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Noonaville: The Search for Sanity
by Stephen BoltonA parallel universe in cartoons for connoisseurs of day-glo surrealism. Noonaville is the cartoon sensation from the Sunday Times Style Magazine, each week it transports Style readers to a quirky alternative world somewhere between Twin Peaks, Royston Vasey and Brookside Close. In the book, the weirdness can be relived again and again with approximately 160 cartoons on themes of love, work, death, fashion and fun, plus a running narrative linking all the sections. Noonaville is set to be the humour book that people read under their desks, in front of the telly, in their lunch breaks & before they go to bed. It is bright, fun and funny and has cult status written all over it.
The Painspotter's Guide to Broken Britain: 50 People to Love, Hate, Blame, Rate
by Andrew HolmesWelcome to Broken Britain! MPs are blaming 'The System' for their thieving behaviour. Bankers have burnt through more cash than President Mugabe and still been bailed out. Britain is Broke. Only one thing's going to sort this mess out - some good old-fashioned finger pointing. It's time to take revenge... Painspotting style. Let the Painspotting commence! This book is more effective than Prozac and cheaper than therapy. You may be angry, you may be mad, you may even be institutionalised, but put the baseball bat away, hang up your lynching rope, and let the Painspotting commence! 50 of the best Love them, hate them, blame them, rate them: The Painspotter's Guide to Broken Britain introduces the 50 most frightful characters you'll meet in a financial crisis, so prepare to laugh out loud at the Frightened Fat Cat, the Miserable Middle Class, the Self-help Saddo and many more.
The Read Aloud Cloud: An Innocent's Guide to the Tech Inside
by Forrest BrazealWhat is “the cloud”? Is it here or there? Should it be allowed? Should I even care? Have you ever imagined the internet as a giant Rube Goldberg machine? Or the fast-evolving cloud computing space as a literal jungle filled with prehistoric beasts? Does a data breach look like a neo-noir nightmare full of turned-up coat collars and rain-soaked alleys? Wouldn’t all these vital concepts be easier to understand if they looked as interesting as they are? And wouldn’t they be more memorable if we could explain them in rhyme? Whether you’re a kid or an adult, the answer is: YES! The medicine in this spoonful of sugar is a sneaky-informative tour through the past, present and future of cloud computing, from mainframes to serverless and from the Internet of Things to artificial intelligence. Forrest is a professional explainer whose highly-rated conference talks and viral cartoon graphics have been teaching engineers to cloud for years. He knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. But he has plenty of words, too. Your hotel key, your boarding pass,The card you swipe to pay for gas,The smart TV atop the bar,The entertainment in your car,Your doorbell, toothbrush, thermostat,The vacuum that attacked your cat,They all connect the cloud and you.Maybe they shouldn't, but they do. As a graduation gift (call it “Oh the Places You’ll Go” for engineering students), a cubicle conversation starter, or just a delightfully nerdy bedtime story for your kids, “The Read-Aloud Cloud” will be the definitive introduction to the technologies that everyone uses and nobody understands. You can even read it silently if you want. But good luck with that.
The Read Aloud Cloud: An Innocent's Guide to the Tech Inside
by Forrest BrazealWhat is “the cloud”? Is it here or there? Should it be allowed? Should I even care? Have you ever imagined the internet as a giant Rube Goldberg machine? Or the fast-evolving cloud computing space as a literal jungle filled with prehistoric beasts? Does a data breach look like a neo-noir nightmare full of turned-up coat collars and rain-soaked alleys? Wouldn’t all these vital concepts be easier to understand if they looked as interesting as they are? And wouldn’t they be more memorable if we could explain them in rhyme? Whether you’re a kid or an adult, the answer is: YES! The medicine in this spoonful of sugar is a sneaky-informative tour through the past, present and future of cloud computing, from mainframes to serverless and from the Internet of Things to artificial intelligence. Forrest is a professional explainer whose highly-rated conference talks and viral cartoon graphics have been teaching engineers to cloud for years. He knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. But he has plenty of words, too. Your hotel key, your boarding pass,The card you swipe to pay for gas,The smart TV atop the bar,The entertainment in your car,Your doorbell, toothbrush, thermostat,The vacuum that attacked your cat,They all connect the cloud and you.Maybe they shouldn't, but they do. As a graduation gift (call it “Oh the Places You’ll Go” for engineering students), a cubicle conversation starter, or just a delightfully nerdy bedtime story for your kids, “The Read-Aloud Cloud” will be the definitive introduction to the technologies that everyone uses and nobody understands. You can even read it silently if you want. But good luck with that.
The Abertump Uprising (The Strange Life of Horatio Evans #2)
by Ray NoyesGrowing in confidence, but fed up with a lack of progress in bringing communism to Abertump, Horatio Evans decides to declare the town an independent soviet socialist republic. He, as its leader, decides to emulate Karl Marx by creating a reading room behind Jones’ Emporium, (the ironmonger), in which to find inspiration. However, he finds he’s the only one who’s looking for inspiration. The rest of the town seem quite content, thank you. How will he stir up the populace and persuade them to revolt? Horatio enlists the aid of the communist parties of London, Moscow, and East Berlin in his push for revolution. He hides his full intentions from Abertump Town Council under the guise of twinning it with Berlin. A group of six men set off for the German capital in an ancient Austin A35 van to make contact with real communists, but fail to get very far. How Horatio extricates himself from the failed uprising is a stroke of sheer genius.
Animals' Guide to the Human Race
by D. E. KendallLove animals? Life stressing you out? Struggle to find time to read? If you answered "Yes" to any of the above, Animals' Guide is the perfect pick-me-up! Animals' Guide is jam-packed with smile-inducing case studies, provided by animals observing humans. Open any page, read a case study, have a laugh, then get on with your day feeling a little brighter. Witty observations from horses, cats, dogs, and exotic creatures fill the pages with humour. Animals enrich our lives every day; I bet if we could all take our pets to work with us, we'd be so much happier! Escaping reality for even a moment to enjoy some hilarious animal antics really does make a difference...
Cow in a Crash Helmet (Myrtle's Mishaps #1)
by Pauline TuckerEvery day, Myrtle watched the traffic going past the farm. Cars and lorries, horses and tractors... Then a big blue motorbike roared down the road, and that’s when her life changed forever! With the help of her best friend, Tom, and the long-suffering Farmer, Myrtle embarks on some excitement-fuelled adventures.
Disaster in His Wake: The Strange Life Of Horatio Evans (The Strange Life of Horatio Evans)
by Ray NoyesThe Making of Horatio Evans Ardent communist, defender of the proletariat, and bin man, Horatio is convinced he has a calling to transform the village of Abertump and wake it from its sleep. Self-appointed leader of men, his confidence knows no bounds, even when disaster stares him in the face. From school expulsion to army court martial, he seems destined to confront authority. His desire to go his own way leads to some DIY disasters as he sets up his own Kremlin in his tiny terraced house. Using cast-offs from the village and sand from the beach, his lean-to quickly becomes a dangerous lean-over. His problem-solving skills also leave much to be desired, as he cuts a wardrobe in half to move it upstairs, and fits a new fireplace while the old one is still alight. Follow Horatio’s exploits and spare a thought for Gladys, his permanently-on-the-verge-of-death wife.
Mexican on a...: A Mildly Amusing Game (Creative Portfolio Series #4)
by David NorringtonWhat is a Mexican? They are everywhere, you cannot miss them when you know what they look like. I do not mean the indigenous population of the country of Mexico. No, these are entirely different, and they have taken over the world, but you didn't realise it. The fact that they look a bit like the top of a sombrero is entirely coincidental with the idea that people from Mexico wear that type of hat a lot. Entirely. Coincidental. This book will provide you with some ideas for drawing your own Mexicans, or you can colour them in, or add your own descriptions to the ones that are shown, or leave the book on the bus, it's entirely up to you.
The Pocket Guide to Abertump (The Strange Life of Horatio Evans #5)
by Ray NoyesWelcome to the village of Abertump, nestling in the Swansea Valley. A village recovering from the loss of traditional industry, and coping in its own, eccentric manner. Walk the streets and meet the residents to find out some of the background to the series, The Strange Life of Horatio Evans. Horatio finds hapless and unwitting allies in the village as he seeks to implement a Soviet-style administration in the depths of a South Wales valley.
The Strange Life of Horatio Evans: (Boxset Books 1-4) (The Strange Life of Horatio Evans #6)
by Ray NoyesBoxset of books 1-4 of The Strange Life of Horatio Evans. Follow Horatio’s exploits in Abertump and spare a thought for Gladys, his permanently-on-the-verge-of-death wife.
Venice in the Valleys (The Strange Life of Horatio Evans #4)
by Ray NoyesThe Fogle family, the rich landowners of Abertump has a strange son, Marmaduke Wellington Fogle, who has returned penniless from his grand tour of Europe. He spent most of his time and their money tobogganing in Austria and lazing around Venice, where he fell in love with gondolas. Horatio had already tried using the canal for boating, but failed. So here is another chance for him to try again, this time using Fogle money. That Marmaduke insists on having gondolas, which Horatio has never heard of (he also thinks Venice is near Wrexham), causes him genuine problems. Where will he get them? Since he always refuses help, he decides to make them - rather special, and very Welsh, ones. Luckily for Horatio, Marmaduke, like his father, always adopts the philosophy of never actually doing anything but ‘leaving it up to the chaps’ to sort out. This provides space and time for Horatio to manage the construction of the gondolas himself with disastrous and rather comic results. Venice is not in imminent danger of facing stiff competition from Abertump!
The Village Theme Park (The Strange Life of Horatio Evans #3)
by Ray NoyesNow in his middle years, Horatio Evans has been knocked back by the failure of his communist uprising. The atmosphere in the town is also depressed, because several of the mines are to close. He sees this not as a crisis, but as another opportunity for a revolution - of sorts. If the mines are closing why doesn’t the town buy them (for a song) and create visitors’ attractions? Horatio’s idea of setting up the theme park is beset by a major problem - he has no cash. Persuading the once-rich Fogle family, which owns one of the mines (and most of Abertump) to collaborate with him, sees a clash between his communist, working class values and their upper-class privileged ones. Then Gladys comes to the rescue with a plan, not only for getting some cash but also for earning some themselves from the theme park. But how could a communist become a capitalist? Such a fundamental clash of belief is just another challenge for our loveable hero.
Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence (Jewish Lives)
by Lee SiegelA trenchant examination of an iconic American figure that explores the cultural and psychological roots of his comic genius Born Julius Marx in 1890, the brilliant comic actor who would later be known as Groucho was the most verbal of the famed comedy team, the Marx Brothers, his broad slapstick portrayals elevated by ingenious wordplay and double entendre. In his spirited biography of this beloved American iconoclast, Lee Siegel views the life of Groucho through the lens of his work on stage, screen, and television. The author uncovers the roots of the performer’s outrageous intellectual acuity and hilarious insolence toward convention and authority in Groucho’s early upbringing and Marx family dynamics. The first critical biography of Groucho Marx to approach his work analytically, this fascinating study draws unique connections between Groucho’s comedy and his life, concentrating primarily on the brothers’ classic films as a means of understanding and appreciating Julius the man. Unlike previous uncritical and mostly reverential biographies, Siegel’s “bio-commentary” makes a distinctive contribution to the field of Groucho studies by attempting to tell the story of his life in terms of his work, and vice versa.
Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence (Jewish Lives)
by Lee SiegelA trenchant examination of an iconic American figure that explores the cultural and psychological roots of his comic genius Born Julius Marx in 1890, the brilliant comic actor who would later be known as Groucho was the most verbal of the famed comedy team, the Marx Brothers, his broad slapstick portrayals elevated by ingenious wordplay and double entendre. In his spirited biography of this beloved American iconoclast, Lee Siegel views the life of Groucho through the lens of his work on stage, screen, and television. The author uncovers the roots of the performer’s outrageous intellectual acuity and hilarious insolence toward convention and authority in Groucho’s early upbringing and Marx family dynamics. The first critical biography of Groucho Marx to approach his work analytically, this fascinating study draws unique connections between Groucho’s comedy and his life, concentrating primarily on the brothers’ classic films as a means of understanding and appreciating Julius the man. Unlike previous uncritical and mostly reverential biographies, Siegel’s “bio-commentary” makes a distinctive contribution to the field of Groucho studies by attempting to tell the story of his life in terms of his work, and vice versa.
Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence (Jewish Lives)
by Lee SiegelA trenchant examination of an iconic American figure that explores the cultural and psychological roots of his comic genius Born Julius Marx in 1890, the brilliant comic actor who would later be known as Groucho was the most verbal of the famed comedy team, the Marx Brothers, his broad slapstick portrayals elevated by ingenious wordplay and double entendre. In his spirited biography of this beloved American iconoclast, Lee Siegel views the life of Groucho through the lens of his work on stage, screen, and television. The author uncovers the roots of the performer’s outrageous intellectual acuity and hilarious insolence toward convention and authority in Groucho’s early upbringing and Marx family dynamics. The first critical biography of Groucho Marx to approach his work analytically, this fascinating study draws unique connections between Groucho’s comedy and his life, concentrating primarily on the brothers’ classic films as a means of understanding and appreciating Julius the man. Unlike previous uncritical and mostly reverential biographies, Siegel’s “bio-commentary” makes a distinctive contribution to the field of Groucho studies by attempting to tell the story of his life in terms of his work, and vice versa.
Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew (Jewish Lives)
by Jeremy DauberA spirited dive into the life and career of a performer, writer, and director who dominated twentieth-century American comedy Mel Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, is one of the great comic voices of the twentieth century. Having won almost every entertainment award there is, Brooks has straddled the line between outsider and insider, obedient and rebellious, throughout his career, making out-of-bounds comedy the American mainstream. Jeremy Dauber argues that throughout Brooks’s extensive body of work—from Your Show of Shows to Blazing Saddles to Young Frankenstein to Spaceballs—the comedian has seen the most success when he found a balance between his unflagging, subversive, manic energy and the constraints imposed by comedic partners, the Hollywood system, and American cultural mores. Dauber also explores how Brooks’s American Jewish humor went from being solely for niche audiences to an essential part of the American mainstream, paving the way for generations of Jewish (and other) comedians to come.
The Valiant Little Tailor: A Novel (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
by Eric ChevillardThe classic Grimms' fairy tale of the valiant little tailor, as you’ve never heard it before Once upon a time, there lived a valiant little tailor who killed seven flies with one blow—but who is this narrator who has abruptly inserted himself into the story, claiming authorship? He’s indignant: the fairy tale, borne carelessly along by the popular imagination, subjected to the transformations of oral tradition, was collected in a lamentable state by the Brothers Grimm, and he intends to restore the tale and its giant-slaying, unicorn-fighting, boar-hunting star to their original magnificence. But the true hero of the story remains to be seen: Is it the tailor, the narrator, or someone else entirely? In this explosive retelling of the classic tale, Éric Chevillard enlists the reader in a dizzying game of crack-the-whip, with new directions and delights in every paragraph. At once irreverent and deeply sincere, this book is a mischievous, multifarious celebration of the power of stories and those who tell them.
A Cool Million: The Dismantling Of Lemuel Pitkin (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
by Nathanael WestA great American satirist, Nathanael West laughs in the face of the Horatio Alger myth. Like many an Alger, Lemuel Pitkin leaves his home on the farm to seek his fortune in the Big City. By the time he is through, he has been robbed, jailed, has lost his teeth, his eye, a leg, his scalp, and has witnessed a remarkable number of assults and political riots. In A Cool Million, West etches a classic parable of America in the chaotic Thirties.Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
The Day of the Locust (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Nathanael WestIn The Day of the Locust a young artist, Tod Hackett, arrives in Los Angeles full of dreams. But celebrity and artifice rule and he soon joins the ranks of the disenchanted that drift around the fringes of Hollywood. When he meets Faye Greener, an aspiring actress, he is intoxicated and his desperate passion explodes into rage.Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
Eyeless in Gaza: A Novel
by Aldous HuxleyTold over more than thirty years, in non-chronological order, Eyeless in Gaza revolves around the lives of a small group of the English upper-middle classes, and is ultimately Aldous Huxley’s most personal—and loosely autobiographical—novel. It is the story of Anthony Beavis, a cynical Oxford graduate coming of age in the wake of World War I. Unfulfilled by his life, he is persuaded by a friend to find a new way to live, leading him from blind hedonism to political revolution and then to spiritual enlightenment.
Miss Lonelyhearts
by Nathanael WestMiss Lonelyhearts is a decidedly off-kilter, darkly comic tale set in New York in the early 1930s. A nameless man is assigned to produce a newspaper advice column. It was meant to be a joke. But as endless letters from the Desperate, Sick-of-it-All and Disillusioned pile up for Miss Lonelyhearts's attention the joke begins to escape him.Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder: Large Print
by James De MilleA Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is James De Mille&’s most famous work, set in an imaginary, semi-tropical land in Antarctica that is inhabited by prehistoric monsters and a cult called the Kosekin. Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe&’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and Ms. Found in a Bottle, the main story follows the adventures of Adam More, a British sailor shipwrecked on a homeward voyage from Tasmania. In the strange world More discovers, he finds a well-developed human society whose values are reversed from the 19th century Western world he hails from: death and darkness are preferred to life and light, and poverty is revered while wealth is scorned. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
The Inimitable Jeeves
by P. G. WodehouseBertie becomes involved with his friend Bingo's pursuit of a waitress, flirting with the Communists, and "the Great Sermon Handicap." Musical commedy, without music.
Isaac Bickerstaff
by Richard SteeleFrom Richard Steele, the founder of the Tatler, later the Spectator. Bickerstaff was first used by Jonathan Swift to poke fun.