![]() The Funny Thing Is... $13.00 Ellen DeGeneres published her first book of comic essays, the #1 bestselling My Point...and I Do Have One, way back in 1996. Not one to rest on her laurels, the witty star of stage and screen has since dedicated her life to writing a hilarious new book. That book is this book. After years of painstaking, round-the-clock research, surviving on a mere twenty minutes of sleep a night, and collaborating with lexicographers, plumbers, and mathematicians, DeGeneres has crafted a book that is both easy to use and very funny. Along with her trademark ramblings, The Funny Thing Is...contains hundreds of succinct insights into her psyche, supplemented by easy-to-understand charts, graphs, and diagrams so that you'll never miss a joke. Overseeing all aspects of production, DeGeneres labored over details both significant and insignificant, including typefaces, page number placement, and which of the thousands of world languages to use. Ultimately she selected English, as it's her mother tongue, but translations into Hindi and Pig Latin are already in the works. DeGeneres takes an innovative approach to the organization of her book by utilizing a section in the beginning that includes the name of each chapter, along with a corresponding page number. She calls it the "Table of Contents," and she is confident that it will become the standard to which all books in the future will aspire. Some of the other innovative features you'll find in this edition: • More than 50,000 simple, short words arranged in sentences that form paragraphs. • Thousands of observations on everyday life -- from terrible fashion trends to how to handle seating arrangements for a Sunday brunch with Paula Abdul, Diane Sawyer, and Eminem. • All twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Sure to make you laugh, The Funny Thing Is...is an indispensable reference for anyone who knows how to read or wants to fool people into thinking they do. ![]() My Point...And I Do Have One $13.00 In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ellen DeGeneres shares her hilarious take on everything from our most baffling human foibles–including how we behave in elevators, airplanes, and restrooms, and why we’re so scared of the boogeyman–to fashion trends, celebrity, and her secret recipe for Ellen’s Real Frenchy French Toast. Most of all, this witty, engaging book offers insights into the mind of one of America’s most beloved comics.… Dear Reader, I was awfully excited when I was asked to write a book. I was however, nervous. I was afraid I didn’t have anything important to say. But when I began writing, I realized that although I don’t know a lot about any one thing, I know a little about a whole bunch of things: baking a pie; dancing; curing the common cold; running the Iditarod–it’s all in the book. And I realized I notice things that maybe some people don’t notice (or they don’t notice that they don’t notice). That’s all in the book, too. ![]() Finding Nemo $24.99 A delightful undersea world unfolds in Pixar's animated adventure Finding Nemo. When his son Nemo is captured by a scuba-diver, a nervous-nellie clownfish named Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) sets off into the vast--and astonishingly detailed--ocean to find him. Along the way he hooks up with a scatterbrained blue tang fish named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), who's both helpful and a hindrance, sometimes at the same time. Faced with sharks, deep-sea anglers, fields of poisonous jellyfish, sea turtles, pelicans, and much more, Marlin rises above his neuroses in this wonderfully funny and nonstop thrill ride--rarely does more than 10 minutes pass without a sequence destined to become a theme park attraction. Pixar continues its run of impeccable artistic and economic success (their movies include Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc). Also featuring the voices of Willem Dafoe, Geoffrey Rush, and Allison Janney. --Bret Fetzer ![]() Finding Nemo $18.98 Will it become another rich Newman family tradition? Picking up the baton his cousin Randy carried so skillfully on Disney/Pixar's four previous pioneering computer animation features, composer Thomas Newman was undaunted, bringing his own highly original scoring sensibility to the studio's latest digital daydream--an effort that's also the younger Newman's own debut score for an animated feature. Tom's consistently unique approach to matters of rhythm and percussion are as forceful and inventive as ever in this undersea adventure, while his passages for orchestra resonate with the same quintessentially American pastoral melancholy his songwriting cousin has long employed in his work. The result is dynamic, diverse, and uniquely personal as any modern animated feature. Especially rewarding are the jazz/exotica/kitsch flourishes Newman playfully throws into the mix, diffusing his ever nervous rhythms with unexpected, quirky colorations. It's a must for any fan of Newman's evocative canon. Contemporary crooner Robbie Williams rounds out proceedings with a faithful, jazzy take on Bobby Darin's classic "Beyond the Sea." --Jerry McCulley |
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