shostakovich malfunctioning irreproducible improbabilities

books:

The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun: A Parody

130 reviews
Robert Kaplow

New Millennium, 2004

Satire, Parody, lampooning...Huh???
This is a very very strange book. The author clearly clenches his teeth when discussing Lilian Jackson Brown, and he also dislikes much of modern American literature and culture. As a result, he writs this book in a tone that veers between weird parody and manic satire. The title character dies in a gay bar, beheaded in the men's room, and so a writer she knew begins to try and solve the case of ...

The Satanic Nurses: And Other Literary Parodies

4 reviews
J. B. Miller

Thomas Dunne Books, 2003

The funniest book!!!!
I haven't laughed so much since the last time I laughed this much, which never happened before. This book is HILARIOUS! If you like literary satire, this book is for you. The Harry Potter spoof had be falling off my chair. Unfortunately I was driving at the time. When I woke up in the hospital I asked the staff where my copy of THE SATANIC NURSES was. They thought I was making fun of them, ...

Goodnight Bush: A Parody

38 reviews
Gan Golan, Erich Origen

Little, Brown and Company, 2008

A grown up MOON
The original book was her first one, a gift, for my daughter and we grew weary reading it over and over and 'finding' the hidden changes as we turned the pages engaged in the sing song lyrics. We gifted her with this parady, now a college student and we all were enthused with the depiction of the Bush years in the original style of the book. True to her youthful enthusiasm, she couldn't wait to ...

Pat the Husband: A Parody
Kate Merrow Nelligan

Cider Mill Press, 2008

Dorothy Kunhardt’s Pat the Bunny is a children’s classic, with millions of copies sold. It’s inspired numerous spin-offs for both kids and adults—but none as wickedly amusing as this clever interactive book! Every wife, girlfriend, and woman who hopes to be one will treasure it, and have endless fun playing with the lift-the-flap, touch-and-feel, pull tabs, and other highly designed elements. It slyly questions who ...

Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-modern (Literature, Culture, Theory)
Margaret A. Rose

Cambridge University Press, 1993

In this definitive work, Margaret Rose presents an analysis and history of theories of parody from ancient to contemporary times. Her earlier Parody/Meta-fiction (1979) was influential in broadening awareness of parody as a "double-coded" device that could be used for more than mere ridicule. In the present study she both expands and revises the introductory section of her 1979 text and adds substantial new sections on modern and postmodern ...

Maybe Life's Just Not That Into You: When You feel Like the World's Voted You Off

20 reviews
Martha Bolton, Brad Dickson

Howard Books, 2006

Funny
Admit it... you read all those popular so-called self-help books and put their advices, exercises, recommendations, suggestions, plans, ideas, mantras, meditations, visualizations, affirmations, prayers to work only to find that none of that silliness works, and then you turned to this book and had a NECESSARY GOOD OL' LAUGH!... I admit it.

A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms

2 reviews
Linda Hutcheon

University of Illinois Press, 2000

Parody: Creation and Re-Creation at once
kalinin@terra.com.br Linda Hutcheon's A Theory of Parody is one of the most important theoretical books of the decade not only on parody but also on postmodernism. The dispute over the worth of postmodern art revolves around one of its most striking features, i.e. the outburst of intertextuality in the form of parody and pastiche. This proliferation of parody has been described as an exhaustion ...

The Teachings of Don B.: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme

Counterpoint, 2008

A Batman episode slowed to soap-opera speed; a game of baseball played by T. S. Eliot and Willem de Kooning; an illustrated account of a scientific quest for God. These imaginative riffs on reality could only have been generated by the brilliant bad boy of American letters, Donald Barthelme. Here, 63 rare short works by Barthelme — satires and gables, plays for stage and radio, and collages — have been assembled in a single volume. ...

The Dick Cheney Code: A Parody

6 reviews
Henry Beard

Amazon Remainders Account, 2004

For Cheney's Boys...
They being the five young Americans who went to Vietnam in place of Dick (5 deferments) Cheney. There's absolutely nothing wrong with getting five deferments, unless you subsequently become a politician and send other people's sons and daughters off to war. A book that mocks the overblown and utterly derivative The Da Vinci Code and Dick Cheney at the same time simply has to be worth a read. I ...

The Best-Case Scenario Handbook: A Parody

16 reviews
John Tierney

Workman Publishing Company, 2002

GREAT PARODY!
This book is spectacular. The scenarios are far-out but holarious none the less. However, the only fault I found was the excessive reference to sexual themes. I didn't think that was necessary.

Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking at All (A Mindless Parody)

3 reviews
Noah Tall

Harper Paperbacks, 2006

A brisk and stimulatingly funny read! Not to be missed!
Fans of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" may still find plenty of room in their admiration of the author to admit the possibility that his work is subject to affectionate parody. This amusing send up of Gladwell's book is a perfect companion piece to his thought-provoking effort, in that this one provides no provocation for thought at all -- in fact, it exhorts the reader to stop thinking altogether. ...

The Da Vinci Cod: A Fishy Parody

4 reviews
Don Brine

Harper Paperbacks, 2005

The Bible For A New Age!
An entertaining explanation of the existence of everything. This makes more sense than the traditional bible which also contains fiction mixed with fact; so it's just as important. Don't forget that fiction has, in fact, become fact on many occasions throughout history, first conjured by the mind and then made into reality! I'm sure we'll hear from the naysayers with their talk of halibut or ...

Parody (The New Critical Idiom)
Simon Dentith

Routledge, 2000

Parody is everywhere in contemporary popular culture. It runs through literature, theatre and television, architecture and films and even everyday speech. Dentith, by drawing on examples from Aristophanes to The Simpsons, displays the many roles that parody plays, from its place in the history of literature to its pivotal part in postmodernist debates. Parody, as a subversive or conservative mode of writing, has been in the culture wars from ...

Sex as a Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble: More of the Best of the Journal of Irreproducible Results (And ...

3 reviews
Marc Abrahams

Workman Publishing Company, 1993

Very funny, but only for the scientifically inclined...
This book is largely a collection of silly experiments--likethe testing of bricks for infectious diseases, or the reactions ofcats to photographs of men with various styles of beards--written up in the style of a scientific research paper, complete with footnotes. Most of the material is written in a very dry, technical style, which is exactly what makes it so funny--_if_ you're a scientist, or ...

Anti-Christ: A Satirical End of Days

2 reviews

Booklocker, 2007

God, are you there? If so, are you laughing as hard as me?
The author is clearly angry at society. He rips on the Church, politics, self-help groups, corporations, and even God! Judging by how screwed up the planet is can you blame him? This is a fun read following a guy's journey through Heaven and back. But come on, Mexicans sneaking into Heaven! That alone makes this story funny beyond belief. It's like South Park on steroids. If you are extremely ...

The Devious Book for Cats: A Parody
Joe Garden, Janet Ginsburg, ...

Villard, 2008

Cats have nine lives. Shouldn’t they be lived to the fullest? “Domesticated” does not mean “docile.” The ho-hum routine of sleep, eat, eat, and sleep is no way for any creature who ruled Egypt for a millennium to spend her day. It’s high time felines everywhere woke up from their cat naps and grabbed life’s strings with both paws. The Devious Book for Cats offers today’s discerning kitties words ...

Even More Outrageous Celebrity Meltdowns: Pop-Up Parodies of Your Favorite Stars
Heather Havrilesky, Mick Coulas

DK ADULT, 2008

Fast on the heels of the wildly popular Pop-Up Book of Celebrity Meltdowns comes this equally raucous, irreverent sequel. Brought to life with Mick Coulas's outrageously humorous caricatures and Kees Moerbeek's stunningly inventive paper engineering, this deluxe, handcrafted gift book brings to life ten more examples of celebrity behavior gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Dmitrii SHostakovich

1 review
Esti Sheinberg, University of Edinburgh, UK Esti Sheinberg

Ashgate Publishing, 2001

Application of Literary Theory to Music
Esti Sheinberg uses a multi-disciplinary approach to present a theory for the recognition of musical language that implies irony, satire, parody, and grotesquerie. Her approach includes elements of literary theory and semiology rather than traditional music theory. One should have some familiarity with the Russian Formalist (literary theory) and a basic understanding of semiology prior to ...

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improbabilities, irreproducible, malfunctioning, shostakovich, twentieth-century

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