So Many Books; So little Time

Help! I’m Laughing and I Can’t Get Up

Help! I’m Laughing and I Can’t Get Up: Fall-Down Funny Stories to Fill Your Heart and Lift Your Spirit

by LIz Curtis Higgs

c. 1998

I happened into this book almost by accident. A friend from church was moving and offered those of us who helped her our choice of selected books she was discarding and I picked this one up. I’m a sucker for good Christian humor books and I know my friend to have excellent taste in humor. So, it came home but then it went on the shelf–until….I needed to have a book finished by the end of August and the one I was reading wasn’t going very well. Humor is always a fast read because who can stop laughing????

This book is funny but it isn’t just funny. It’s filled with insight as to why we laugh, what we laugh at and how we laugh. Liz Curtis Higgs dissects the laughing style of what we’re laughing at and the laugh we use and even the person we are inside that makes us laugh the way we laugh. And still the jokes are funny. She dissects herself too and finds out why she does humor and not “deep theology” like she would like to. She is an encourager and her gift of encouragement is humor. She can’t tell a joke (she says) but she can make us laugh–on stage and off.

This book is still in print and should always be in print. It’s 249 pages of insight and humor and laughs that all of us need again and again. Time for me to check out some of her other books–like all of them. We all need to laugh more. We may not live longer, but then again, we might.

If Nature Calls…Hang Up!

If Nature Calls…Hang Up! A Classic Collection of Outdoor Humor

Articles Previously Published in Outdoor Life

c. 1999

This is a funny and thought-provoking book. If you look closely at the cover, you will see hunters taking aim at a steel barrel tied to a sawhorse with a mounted deer had attached to it. And so go many of the stories in this work.

This is as much a study in Culture as it is a study of hunting and fishing humor. In the story “Lightning Rod Dog,” you meet the typical snake oil salesman from yesteryear and the men who were his match. In “Terror of the Pack Train,” you meet a horse with a mind of his own. “Mekong Madness” takes you to Asia, “The Argentine Way” to South America, and “Rabbit Hunt, Indian Style” to the southeast US.

Between stories are cartoons and “Tall But Short” tall tales from the modern era. This can be a fun read or it could be used to teach about the differences of then and now and here and there along with how to write a modern tall tale.

Some language but very little. All in all this is just a decent book with which to remind yourself why you aren’t out there in the woods–or to make you wish you were.

Flying By The Seat of My Pants

Flying by the Seat of My Pants: Flight Attendant Adventures on a Wing and a Prayer

by Marsha Marks

c. 2005

Doesn’t every little girl want to be a flight attendant? I did when I was little. I loved to fly when I got the chance and it just seemed like the sort of thing that would be a great thing to do. Get on an airplane, see the world and get paid for it.

Well, that’s sort of the thought that Marsha Marks had when she became a flight attendant. That and that she needed to do something rather than mooch off a friend any longer. So, at 29, having lost her job, lost her fiance, and having been evicted from her apartment, Marsha pitches herself to the airline in third person and gets a job as an aged, brand-new flight attendant.

And that’s where the hilarity begins. Her entire life revolves around the funniest things you think could never happen on an airplane. Like, how many of you would believe that your flight attendant could forget her uniform? And that the airline wouldn’t have one lying around she could borrow? I mean those ladies are all the same size, aren’t they? Imagine if you will, a size 12 lady in a size {oops} 2 uniform. (Please don’t spill the pepper! I can’t afford to sneeze!)

Did you know that flight attendants occasionally hide in overhead bins? Mostly to surprise their frequent fliers so if you start seeing the same flight attendant on all your flights and then you don’t–careful how you open that overhead bin. Unless, of course, a former president has flown that airline lately.

And how many of you have ever been afraid of getting on the wrong plane? You check your ticket and check the gate and make absolutely sure you have the right place and are getting on the right plane. Imagine a flight attendant getting on the wrong plane. And staying on it till she reached the wrong destination and had to drive all night to get home.

Marsha Marks will take you from her homeless, single days to her marriage to a man who looks young enough to be her son through her pregnancy and introduces you to her friends who have just as hilarious lives as she does. One rips the toupee off a man on a flight. One threw up on a passenger. And I don’t think any of us want to know what that one drank.

But through it all, Marsha’s focus never changed. It was up on God all the time. On the days that she couldn’t get to work on time because she was dressed and the days she was on time but couldn’t possibly be kind to anyone including her co-workers.

For those of you who thought all those jokes on airplanes in the movies never really happened–guess again. And then see how God gave that flight attendant a sense of humor to get through the flight without throwing the passengers off. This is funny from the first page to the last and a fast enough read to finish long before the in-flight movie.

Whether you fly or not, if you need to laugh at life, Marsha Marks will tickle your funny bone.

My copy, of course, came off the discount rack. It’s paperback and a fast read except for the breaks to wipe the tears from laughing.

Honey, The Carpet Needs Weeding, Again!

I was given a book yesterday by a friend. It’s a bit old (1993) but it really hit the spot. Several of my friends and co-workers are having health problems or members of their immediate families are. So, it’s been a bit tense at work as we wait for word on someone to come out of surgery or get test results. Sometimes even here at Beacon we get a little tense and serious. Well, this isn’t.

Honey, The Carpet Needs Weeding, Again! *

by Martha Bolton

This is Erma Bombeck on steroids and giving praise to God at the same time. I started laughing with the acknowledgements and didn’t stop until the last sentence. The 26 chapters can be used as devotions, Sunday School introductions, or just for a laugh when you can’t find the top of your desk. Admittedly, since it’s written by a woman, women will probably get more out of it but any pastor who feels like putting nameplates on his pews will want to share chapter 2–The Great Pew Invasion. You may want to share it with the ushers first and the congregation after about five weeks of pew hopping, though. Anyone who has gone grocery shopping hungry will be able to relate to chapter 6–Paper, Plastic or Crane. And if there are any parents of budding musicians (especially drummers) you will know exactly where she’s coming from in chapter 15–And the Beat Goes On…And On…And On.

She talks about shopping (She’s a woman! Of course she talks about shopping!), teenagers, family dinners, earthquakes, tornadoes, housework, church work, crafts, jogging, baseball (played in formal evening attire), hospital visits, romance, and wills. And she does it all with no foul language and her faith in God showing loud and clear.

This copy is paperback. Published by Vine Books.

*I asked my friend how she knew.