Best Books of June: Humor & Entertainment

Here are a few of our favorite Humor & Entertainment titles this month. See more editors' picks in the Best Books of the Month.

Here are two items I will admit to owning: Number one is a 1975 first edition Star Fleet Technical Manual, a compendium of everything from uniform insignia specs to schematics for transporters and tricorders. The second is a full set of U.S.S. Enterprise blueprints, neatly packaged in a clear vinyl bag and in the same condition as I received them over four decades ago. (We'll leave my long-lost Kirk and Spock dolls for a future discussion.) So while I'm not much of a science fiction fan these days, I do get a little sense of frisson when I see a book like The Star Trek Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained), a survey of more than 50 years of Star Trek in all of its incarnations, including explorations of all of its new worlds and civilizations, as well as its technology--not just the fantastical, but also real-world examples that the iconic series foresaw. Happy Father's Day, Trekker Dads.

Okay: I was not here; I did not say this. Onto more of the best books of the month in Humor & Entertainment.

  

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Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big by Jensen Karp

Before there was Eminem, there was "Hot Karl." Hot Karl is Jensen Karp, a Jewish kid from the Los Angeles suburbs who rapped his way from a friend's bar mitzvah to the brink of a million-dollar recording contract--performing along the way with the likes of Kanye West, Redman, and will.i.am--only to have his record buried under the (slim) shadiest of circumstances.

 

 

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I'm Just a Person by Tig Notaro

In a span of four months, Tig Notaro was diagnosed with a debilitating intestinal ailment, her mother died, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer. What's this book doing on an Humor & Entertainment list? Well, Notaro is a comedian, and as comedians will do, she took her pain to the stage. Though it's a tough story, I'm Just a Person draws on the same candor and clarity of her act to lift itself into funny, moving, and uplifting territory.

 

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Live Fast Die Hot by Jenny Mollen
By the customer comments on this one, actor Jenny Mollen (Angel, Girls, etc.) is a polarizing figure. So either you'll find the actor's collection of frank, self-effacing sketches of motherhood and other inconveniences of adulthood insufferably shallow or inescapably hilarious. In either case Mollen is certainly unafraid to admit her own fallibility and insecurities, and many others who allow themselves the same will relate.

See more picks in Humor & Entertainment, and see all of our Best Books of June for more than a dozen categories.

 

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