Biography Humor

Well hello to you dear audiobook browser. Now I have your attention it would be rude if I didn't tell you a little about my literary feast. So, here is the thing: is it just me or does anyone else find that adulthood offers no refuge from the unexpected horrors, peculiar lack of physical coordination and sometimes unexplained nudity, that accompanied childhood and adolescence? I am proud to say I have a wealth of awkward experiences - from school days to life as an office temp - and here I offer my 18-year-old self (and I hope you, too, dear listener) some much needed caution and guidance on how to navigate life's rocky path.

You may know Anjelah Johnson for her viral sketch "Nail Salon" (over 100 million views globally) or her beloved ghetto-fabulous MadTV character Bon Qui Qui, but it's her clean humor and hilarious storytelling that make her one of the most successful stand-up comedians and actresses today. With her razor-sharp wit, Anjelah recounts funny stories from her journey.

This is a self help-book like no other. Because you are not helping yourself, James Acaster is helping you. When James quit all forms of social media in 2019 he felt like he'd been born anew, but he was worried he'd suffer withdrawal and get lured back online to compete in a never ending popularity contest with only one possible winner (f--king Zuckerberg). He knew that in order to stay clean he'd have to replace everything social media used to give him with three-dimensional real-life activities.

From the outrageously filthy and oddly innocent comedienne and star of the powerful 2015 film I Smile Back Sarah Silverman comes a memoir—her first book—that is at once shockingly personal, surprisingly poignant, and still pee-in-your-pants funny. If you like Sarah's television show The Sarah Silverman Program, or memoirs such as Chelsea Handler's Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea and Artie Lange's Too Fat to Fish, you'll love The Bedwetter.

Daniel Sloss' stand-up comedy engages, enrages, offends, unsettles, educates, comforts, and gets audiences roaring with laughter - all at the same time. In his groundbreaking specials, seen on Netflix and HBO, he has brilliantly tackled everything from male toxicity and friendship to love, romance, and marriage - and claims (with the data to back it up) that his on-stage laser-like dissection of relationships has single-handedly caused more than 300 divorces and 120,000 breakups.

When Tyler Merritt was diagnosed with cancer, everything he thought he knew about what mattered in life changed. This Changes Everything is a humorous and optimistic love letter to this beautiful life. Though he made it through a highly invasive surgery and thought he was in the clear, Tyler soon realized that the cancer had other plans. It wasn’t a question of if the tumor would come back for an encore, his doctors told him. It was a question of when.

Pedro Martin has grown up hearing stories about his abuelito—his legendary crime-fighting, grandfather who was once a part of the Mexican Revolution! But that doesn't mean Pedro is excited at the news that Abuelito is coming to live with their family. After all, Pedro has 8 brothers and sisters and the house is crowded enough! Still, Pedro piles into the Winnebago with his family for a road trip to Mexico to bring Abuelito home, and what follows is the trip of a lifetime, one filled with laughs and heartache.

For years, Gary Gulman had been the comedian’s comedian, acclaimed for his delight in language and his bracing honesty. But after two stints in a psych ward, he found himself back in his mother’s house in Boston—living in his childhood bedroom at age forty-six, as he struggled to regain his mental health. That’s where Misfit begins. Then it goes way back. This is no ordinary book about growing older and growing up. Gulman has an astonishing memory and takes the listener through every year of his childhood education, with detailed stories that are in turn alarming and riotously funny.

Marc Maron was a parent-scarred, angst-filled, drug-dabbling, love-starved comedian who dreamed of a simple life: a wife, a home, a sitcom to call his own. But instead he woke up one day to find himself fired from his radio job, surrounded by feral cats, and emotionally and financially annihilated by a divorce from a woman he thought he loved.

Randy Rainbow has a few things on his mind that he wants to talk about. As a savvy social commentator tuned into the public discourse, his unfailing intuition tells him that the perspective everyone in America is clamoring for is that of a privileged white male complaining about a bunch of shit. While writing his New York Times bestseller Playing With Myself, Randy saw an America in crisis. He knew that what the country needed to get back on its high heels was a hard-hitting gay agenda and here it is—Low Hanging Fruit.

At 24, Sebastian Maniscalco arrived in LA with a suitcase and saved up minimum wages. He knew no one and nothing about standup comedy, but he was determined to go for it anyway. At 44, he's on the Forbes' list of highest earning comedians, sells out arenas, and has starred in four hit comedy specials including Why Would You Do That? on Showtime. Stay Hungry tells the story of the 20 years in between.

Anyone who saw an episode of Saturday Night Live between 1999 and 2006 knows Rachel Dratch. She was hilarious! So what happened to her? After a misbegotten part as Jenna on the pilot of 30 Rock, Dratch was only getting offered roles as "Lesbians. Secretaries. Sometimes secretaries who are lesbians." Her career at a low point, Dratch suddenly had time for yoga, dog- sitting, learning Spanish - and dating. After all, what did a forty-something single woman living in New York have to lose?

I'll Just Be Five More Minutes is a personal essay collection of laugh-out-loud-funny, tear-jerking, and at times cringey true stories of Emily's experiences as a neurodivergent woman. With the newfound knowledge of her ADHD, Emily candidly reexamines her complicated relationships (including one with a celebrity stalker), her money problems, the years she spent unknowingly self-medicating, and her hyperfixations (two words: decorative baskets). A memoir-in-essays both entertaining and enlightening, I'll Just Be Five More Minutes is for people with ADHD, as well as those who know and love them.

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the listener from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness". This uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is.

David Spade is best known for his harsh "Hollywood Minute" sketches on SNL, his starring roles in movies like Tommy Boy and Joe Dirt, and his seven-year stint as Dennis Finch on the series Just Shoot Me. Now, with a wit as dry as the weather in his home state of Arizona, the "comic brat extraordinaire" delivers a memoir.

Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world's biggest stars for nearly 20 years. He is loved across the nation for his delight in the peculiar and for his ability to find humour and a common ground in all that life brings.

In Successful Failure, Kevin Fredericks recounts hilarious stories and sincere insight from his adventures (and misadventures) trying to make it in life. From performing under an alias to avoid getting fired from his suit-and-tie day job to breaking a chair onstage and quitting stand-up for six months, from pooping his pants on a bus next to his future wife to starting a clothing line called Dreams Don’t Die (they sure do if the merch doesn’t sell), Kevin reminds listeners that while we might not be The Rock, Warren Buffett, or Kevin Hart, we’re all out here trying, and that’s okay.

Have you ever been badgered by an annoying pick-up artist at the bar? Ever felt a burning desire to emotionally torture a friend’s boyfriend in an act of revenge? Have you ever endured just talking to a man before? If so, then this book is for you. With more than 100 phrases, questions, and comebacks, How to Piss Off Men is your essential guide to sending even the most relentless mansplainer into an existential crisis.

Following his two New York Times best sellers, Brain Droppings and Napalm & Silly Putty, comes George Carlin's third audiobook, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, a riotous journey through the mind of one of America's premiere comic observers.

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of being Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain.