It’s not as if a year could be characterized as “fun”: there are too many moving parts for an entire line of hilariously whimsical or gut-busting fun to come to a point of overwhelming dominance in time and space. the best case scenario we can hope for, for a year, is mundane and uneventful… and 2020 was not that. one could even say that 2020 was a terrible year, horrible, very bad, not good at all. not only was it an election year with its necessary evil, but it was one in which a staggering number of people got sick and died, and a staggering number of people responded to that sickness and death with an emphatic “meh”.
Lockdowns, lockdowns, isolation and loneliness were commonplace for many this year, along with the needs to fill free time, practice self-care and relieve stress. comedy did its job and gave us poor fools of 2020 some much-needed joy and entertainment. This was particularly true of books: books by comedians, books about the major comedy movies and TV shows, comic novels, and absurd versions of reality all helped push back the crushing blows of the year with light, laughter, humor, and humor. intelligence. here are the top ten comedy books of 2020.
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10. american cheese: an indulgent odyssey through the world of artisanal cheese, by joe berkowitz
comedy is really the intersection point between surprise, revelation and joy, so it can be found anywhere. it can be argued that life is innately a comedy, so it’s an absolute joy when a well-told true story is naturally funny. Joe Berkowitz seeks out these stories by exploring poorly documented subcultures, like the world of competitive puns in 2017’s Far From Words and deeply dedicated cheesemaking in hers, Her Last American Cheese. It is a study of the lives of the people who make the best cheeses in the United States. but why is it so funny? well, the harmless (or even helpful) obsession is always hilarious, but so is the cheese itself. it’s a funny word, and the fact that it’s made from aged milk is rarely a flaw in the matrix that is life. While peppering the book with amusing descriptions (e.g., comparing fondue pots to hot tubs, dubbing the tyrosine cheese compound “flavor crisps”), Berkowitz serves primarily as a journalist and not a joke teller, letting go of the silly situations. speak for themselves, like when he attends a big cheese party literally called the cheese ball, and it’s hosted by “madame fromage”.
9. I want to be where normal people are, by rachel bloom
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It seems like every famous person eventually gets to write a collection of humorous essays. The best books of this nature are the self-critical ones about the individual’s difficult road to success and/or self-actualization, and Rachel Bloom’s is exactly that. Her comedic voice lends itself well to this skewed skewed format, whether it’s about a wacky ex-girlfriend or her musical comedy web videos, Bloom’s work is emotionally raw, self-deprecating, and embarrassing, even at its most absurd. We like Rachel Bloom because she gives us permission to admit when we’re clueless. Plus, this book boasts the best cover of the year, straight out of the kind of Judy Blume novel that clearly inspired the author’s many efforts.
8. #veryfat #verybrave: the fat girl’s guide to being #brave and not a moping, brooding, depressed, weeping fat girl in a bikini, by nicole byer
I love any piece of entertainment that can take the smallest part and boldly execute it for the entirety of a play. Richard Ayoade wrote an entire book on the forgettable top-down movie, and the Mortdecai movie is essentially 90 minutes of mustache jokes. it’s admirably ambitious to extend a premise to supernatural heights, repeating and riffing on the same limited material for so long that it becomes a dazzling comic feat that manages to express simultaneously that its subject matter is highly significant and also not significant at all. nicole byer, charming and charismatic in all her on-screen performances, achieves this with #veryfat #verybrave, which is a whole book about overweight people who wear swimsuits, and how they’re called brave for doing it on social media, maybe condescendingly. and yet #veryfat #verybrave wildly and loudly encourages the reader to accept themselves just the way they are… and also subtly asserts that it’s absurd and sad that people who aren’t thin have to be told to be fat. Have fun no matter what other people do. think.
7. Well Well Well: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, by Melissa Maerz
It must be difficult to put together an oral history. the authors have to sort through hundreds of hours of interviews with dozens of people, then find the best parts and put them together in the right order to tell a story that is objective and clear while making sure the right vibe of the topic is conveyed . and for something like dazed and confused, it’s all about the vibe. It’s Alright It’s Alright It’s Alright authentically and viscerally captures what it must have felt like to make the iconic, low-key independent comedy in Austin, Texas in the early 1990s, set on the last day of school in Austin, Texas, in 1976. In short, when a group of future movie stars, including a now-transcendent Matthew McConaughey, recreated Linklater’s high school experience, it was casual, warm, carefree, and loose, with plenty of substance use. no consequences. (or, you know, like dazed and confused). well, well, well is extremely immersive and, like the film in question, evokes that magical time of youth when one can instantly forge lifelong friendships while embarking on crazy, booze-soaked experiences. adventures.
6. create your own romantic comedy: choose your plot, meet your man and direct your happily ever after, by lana schwartz
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You know what’s fun? Romantic comedies. they are sparkling, serious and guarantee a happy ending. also fun: finding a hilarious, punchy, high-concept humor title on a bookstore display table and flipping through it and laughing out loud several times per page. a third fun thing: choose your own adventure, those adventure stories that even reluctant readers read in grade school because we loved starting over when the story didn’t go our way, it gave us control over the story and also subverted the tropes. With Build Your Own Rom-Com, Lana Schwartz combines all of the fun things listed above, deftly subverting the tired formulas used by ’80s, ’90s, and signature channel rom-coms (a subject she clearly has an encyclopedic knowledge of and appreciation for). unwavering). ) turning them into fun meta story points, pick your own adult adventure novel whose notions of romance are skewed and cracked by a diet of old-time Meg Ryan movies. And because of its game-like format, there’s a lot of repetition in building your own rom-com, not unlike a popular rom-com.
5. slouchers: the novelization, by mike sacks
mike sacks, already a pioneer in taking comedy seriously with his insightful collections of comedian interviews and here’s the kicker (2009) and pokeing a dead frog (2014), has created another fresh and unique contribution to the culture: Fake movie novelizations. Novelizations are those cheap paperbacks that tell the plot of a popcorn movie in prose form, and they were hugely popular in the ’70s and ’80s as a way to revive a favorite movie in the days before ubiquitous home video. , cable replacements and instant. transmission. sacks, who writes under assumed names, has embraced this very particular genre of books to present mock novel versions of movies that technically never existed in similar film genres, like his adaptation of a 1970s trucker movie (2017’s Stinky gets loose) and an ’80s teen flick (Passable in Pink from 2019). This year, Sacks turned his attention to skewering the grunge and slack culture of the early ’90s, a hitherto unexamined and rarely mocked moment. slouchers nail the sanctimonious, self-indulgent navel gazing of the era and its music and movies (particularly singles and slacker) while also poking fun at those who fell for its insidious marketing. slouchers novelization is presented as a used print, retaining the previous owner’s ridiculous footnotes and underlining.
4. a very punchy face: memories, by colin jost
In comedy nerd circles and among people who write about comedy, there is a tenuous tolerance for Colin Jost. No one seems to like the guy, nor can many recognize him when he puts in a particularly good performance on Saturday Night Live as the “weekend update” host. he enjoys a reputation as just another white guy trained in satire on the privileged path of the comedy life. Jost knows that this is how he is perceived, as evidenced by the title of his memoir. but this is a good memoir in the sense that it shows that jost is not what we think of him either. he has lived a colorful life, he is a dutiful student of comedy and his book is so well written that one realizes that his voice has immensely shaped the tone of snl for many years. but even if all of this wasn’t true, if this was just another backstage in the saturday night live book, it would be on this list because the never-before-heard stories and lore of the illustrious institution of comedy are irresistible to the very nerds of the comedy i pretend to hate jost.
3. little miss compton: memoir, by arden myrin
little miss little compton is a refreshingly original and unpredictable autobiography. The actress’s memoir is her life story, but it reads like a come-of-age comic novel. myrin has appeared in dozens of comedy things you’ve loved, and was among the best cast members on the underrated madtv, but little miss compton is mostly about her non-traditional, bohemian childhood on rhode island and her fascinating family, which they have a penchant for marrying on the dare. That, in turn, influenced her pursuit of comedy and acting, which are professions about taking risks, trying and making yourself vulnerable, qualities that abound at Little Miss Little Compton.
2. laugh lines: my life helping fun people be funnier, by alan zweibel
Although inadvertent, if his constant self-effacing humor is to be taken at face value, Alan Zweibel is an architect of 20th-century comedy, his influence and experience spanning many different eras. Professional memoirs of him begin with recollections of him as a gag writer, selling cornball jokes by the piece to vaudeville-vintage comedians Catskills and Borscht Belt. As American humor evolved, so did Zweibel, and then his book became a crackling collection of anecdotes about Saturday Night Live, where the author wrote for and with the great Gilda Radner… when they had no weekly discussions about their differences in comic vision. And then the book takes another turn because Zweibel adapted and looked forward, helping to create his Garry Shandling show, the first postmodern sitcom. The common thread running through all of Zwiebel’s experiences is also the moral of the story: Comedy is beautiful but it’s also tough, and it only comes about through a combination of collaboration and hard work.
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