quick question

[breadandroses]

I need a book or books. They must be relatively small and available in paperback, and they need to be literary candy. Nothing I need to work at, nothing that takes time to get into. Readers: which are the books that you read brushing your teeth, and under the covers late at night?

Comments

[jain]

Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast and Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book by Bill Richardson. Clever, quick reads about two brothers who run a B&B that functions as a readers' retreat. Quoting a bit from the chapter "The Top Ten Authors Over Ten Years at the Bachelor Brothers' B&B":

Bookcases the world over contain the first volume of Marcel Proust's lengthy and elegant sequence, A la recherche du temps perdu. Readers the world over pray to be visited by a mildly debilitating disease: something that will necessitate their confinement to a chaise in a cork-lined room; something that will drain them of all ambition, save the urge to get beyond the famous dipping of the madeleine that happens early on in Swann's Way.

A Treasury of Royal Scandals and A Treasury of Great American Scandals by Michael Farquhar. Non-fiction, and just what the titles sound like.

Any- and everything by P.G. Wodehouse.

Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris. Screamingly funny memoirs. I'm not sure how many of them are available in paperback, though.

David Starr, Space Ranger and its sequels by Isaac Asimov. If I've not pimped the Lucky Starr books to you before, I should have. They're science fiction mysteries about scientist/adventurer Lucky Starr and his sidekick Bigman Jones (who stands 5'2" if he stretches a bit), and they were a formative adolescent experience for me.

Tales of the Black Widowers, More Tales of the Black Widowers, Banquets of the Black Widowers, Puzzles of the Black Widowers, and The Return of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov. Connected short mysteries. I'm fairly certain the first three are available in paperback, but I don't know about the last two.

I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Buddies, Everybody Loves You, and Some Men Are Lookers by Ethan Mordden. Connected short stories about a group of gay men living in Manhattan. Think Tales of the City only funnier and less soap opera-esque.

Pass the Butterworms by Tim Cahill. Travel literature, also very funny. (Apparently he's written other travel books, which I'm thinking of checking out myself.)

And, on that note, some books that I've been meaning to read and that probably fit your criteria, but I haven't read them yet to be sure:
Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille by Steven Brust
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead! by James Kirkwood
Practical Demonkeeping: A Comedy of Horrors by Christopher Moore
Anything by Daniel Pinkwater