine gilt, satin moire end-papers, and bound-in silk ribbon marker. A collection of thirty-five of the best stories by Lardner. 569 pages. 2-color illustrations by Gerry Gersten.Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , Simon and Schuster, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 190 pages, b&w cartoon contraptions by the master. Bright, clean copy in unclipped dust jacket. A collection of Rube Goldberg's wackiest inventions features more than two thousand "schematics" from the immensely popular comic for everything from suicide machines to a pick-pocket device designed for politicians.

Hardcover. New York, Morrow Junior Books, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Non-paginated. Hardcover. Illustrated by Diane Stanley. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 128 pages. Acclaimed photographer Larry Fink's behind-the-scenes photographs from the fashion shows in Milan, New York, and Paris, Fink's distinctive take of the perversely unusual world of fashion teases, baits, and whets our morbid fascination with its glamour with humor and style like no other photographer possibly could. B&w photos throughout.

Softcover. Chicago, Indiana Society of Chicago, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, illustrated wrappers with red plastic comb binding. 40 full-page b&w cartoons by various artists, all honoring McCutcheon at the 29th Annual Dinner of The Indiana Society on Dec. 14, 1940: Fontaine Fox, Webster, Fitzpatrick, Milton Caniff, Shoemaker, Chester Gould, many others. Cover by Paul Plaschke. Bright, clean copy. Scarce.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 624 pages. A fresh translation of Nobel Prize-winning author Halldor Laxness's modernist masterpiece, Salka Valka. A feminist coming of age tale, an elegy to the plight of the working class and the corrosive effects of social and economic inequality, and a poetic window into the arrival of modernity in a tiny industrial town, Salka Valka is a novel of epic proportions, living and breathing with its expansive cast of characters, filled with tenderness, humor, and remarkable pathos. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The New Yorker magazine named Matt Klam one of the twenty best young writers in America, and the seven stories that comprise Sam the Cat are all the proof we need. Knowing, perceptive, and wickedly funny, Matt Klam loves his characters but spares them nothing: the swaggering womanizer Sam falls in love with a woman across a crowded room who, upon closer inspection, turns out to be not quite what he expected; a self-doubting young professional attends the posh wedding of his successful friend and delivers a disastrous toast; the chicken one man's girlfriend is preparing for dinner comes to embody the darkly corrosive element in their relationship. These stories crackle with humor, intelligence and style and add up to an outrageously funny, unforgettable debut. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Paris, Denoel, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 123 pages of b&w cartoons by Sempe, originally published in 1964. Green cloth covers with fading to spine. previous owner's signature on front fly leaf. Otherwise clean, very good. French language but most of his cartoons are wordless.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1st, 1939, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 64 pages. Pictorial boards with black cloth spine. Full color and black & white illustrations by Marguerite Kirmse. Faint foxing along hinges on preliminary pages. Rubbing along cover edges and spine, upper right corners with shallow bump. Clean, unmarked text.

Watertown, MA, Charlesbridge Publishing, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color illustrations by Matt Faulkner. Scatterbrain Sam is the distant down-home cousin of "Morgan and the Pot of Brains," a Welsh tale told by Ellen Pugh. This adaptation is a funny, folksy tall tale filled with exaggeration and sly humor. It is set in mid-20th-century America, and Jackson has freely updated and modified the old story. Sam is so scatterbrained, "he didn't know nothing about nothing," so he asks Widder Woman to help fix his brains. She offers a glue-stew remedy for which the young man must provide the flavoring with things that he loves. When that proves to be too difficult, he is given riddles to solve and only with the help of Maizie Mae, a golden-haired aviatrix with her own stunt plane, does Sam begin to find the solution. When Maizie falls into the sticky concoction, Sam follows the glue flood through town and finally realizes what he truly loves. He takes the Widder's advice and marries Maizie and they fly off together into the sunset. This is a rollicking good tale with exuberant cartoonlike watercolor-and-gouache paintings.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 82 pages. pre-World War II collection of satire on history, man and current events. Periwinkle linen-lilke cloth with bright red cover lettering and decoration. Day illustrates his humorous verse with Thurber-like cartoons. Nice dustjacket with light edgewear, mild tanning, unclipped.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 192pages. Collects, for the first time, the complete adventures of four of the influential Mad magazine cartoonist's more arcane comics creations: Scoop Scuttle, Mystic Moot, Bingbang Buster, and Jumpin' Jupiter - restored, as they've never been seen before! In this rip-roaring retrospective of the influential Mad magazine cartoonist, Basil Wolverton's often-warped imagination combines with his outlandishly wacky visual humor to fascinate and delight. It collects the ultra-rare treasures Scoop Scuttle, Mystic Moot, Bingbang Buster, and Jumpin' Jupiter - as they've never been seen before! Due to the rock-bottom printing methods of ten-cent comic books, Wolverton's intricate line work was routinely obscured, and often obliterated. In this collection, every effort has been made to restore the art to its original splendor, and to at last present the uniquely detailed graphics of this justly revered comic book master. Full-color illustrations throughout.

Hardcover. London, Chapman & Hall, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, publisher's red and black marble-patterned cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Scoop is a humorous novel in which Waugh satirizes foreign correspondence and sensational journalism. Specifically, it tells the story of William Boot, an inexperienced journalist and author of a nature column for The Beast. This real life reporter was identified as Lord Deeds. Boot is mistakenly identified as his novelist cousin and sent to the fictional East African country of Ishmaelia to cover its socialist insurrection. Ironically, Boot's naivete allows him to get the real "scoop" not reported by more experienced journalists. Notably, Scoop is based on Waugh's own experiences working as a journalist for the British Daily Mail during Mussolini's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. Clean, square copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, Reilly & Britton, 1st, 1918, Illustrated boards, oblong 8 X 4 inches. 96 pages of b&w cartoons. The travails of Silas N. Dobbin Of Pickle Center, Iowa during his arrival and training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center during World War I. The book is a compilation of cartoons that ran in the camp newspaper, and was drawn by 18-year-old Perce Pearce, who would go on to be a writer, director, and producer at Walt Disney Studios. Pearce was the model for Doc in the cartoon feature Snow White, which he co-directed. Pearce's credits also included the Disney pictures Bambi, Song of the South, Treasure Island, Rob Roy and The Story of Robin Hood. Light stains to covers otherwise clean and tight.

Softcover. Boston, A Nonpareil Book, reprint, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 304 pages. Three novellas filled with humor and insight by one of America's modern literary masters. In Searches & Seizures, Elkin tells the story of the criminal, the lovelorn, and the grieving, each searching desperately for fulfillment - while on the verge of receiving much more than they bargained for. Infused with Elkin's signature wit and richly drawn characters, "The Bailbondsman," "The Making of Ashenden," and "The Condominium" are the creations of a literary virtuoso at the pinnacle of his craft. Mild soil, no markings.

Softcover. New York, Wm. H. Wise, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-Paginated. Comic strips by Clare Briggs that originally appeared in the New York Herald-Tribune. This being one volume of a seven volume set. Light wear to cover corners and edges. Clean, tight copy. Pebbled flexible cloth covers. Clean.

Softcover. New York, Wm. H. Wise, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-Paginated. Comic strips by Clare Briggs that originally appeared in the New York Herald-Tribune. This being one volume of a seven volume set. Light wear to cover corners and edges. Clean, tight copy. Pebbled flexible cloth covers. Clean.