Please note: There's no fee for these events but you are welcome to show your support for Barrett by purchasing a book from our website (click on the book jacket image to be directed to the site). In some cases, we've been able to secure signed copies of the books. If you're interested in joining the event, make sure to click through the below links to learn more.

This week, we're offering up books to lift your spirits. To kick it off is a staff favorite, a book of prestigious Pulitizer Prize-winning pedigree: Less, by Andrew Sean Greer. I listened to this gem when it was released back in 2017 and Sheila dove in last week. Less follows an not-so-successful fifty-year-old writer as he travels the world in an attempt to deal with the emotions that arise when an old flame marries a new love. The combination of smart humor, international travel, and spot-on writing makes this a lovely companion for at-home days.

Next up, Thurber Prize for American Humor award-winner Christopher Buckley. How to choose among his many volumes? A daunting task, for sure. The Judge Hunter is awfully fun. In this 2018 novel Buckley delivers historical fiction satire that follows the good-for-nothing brother-in-law to English diarist Samuel Pepys. Looking down the road to July, mark your calendar for Buckley's latest release Make Russia Great Again ; early reviews suggest another hilarious winner. Or if you're more in the mood for a comedic film this week, check out Thank You For Smoking, a 2005 based on Buckley's 1994 book of the same name.

There are many celebrity memoirs from well-known comedians, writers, and actors that deserve praise but few come close to the candid, beautifully penned collection of essays by Daily Show host Trevor Noah: Born A Crime. Critic Michiko Kakutani describes it "By turns alarming, sad and funny, this book provides a harrowing look, through the prism of Mr. Noah's family at life in South Africa under apartheid and the country's lurching entry into a post apartheid era in the 1990s." Not to be missed.

Be forewarned, Oyinkan Braithwaite's 2019 novel My Sister the Serial Killer is filled with blood, murder, and secret. No, I haven't misplaced this read, pulling it from a thriller list and lazily dropping it into a group of books we hope to bring a smile to your face. Braithwaite's book is the best of both frightening and funny. At a mere 188 pages, you can polish it off in a single weekend.

Bill Bryson, of Walk In the Woods , A Short History Nearly of Everything, and The Body fame, is known for humorous and exhaustively detailed books, both. In 2008 he penned a gut-busting memoir that chronicles a happy (shockingly unusual for memoirists to own up to a happy youth) childhood in the 1950s, an era when children were pushed out the door in the early morning and left to fend to their own (the current homeschool parent dream, perhaps?). The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a delight, start to finish.

Finally, I'd be amiss if I didn't offer up three honorable mentions that are favorites on my bookshelf: absolutely anything by Kevin Wilson (if you've never read, begin with The Family Fang ); Man Booker Prize/National Book Critics Circle Awards winner The Sellout and currently on my nightstand, helping me to laugh out loud at the end of the day as I try to figure out what Reagan-wannabe politician Paine Wilson is going to do with the stuffed aardvark dropped on his doorstep, new release Enter The Aardvark.

And before we sign off, a handful of funny reads for the youngest readers in your home. Here's an idea: send a few of these hilarious picture books to a social-distanced loved one and have them do a virtual story time with the little ones. Laughter and safe, social-distanced connection guaranteed.