A delightful reminder to age gleefully while living life to the fullest. "They say the best way to grow old is not to be in a hurry about it, and Lord knows, I've put it off for as long as I could." says humorist and encourager Barbara Johnson. But old age happens...with little or no effort on our part. If you're alive, you're getting older! In this third book in the Humor Me series, readers will find hilarious ways to age both ferociously and joyfully. Created especially for those who are young at heart but slightly older in other places.

Join the Queen of Encouragement for a lap around the laugh track! Laughing is Barbara Johnson's favorite aerobic exercise, and Humor Me is a zany collection of her heartiest laugh-filled workouts. Its pages bubble over with fun poked at some of the most laughable things in God's creation: the wonders of womanhood, the thrill and terror of child rearing, the Catch-22 of aging, the mirthful mysteries of men, and that hilarious show-stopper: death. This little book is a big gift for anyone who loves to laugh?or needs to laugh. If you've hit a pothole that has knocked the joy right out of your life, Barbara's favorite gigglers can realign your sense of humor, energize your joy level, and shine a beam of fun-light into your heart.

Mrs. Entwhistle may look like your sweet old granny, but things happen to her: she's caught up in the witness protection program, stuck in an elevator with an assortment of strangers, her house is burglarized and her dog is kidnapped. But Mrs. Entwhistle is dauntless; she didn't get to be a feisty 78 by wimping out. Come join her on her porch swing, meet her best friend, Maxine, and her dog, Roger. Maxine will probably offer you a bowl of her homemade soup. Sit a while. Come back when you can.

Grab your giggle box! Here comes Barbara Johnson with another helping heap of joy for women of all ages, aches, and "architecture." Author Barbara Johnson's encouraging book about a woman's adventures in aging, Living Somewhere Between Estrogen and Death, became the number-one best-selling paperback in the Christian market for the year in which it was published. Soon hordes of happy readers were flooding Barbara's mailbox with their own favorite jokes, touching stories, and hilarious tales of female misadventures. Now Barb has packed that amazing collection of wacky wit into this boisterously funny new book that's full of "laff leaks" about every stage of a woman's life?from diapers to dentures. No matter what stage of the "hormonal cesspool" you're splashing through, there's something here to touch your heart. You'll love Barb's quirky empty-nest de-cluttering strategies, her joyful insights on stress-soothing, husband-handling, kid-corralling, and parent-parenting in chapters like these: Having a Baby Is Like Writing a Book?Lots of Whining, Begging, and Pushing Who Are These Kids, and Why Are They Calling Me Mom? I Finally Got My Head Together?Then My Body Fell Apart We Started Out With Nothing?and Still Have Most of It Left Leaking Laffs Between Pampers and Depends is a heart-warming ride over the waves of humor in God's endless sea of love.

In classic Barbara Johnson style, these hilarious pages will show readers how to put life's trials into perspective and remember that there is a wonderful life awaiting them in heaven.

A professor of American Studies—and stand-up comic—examines sharply focused comedy and its cultural utility in contemporary society. Outstanding Academic Title, Choice In this examination of stand-up comedy, Rebecca Krefting establishes a new genre of comedic production, “charged humor,” and charts its pathways from production to consumption. Some jokes are tears in the fabric of our beliefs—they challenge myths about how fair and democratic our society is and the behaviors and practices we enact to maintain those fictions. Jokes loaded with vitriol and delivered with verve, charged humor compels audiences to action, artfully summoning political critique. Since the institutionalization of stand-up comedy as a distinct cultural form, stand-up comics have leveraged charged humor to reveal social, political, and economic stratifications. All Joking Aside offers a history of charged comedy from the mid-twentieth century to the early aughts, highlighting dozens of talented comics from Dick Gregory and Robin Tyler to Micia Mosely and Hari Kondabolu. The popularity of charged humor has waxed and waned over the past sixty years. Indeed, the history of charged humor is a tale of intrigue and subversion featuring dive bars, public remonstrations, fickle audiences, movie stars turned politicians, commercial airlines, emergent technologies, neoliberal mind-sets, and a cavalcade of comic misfits with an ax to grind. Along the way, Krefting explores the fault lines in the modern economy of humor, why men are perceived to be funnier than women, the perplexing popularity of modern-day minstrelsy, and the way identities are packaged and sold in the marketplace. Appealing to anyone interested in the politics of humor and generating implications for the study of any form of popular entertainment, this history reflects on why we make the choices we do and the collective power of our consumptive practices. Readers will be delighted by the broad array of comic talent spotlighted in this book, and for those interested in comedy with substance, it will offer an alternative punchline.

A university professor stops at a bar to leave some papers with a friend. Moments later, she leaves the bar with a companion to return to her vehicle. People abruptly approach and fire several handgun rounds into her body. The companion is wounded but gets to her. She dies as he holds her. Questions abound. Why does anyone want a professor of modern languages dead? Why was the original target enlarged to include another professor, a woman who works for the CIA, and a bar owner? There are so many questions, but so few answers. So small a group, with just three persons—Jed, Rusty, and Frank, but as the group grows, it will be called to deal with politicians and thieves, international criminals, and leaders of nations who betray their people. And the monster they seek to attack will be hidden, protected by the mighty, and born of evil. It isn’t a fair fight, but then, whatever is?

Young mage Toby's wild magic is killing him, and his only chance is an exiled wizard rumored to have lost his mind. Will Darius take a chance on teaching Toby--and find a reason to rejoin the world in the process--or leave Toby to his fate?

“I love everything about this hilarious book except the font size.” —Jon Stewart Although his career as a bestselling author and on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was founded on fake news and invented facts, in 2016 that routine didn’t seem as funny to John Hodgman anymore. Everyone is doing it now. Disarmed of falsehood, he was left only with the awful truth: John Hodgman is an older white male monster with bad facial hair, wandering like a privileged Sasquatch through three wildernesses: the hills of Western Massachusetts where he spent much of his youth; the painful beaches of Maine that want to kill him (and some day will); and the metaphoric haunted forest of middle age that connects them. Vacationland collects these real life wanderings, and through them you learn of the horror of freshwater clams, the evolutionary purpose of the mustache, and which animals to keep as pets and which to kill with traps and poison. There is also some advice on how to react when the people of coastal Maine try to sacrifice you to their strange god. Though wildly, Hodgmaniacally funny as usual, it is also a poignant and sincere account of one human facing his forties, those years when men in particular must stop pretending to be the children of bright potential they were and settle into the failing bodies of the wiser, weird dads that they are.