Here are 36 books that Kids Write Jokes fans have personally recommended if you like
Kids Write Jokes.
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As a clinical psychologist I know how critical it is to have someone help you see beyond where you can see yourself. Authors have served that role for me at every stage of my development. It boils down to a pretty simple equation, how we think and feel determines how we behave. The path to different starts in your mind, and books are one of the most successful activators of your thoughts. My path of self-discovery led me to these books and the wisdom within them continue to expand my opportunities. I hope they serve as a launch pad for you.
For me enduring joy has been elusive and too easily stolen.
This book provides an active course for capturing it and holding on to it. One area that hit the bullseye for me was the need for laughter in the maintenance of joy. I was rewarded as a child for being serious and responsible.
As a result, they are my learned defaults. The truth, however, is that they are not my natural way. Those close to me always note that I am funny, but if you are just meeting me or encounter me in a work setting, you would never guess this.
Unleashing laughter in all settings has become my new goal.
Two spiritual giants. Seven days. One timeless question.
'The ultimate source of happiness is within us.' DALAI LAMA
'We grow in kindness when our kindness is tested.' DESMOND TUTU
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama have been friends for many, many years. Between them, they have endured exile, violence and oppression. And in the face of these hardships, they have continued to radiate compassion, humour and above all, joy.
To celebrate His Holiness's eightieth birthday, Archbishop Tutu travelled to the Dalai Lama's home in Dharamsala. The two men spent a week discussing a single burning question: how do we…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve worked on the frontlines of the hospital, clinic, and delivery rooms for the last 25 years and in global settings after traumatic disasters…As a physician activist, Justice is my act of service. And yet, the moment I found out my young son had a fatal illness, fighting for Justice felt elusive. Until I started fighting for myself. Until I realized that if I walked back toward my unfathomable pain, I could find something revolutionary... Joy. Now, this work of finding Joy has become my most potent medicine for my patients and myself. It is my mission to make sure everyone knows Joy is accessible. No matter what.
I had to put this book in because sometimes it gives me great Joy to get lost in a good story, especially one where women come out victorious.
This is set in Seattle, where I currently live, which also was fun and literally I turned page to page and lost track of time. It’s been a long time since I’ve read fiction and reading this was pure Joy. At the end, I wanted it to keep going and am secretly hoping for a sequel!
As a kid, I read the New Yorker—first, just the cartoons; later, the articles—and dreamed about becoming a writer. Sentences danced in my head as I fell asleep. I’ve always been especially interested in human behavior and the match-up between our insides and outsides. How do the roadmaps in our brains inform the way we act around others? Over the years, I’ve read hundreds of studies and interviewed countless experts to inform my writing about well-known figures like Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, Marilyn Monroe, and Maya Angelou. But I’m just as captivated by everyone outside the spotlight. We all have stories to tell.
Like Sacks, Jamison is the rare scientist whose writing is both research-based and accessible.
In An Unquiet Mind, the memoir she published in 1995, Jamison shared her diagnosis of manic depression, chipping away at stigma by opening up about herself. In Exuberance, she takes readers in another direction by delving into a single human characteristic.
I have always been fascinated by people who are positive, upbeat, and charming—people who seem to be enveloped in joy. Jamison explores the history of exuberance and the people who exude it, from Teddy Roosevelt to P.T. Barnum.
Jamison’s enthusiasm for her subject springs from the page. Exuberance “leaps, bubbles, and overflows, propels its energy through troop and tribe,” she writes. “It spreads upward and outward, like pollen toted by dancing bees…”
A national bestselling author examines one of the mind's most exalted states—one that is crucially important to learning, risk-taking, social cohesiveness, and survival itself.
“[Jamison is] that rare writer who can offer a kind of unified field theory of science and art.” —The Washington Post Book World
With the same grace and breadth of learning she brought to her studies of the mind’s pathologies, Kay Redfield Jamison examines one of its most exalted states: exuberance. This “abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion” manifests itself everywhere from child’s play to scientific breakthrough.
Exuberance: The Passion for Life introduces us to such notably irrepressible…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Loads of people want to be writers and the dream can come true! It did for me. So, I want to tell people about the books that have helped to turn me into a novelist. Initially, I wrote journalistic pieces about bizarre leisure activities for various British newspapers and magazines: I lay on a bed of nails, walked on red hot coals, met people who collect bricks as a hobby...and even lost my underpants while performing on the flying trapeze! (No kidding!) But my ultimate goal was always to become a novelist. Then, one day, I discovered the subject I just had to turn into a novel. And the result was...Death and Mr. Pickwick.
This book made me realise that a great novel could be largely plotless. The Tree of Man simply describes the lives of a husband and wife in Australia—a sort of echo of the Garden of Eden set in the Outback. I can’t claim that I remember many details about it now—I read it years and years ago, but I do know that it made me feel that I too could write a plotless book, based on simple, everyday human experiences.
Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company journeys to a remote patch of land he has inherited in the Australian hills. Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife Amy to the wilderness. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment.
Green sketching opened my eyes to the beauty and joy in my life that I’d never noticed before, beauty and joy that cost nothing to me or the planet. It quietened my busy brain, reduced my anxiety, and made me much more resilient. I’m now trying to help others put down their phones and pick up a pencil. Because when we change what we look at, we can change how we feel. And I’m convinced that once we see and appreciate nature’s beauty with fresh eyes, we’ll start to love and take care of it again.
This book introduced me to the concept of joy spotting and changed the way I see the world. Well-researched and hugely engaging, I was fascinated to discover why I’m consistently drawn to certain color combinations, patterns, and environments. Full of ‘aha’ moments, I loved connecting the dots (in my case, multi-colored) and clarifying what and where truly brings me joy.
Few books have impacted my life and creativity so much and on such an ongoing basis. But since reading this book, I’ve embraced my love of color throughout my home, garden, and wardrobe and embedded the concept of joy spotting at the heart of my work. I highly recommend it!
Make small changes to your surroundings and create extraordinary happiness in your life with groundbreaking research from designer and TED star Ingrid Fetell Lee.
Next Big Idea Club selection—chosen by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant as one of the "two most groundbreaking new nonfiction reads of the season!"
"This book has the power to change everything! Writing with depth, wit, and insight, Ingrid Fetell Lee shares all you need to know in order to create external environments that give rise to inner joy." —Susan Cain, author of Quiet and founder of Quiet Revolution
I fell in love with reading and writing as a child, but it wasn’t until college that I discovered the magic of poetry and began writing it myself. I began to immerse myself in poetry and, in particular, the poetry of Pablo Neruda through a course on The Poet’s Voice in which we explored how the poet’s voice changes over a lifetime of writing. For many years, I thought of myself as a fiction writer, but gradually I turned to poetry, and poetry saved my life. I start each day with a poem or two, and much of my work is inspired by the poets and poems that I read.
This is the book I turn to for inspiration. Similar to Neruda’s poetry, Crooker turns the everyday into poetry. No matter the page, I find a poem that inspires more poems. I rediscover the magic of this morning, this day, again and again.
Crooker has trouble writing a poem and turns to Betty Crocker, the dry martini, cream puffs. I can then enter my own day with my eyes open wide enough to see its gifts in even the simplest of things.
Some Glad Morning, Barbara Crooker's ninth book of poetry, teeters between joy and despair, faith and doubt, the disconnect between lived experience and the written word. Primarily a lyric poet, Crooker is in love with the beauty and mystery of the natural world, even as she recognizes its fragility. But she is also a poet unafraid to write about the consequences of our politics, the great divide. She writes as well about art, with ekphrastic poems on paintings by Hopper, O'Keeffe, Renoir, Matisse, Cezanne, and others. Many of the poems are elegaic in tone, an older writer tallying up her…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
After my dad died, I didn’t know where to turn. People felt uncomfortable talking to a seventeen-year-old girl about her dead dad. They felt even more uncomfortable talking to me about it one, two, ten years later. Still, I couldn’t, can’t, stop thinking about it. I turned, then, to books. These books made and make me feel seen. They aren’t about “moving on” or “letting go” but the ways in which leaning into grief’s deep well connects us to love’s true depths. These books are honest and pure, and if you don’t know what to say to a friend who’s mourning, let these authors speak for you.
Joy might not be the first thing you think of when
considering grief, but then maybe you haven’t read Ross Gay.
Gay understands
that joy exists because of grief, not as a counterbalance, but in a deeply
reciprocal relationship. As his father is dying, he presses their faces
together, and in his father’s freckles, he sees seeds, a garden. It is just one
instance in this book where Gay recognizes that what grows from loss is love.
His book clarifies what I know to be true: that when we fall into the hole of
loss, we find ourselves in a deep well of love.
A collection of gorgeously written and timely pieces in which prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life's inevitable hardships.
In "We Kin" he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in "Share Your Bucket" he explores skate-boarding's reclamation of public space; he considers the costs of masculinity in "Grief Suite"; and in "Through My Tears I Saw," he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying.
Growing up I never felt good enough. I was called ‘tubby’ and ‘little tubette.’ I tried to people-please my way to love and acceptance, being who I thought others wanted and needed me to be. I achieved. I followed (most of) the rules and was nice and polite. But none of that worked to cultivate a balanced or meaningful life. Not surprisingly, this led me to a career in psychology and a love of learning about how to help others with similar struggles. Reading and writing self-development books has completely changed my life for the better. I hope this list will help you do the same!
If I had to bring my kids to one more trampoline park I was going to quit parenting. Until I decided to start jumping too!
Spoiler alert—it didn’t go well for my bladder and me, but it was filled with laughter and fun! In The Fun Habit, Mike Rucker convinces us that fun and play are not optional if we truly wish to thrive (I do!) and he shows us how to build in the time for it. He even brings fun to work and parenting!
Discover the latest compelling scientific evidence for the revitalizing value of fun and how having fun can help you achieve better work-life balance, reduce stress and much more.
Doesn't it seem that the more we seek happiness, the more elusive it becomes?
There is an easy fix, hiding in plain sight. Fun is an action you can take here and now, practically anywhere, anytime. Through research and science, we know fun is enormously beneficial to our physical and psychological well-being, yet fun's absence from our modern lives is striking. Whether you're a frustrated high-achiever trying to find a better work-life…
I’ve worked on the frontlines of the hospital, clinic, and delivery rooms for the last 25 years and in global settings after traumatic disasters…As a physician activist, Justice is my act of service. And yet, the moment I found out my young son had a fatal illness, fighting for Justice felt elusive. Until I started fighting for myself. Until I realized that if I walked back toward my unfathomable pain, I could find something revolutionary... Joy. Now, this work of finding Joy has become my most potent medicine for my patients and myself. It is my mission to make sure everyone knows Joy is accessible. No matter what.
This book is exactly the upward spiral of Joy someone needs when they ask me, “But, how, Dr. Sethi, how do I even start to feel Joy?”
It’s so simple and accessible. Each essay or prompt brings the reader closer into seeing their own life as the way to get to Joy, especially when things are hard.
Bighearted and hopeful. Unflinchingly honest and healing. A profound compendium of intimate, inspiring essays and thoughtful prompts that will keep you afloat in difficult times and sustain you in the everyday.
Microjoys are a practice of uncovering joy and finding hope at any moment. They are accessible to everyone, despite all else. When we hone the ability to look for them, they are always available. Microjoys are the hidden wisdom, long-ago memories, subtle treasures, and ordinary delights that surround us: A polka-dot glass on a thrift store shelf. A dear friend's kindness at just the right time. The neighborhood spice…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
We are two historians who have been writing together for about a decade now, first on project related to race relations after WWI, then on a book about debates over the enlistment age in nineteenth century America. Rebecca teaches at UCSD while Frances works at the University of Sydney in Australia, but we regularly meet online to write together and talk about our favorite new books.
When this work first came out, it was the only wide-ranging study of children’s lives during the American Civil War. Marten revealed how much there was to know about this topic, and how much there was to work with—not just material produced by adults for or about children—from picture books and board games to artwork and literature—but also a wealth of letters, diaries, and newspapers written by children to document their wartime experiences. Marten, as either author or editor, subsequently followed up with numerous books that have expanded research in this area. But this one remains a favourite for its readable prose and deadpan asides.
Children--white and black, northern and southern--endured a vast and varied range of experiences during the Civil War. Children celebrated victories and mourned defeats, tightened their belts and widened their responsibilities, took part in patriotic displays and suffered shortages and hardships, fled their homes to escape enemy invaders and snatched opportunities to run toward the promise of freedom. Offering a fascinating look at how children were affected by our nation's greatest crisis, James Marten examines their toys and games, their literature and schoolbooks, the letters they exchanged with absent fathers and brothers, and the hardships they endured. He also explores children's…
