Laughs galore as EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony
winner) comedy legend Mel Brooks looks back on his remarkable life and career.
I’ve met Mel a few times, and he was delighted when I told him that a French au
pair once said, about my mother-in-law, “She has high anxiety.” Meaning
vertigo. And High Anxiety was Mel’s spoof of Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
He loved to hear that. “She said that? She really said that??”
Hearing Mel reading it in my earphones made
my daily walks a joy. He certainly knows
how to tell a funny story—and this book is overflowing with them.
'Delightful. A great, fun read.' DAVID JASON 'Mel Brooks is the king of comedy.' DAVID BADDIEL 'Riotous' DAILY MAIL 'A jaunty romp across Brooks's career' THE TIMES
__________________________ At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now, for the first time, this EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner shares his story in his own words.
Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny.
It’s not easy to combine two very different genres of
fiction successfully, let alone three, but Aoki does.
Aliens owning a donut store in California’s
San Gabriel Valley; a violin master teacher who has sold her soul to the devil;
a transgender kid cast out by their family, who has a natural talent for the
instrument despite never having had a lesson, and who is taken advantage of by
everyone, until she starts to study with her mysterious teacher.
I was fascinated to see how on earth—as well
as off it—these three very different elements could possibly combine into
something harmonious. They do.
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.
When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.
Another memoir by
another funny and talented writer. Subtitled “Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus,”
this anecdote-rich, leisurely view of her life shows why Toksvig is a British
National Treasure.
As in all memoirs,
there is pain as well as pleasure, but Toksvig’s insights throw light into even
the darkest of corners. And her
observations of London, as it happens all around her from her front-row seat at
the top of the bus, bring my city richly to life.
This long-awaited memoir from one of Britain's best-loved celebrities - a writer, broadcaster, activist, comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years, presenter of QI and Great British Bake Off star - is an autobiography with a difference: as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it.
'Between the Stops is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It's about a bus trip really, because it's my view from the Number 12 bus (mostly top deck, the seat at the front on the right), a double-decker that plies its way from Dulwich, in South East London, where I was living,…
With millions watching on live stream, a retired British school teacher running his heroic young battle-mage avatar, Daxx, and his teammates - Qrysta, an Asian American dual-wielding sword dancer, and Grell, an Australian Orc - win the World Championship of Sword and Sorcery.
Next thing he knows, he finds himself in the middle of a wilderness he doesn't recognize. Armed only with a crappy sword he has no idea how to use, and in beginner-level gear, he discovers, to his astonishment, that he is now his own avatar, Daxx. For real.
And so the adventure starts, leading to a quest far more challenging than any he has faced before, in which the stakes are not only the fate of the realm but their very lives.
