Parenting Comedy

Improv(e) Your Conversations teaches the ingenious rules of improv comedy that allow performers to turn boring prompts into memorable interactions worthy of standing ovations. This means there are real frameworks and templates to escape interview mode small talk – and start connecting and building rapport from the moment you say “Hello”. This book goes through over 15 of the most helpful and insightful improv comedy techniques with countless real-life examples to make you a great talker.

If you write an email to a friend about a fantasy involving your gorgeous boss, don't send it to All Staff... Meg It’s not easy to reinvent yourself, but my thirteen-year-old son and I are ready for a new start. Old Maggie was a magnet for disaster, but New Meg is going to be elegant, sophisticated… and blonde. I’ve landed a dream job at the other end of New Zealand as PA to three rich directors who spoil me rotten, I’ve found a beautiful new apartment, and I feel reborn. Then I write an email to a friend describing in vivid detail what I want to do to the sexiest of the directors...

Shakespeare’s plays and poems remain as beloved in the twenty-first century as they were in the sixteenth. For all the years between us, the world he inhabited was much like our own—afflicted by political turmoil, divisiveness, war, extreme weather, recurrent plagues, the fouling of natural resources on which everyone relied, and discrimination against people who were different. The bard’s remedy for these troubles was to offer respite and inspiration to his audience through his writing.

She never thought she'd fall for a younger man, but with Cee, it was so easy... There aren't enough hours in the day, and struggling single mom Jes just can't make it alone. Fortunately, a fantastic nanny just became available. Stacey is the perfect candidate: Young, college educated, glowing references... Trouble is, the nanny is a manny! The last thing Jes expects is a tall, muscular, handsome stranger on her porch looking for work as a nanny. The last thing Jess wants is a new man complicating her life. But Jes needs the help and there's no one better for the job than Stacey "Cee" Cook. ...

The Wall Street Journal's popular columnist Jason Gay delivers a hilarious and heartfelt guide to modern living. The book you will listen to is a rule book. There have been rule books before - stacks upon stacks of them - but this book is unlike any other rule book you have ever heard.

This smart and witty collection of opinions, observations, and anecdotes covers a broad range of personal topics. Kathie Lee Gifford's stories are often funny, sometimes heartfelt, and always compelling - think Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck meets Carol Burnett.

No subject is off-limits: talking to her kids about sex, being married to Frank Gifford, embarrassing professional gaffes, run-ins with celebrities (of which there are many), the harsh and funny realities of aging.

Phronsie Linnelle was conceived at Woodstock in a serendipitous liaison between a free-spirited hippie and a farmer’s son and was born with magical wonder flickering in her DNA and rationality knit into her bones. All her life she’s been torn between the two. But now that she’s been betrayed by both love and the mother she once idolized, her rational side is winning. So when her best friend from childhood proposes that they give up on romance and marry each other, Phronsie agrees.

The Sweet Potato Queens like men. They like them so much that they have devoted an absolutely inordinate amount of time to the pursuit of men, marriage, and great sex. And then, when that doesn't work out, they've devoted an inordinate amount of time to divorce, gittin another one and having great sex with him instead. The Sweet Potato Queens' Field Guide to Men is the Queens manifesto on all matters of the heart, featuring tales from Queens around the world, plus the continuing adventures of the women you've come to know and love (and envy just a little bit).

Kids, a Primer is a collection of a grandfather's musings on the way his (now grown) children are raising their children and being glad about being a grandparent rather than a new parent with young children (again). While Ungar is convinced that grandparents could do a better job raising children if they had the energy, he is grateful that he, in fact, no longer has the energy.

When you're blind, you see with your heart... Teddi Life’s tough. I can’t argue with that. I’m not referring to being blind. That brings its own challenges, but I’ve never let it hold me back from doing anything I wanted to do. I’m talking about losing my partner before the age of thirty. I thought I had it all figured out—marriage, kids, the whole parcel, neatly tied up with a bow, but it wasn’t meant to be. While Will lay dying, he made me promise never to love anyone else. I did, of course, because that’s what you do, and I meant it, at the time. And then I met Ethan. ...

In the era of instant parent shaming and viral hot takes, some questions are too dangerous to ask out loud: What’s the proper first aid for my toddler’s vampire bite? What should I do if I take a wrong turn on the way to soccer practice and end up in the Cretaceous Period? How can I fend off Godzilla without disrupting my child’s nap? Fortunately, there’s now a parenting resource that answers those burning questions and many more. Professional comedy writer and amateur father James Breakwell tackles over 90 survival challenges ordinary parents may encounter in everyday life.

What happens when a trio of overworked and underappreciated good moms get pushed beyond their limits? They turn "bad" - ditch the kids, the housework, and their clueless partners with hilarious and heartwarming results. Based on the popular movies, Bad Moms: The Novel gives fans a new way to enjoy their favorite characters, Amy, Carla, and Kiki, as they smash the Perfect Mom pedestal, take on the grown-up Queen Bees, forge deeper bonds with their kids, get some long overdue respect and recognition, and indulge in a few hours of some crazy fun.

Every parent has stories about their kids’ antics. The kind of stories that result in fall-on-the-floor laughter. The vignettes in this book will appeal to anyone who has had, or is planning to have, children. It’s a compilation of the best of the authors’ child-rearing experiences from topics like toilet training and selective deafness to traveling with our cherubs. But Honey, He Has Purple Hair is written in Erma Bombeck’s tongue-in-cheek style with sometimes differing perspectives from the authors. Sure, raising kids is a challenge. But what’s to stop you from doing it with ...

A captivating comedy about a man—rooted in the Sixties—who must choose between his career and the people he loves.

Digging deep into her strengths, her failures and her losses, Jann Arden brings us an inspiring account of how she has surprised herself, in her fifties, by at last becoming completely her own person. Like many women, it took Jann a long time to realize that trying to be pleasing and likeable and beautiful in the eyes of others was a loser's game. Letting it rip, and damning the consequences, is not only liberating, it's a hell of a lot of fun: "Being the age I am—that so many women are—is just the best time of my life."

Wendy Moore hides her collection of pilfered bric-a-brac from everyone, including her husband. He thinks she licked her kleptomania in therapy more than a decade ago. Therapy did help, as did focusing her attention on motherhood. But now Wendy’s gardening and furniture-refinishing hobbies fill up only so much of the day, leaving the recent empty nester lonely and anxious—a combination likely to trigger her little problem. She needs a project, fast. Luckily, Harper Ross—a single, childless younger woman in desperate need of highlights—just moved in next door.

The much-loved Guardian columnist asks what it takes to make a husband, and looks to his own married life to provide the answer. Anything resembling advice should be taken at listener's own risk. You'll never get divorced if you never get married. Not even your granny minds if you live in sin anymore. And if you're single you can choose curtains without somebody else butting in. So why bother with marriage? It can't just be an easy way round having to buy your own deodorant.

Laughter is the best medicine and this comedy has the right dose. Joyce’s cooking is so bad that her husband and kids want to cut off their tongues to save themselves for the taste of her food. Joyce's husband, Gary, loves his football team more than he loves her. But they are not an entirely unhappy couple. They have five children. Twenty-one-year-old Fred, their eldest child, is a loafer who believes he will soon be a millionaire. He spends most of his time chasing his elusive dream. A gourmand, he is the only member of the family who enjoys Joyce’s cooking. Nineteen-year-old Nyasha ...

It's better to regret the things you've done than the things you haven't. Right? Jess I’ve made so many mistakes in my life, I’m sure I’m in the book of Guinness World Records, and unfortunately, this year has proved no exception. Telling my boss’s wife that we were having an affair was probably the biggest mistake, but the lying bastard broke my heart, so I don’t regret it. I do regret losing my job, though, especially now I’m broke. Frankly, I’m glad it’s nearly New Year, and I can put this annus horribilis behind me. If only I could do the same with the rest of my life, ...

Today's parents are navigating a new frontier in child-rearing: raising "digital natives" in a world where "screen time" is ever-present. It's a journey strewn with questions, doubts, and persistent pings. But fear not. Parenting Unplugged turns these challenges into opportunities for humor, wisdom, and a screen savvy family life.