February, 2024

All Fun & Games

Posted on February 1, 2024 by | Posted in about LibriVox, Blog, Books, For Volunteers, Monthly Picks, News | Comments: Comments Off on All Fun & Games

February – the month of carnival, Mardi Gras, Shrovetide, Shrove Tuesday… Whatever it’s called where you are from, let’s have fun with 10 hilarious gems from our catalog.

Humor is best delivered in short bursts. And it can’t get any pithier than Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture, little vignettes from 19th century Canada by Palmer Cox.

Mody Coggin Boatright remembers his good ol’ dialect for his Tall Tales From Texas. These eight stories feature horses, cowboys, campfires, and Pecos Bill.

What once was the pinnacle of behavior leaves us chuckling today. Then again, already in 1753, Jane Collier’s Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting was meant tongue-in-cheek.

Mark Twain was the master of humor – but in this one he might even be serious: Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences lists 114 (out of 115) offenses against literary art.

Humor is when you laugh regardless, says a German proverb, obviously inspired by the country’s bureaucracy… Rudolf Greinz writes about Der heilige Bürokrazius, a saint residing in public offices.

When Marc dreams up a lovely girl, he couldn’t have imagined that she’d come to life one day. Henry Farrell chronicles The Early Misadventures of Toffee in great detail.

The term misadventures doesn’t quite fit Roxy Hart’s crime – we’re talking murder after all. Maurice Watkins took the case from 1924 Chicago and turned it into a Broadway musical – and we made a play out of it.

How to exhibit Perfect Behavior at musicals, concerts, or in the opera was researched by Donald Ogden Stewart. This is an interesting glimpse what kind of social crises were feared in 1922.

No matter when, getting lost in New York counts as a crisis. Then again, since this is one of five Follies in Fiction penned by master humorist Stephen Leacock, it can’t be too serious.

Laughter is universal and independent of language and culture. Russian writer Nikolai Leskov collects seven short Святочные рассказы (Yuletide stories) on things that may not be as serious as they sound at first.

Enjoy – and do try to “laugh regardless”!

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