I don't play golf either, but picked up this book while browsing and bought it for FIL, an avid golfer. It was quite funny to me and my FIL thought it was hilarious! A great gift!

I know nothing about golf, but I happened to be browsing and picked up this very funny tome. It's one of the wittiest books I've ever read. Funny, pithy, and full of laughs. A perfect Father's Day gift.

This book is a riot! Not only does it give you subtle techniques to upset your opponents, it has a lot of golf history and lore, and even some good advice on match play and course management. But above all, its hilarious! Best golf book I've read in years!

It puzzles me beyond belief that "Writers on Writing" is out of print. This book is a grand, well-chosen collection of quotes on such apects of writing--from getting published, to starting out, to writer's block. Jon Winokur is a quote-collecting master. When I first became serious about writing, I found this book at my local library, and found it hard to put down, and extremely helpful and insightful. I was being taught by the likes of such literary greats as Truman Capote, Lewis Carroll, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is an educational journey all the way through, using down to earth quotes from those who know, rather than a drawn out step-by-step instructional book. It cured my writer's block, and improved my amateur work. Required reading for aspiring writers.

This neat book has more than 1,500 witty & colorful quotations on the writer's art.

I used this book as a Toastmaster for speech research, and have reveled in its wonderful brief antedotes & witty thoughts on writing.

As Josh Billings states in the book, "About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgement". I think you will (borrow) from this book often!

very zen in itself, and admittedly a "finger pointing at the moon", this book gives a great flavor of zen and shows zen's varied forms as well as zen's freedom from a particular time. Great concept, great quotes, great book.

Lighthearted but impressive collection of quotations on all aspecs of Zen from Life to Death, BC to modern day, & everything in between. A great place to start searching for those aspects of Zen philosophy which interest you. Quips from Yogi Berra to the Buddha make this a wide-ranging and sometimes moving collection I've read time and time again.

This short picture book is the perfect gift for any dog lover! It also a great little coffee table book; our guests love it!

It makes you laugh out loud. Hail the apostles Bellingham! From Nigel, the rabbit - to Susan, the estranged wife - Looking at life through rose coloured glasses indeed.Why hasn't a daily picked this guy up? Bellingham, a man in love with his adopted city of San Francisco. Not a bit of underdone potato - as saterical writers tend to be. Curmundgeons have a hero - a passionate one at that.

WARNING: DO NOT BUY ONE COPY OF THIS BOOK! You will need at least two copies whether you buy it for yourself or for a gift. Don't think you can pick this up as a gift, browse through it to pick up the highlights and then pass it along, no, you're going to want your own copy. And if you do pick it up for yourself, you will undoubtedly add it to your Christmas gift list. It's a great book for anyone; they just have to have a sense of humor. What makes it a keepr, though, is Bellingham's jabs are as insightful as they are funny, his one-liners are as timeless as they are topical. His slice of life encounters with various celebrities give the reader a fun account of the media scene in everybody's favorite city by the Bay. I practically read this book in one sitting because I kept saying, "just one more chapter" (they're short). It's that kind of book, a pick up and read anywhere book, a great "airplane book", if you will. Check it out for chuckles.

"Bellingham by the Bay" is relaxing reading -- and entertaining. It's something I keep by the bed. I'm a retired English Lit teacher and when the world grows too serious, I keep returning to "Bellingham" for its good writing and witty, irreverent insights. At my age, laughter is a great elixir. Try it!

The online reviews were encouraging, and you really can't go wrong with a book of quotes (intended as a birthday present for a friend).

Thus it arrived in the mail and, like all presents, I tested it first. Let's just say that I didn't end up giving the book to my friend.

Instead of pure quotes (as you are led to believe by previewing the first few pages), Winokur has included his own 'analysis' of why he thinks each quote is humourous, or insightful. Sure, he knows the back story of many, but his conveying of said back story is unerringly long-winded and desperate in his attempt to be sycophantic to the celebrity.

You want quotes? Look elsewhere. This guy's even managed to make Groucho Marx boring.

Definitely tickles the funny bone, but also can be useful to show off your vocabulary!

What is so admirable about a curmudgeon? I suppose that one answer is to ask what isn't so admirable about non-curmudgeons: People whose advise may reassure them more than you. After all, don't worry, be happy.

Sometimes just acknowledging the cranky, bilious soul is more effective than drowning it in bland sweetisms. This book recognizes your (or someone else's) bad self, and implicitly encourages you to go with it. Perhaps it's the mix that makes us more human.

This very funny collection of sarcastic, witty, cynical, caustic, and sometimes just downright... quotes will "speak" to you like the blues. Quotes are arranged alphabetically by topic, so that you can look up "G' for gratitude, and plagiarize Rochefoucauld: "Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors." Cynical--of course--but perhaps containing a grain of wisdom. This topical organization doesn't work that well; the categories are too fine grained (who would think of "dinner theatre?").

The best feature are the multi-page sections devoted to one of the masters: W.C. Fields, Oscar Wilde, George S. Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, Quentin Crisp, Oscar Levant, and others. These sometimes take the form of interviews, biographies, and/or several pages of quotes. However, sprinkled liberally throughout its 299 pages are gems ("If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth) by such notables as Marx (Groucho), Mencken, Bierce, and Twain and contemporaries such as Vidal, Woody Allen, and Rita Mae Brown.

Oh--in case you were wondering--it was Paul Fussell who said the following about dinner theatre:"...a way of positively guaranteeing that both food and theatre will be amateur and mediocre, which means unthreatening and therefore desirable."

To its credit, the book stays away from most sexist and all racist "jokes," it doesn't confuse humor with stupid attack. Still, you may need a thick skin for some of the acidity here. Recommended for its humor and eclecticism.

As a writer and teacher of creative nonfiction, I hunger for a glimpse into the interior lives of authors. Do they feel as out of control or depressed as I sometimes do when facing a huge project? Do they suffer from writer's envy or writer's block? Finally, do they drink as much as I do?

Winokur's book is satisfying and addictive. By offering actual quotes from working writers, he manages to show the amazing breadth and depth of the torturous creative experience. Writing is more of a chronic condition than a profession: think of Advice to Writers as a self-help mental health book for the ink-stained wretches of the world.

Advice to Writers is Jon Winokur's finest book -- and that's saying something. Its already pulled me out of writer's block several times. I mean, its not exactly a self-help book, but the damn thing WORKS.

As a writer who suffers from chronic indolence, I'm keeping this book on my bedside table (since I'm indolent I work in bed) -- it makes me WANT to write.

Practical usage aside, its big fun, too. No one else has Winokur's delicious eye for quotes and their juxtapositions. This lovely book is caviar; all other "advice to writer" books are neurasthenic by comparison.

Bravo, Mr. Winokur, and thank you! When's the next one?

Writing is a solitary business. Most of us create alone, revise alone, submit alone. Even when we have a critique partner or group they aren't sitting with us throughout the entire process. But this book is a wonderful reminder that writers of all kinds and levels have shared dreams and shared pains. If you are a serious writer, this book will lift you when you're blue and be a good place to look for advice and a laugh.

Those among us who are generally grouchy and pessimistic can find solace and support in the pages of this book. Indeed, the Portable Curmudgeon Redux is a celebration of the art of complaining. You don't have to be a misanthrope to enjoy the humor, but eternally happy, effervescent souls will find little reason to even glance at these pages. This is the province of realism, satire, rapier wit, irritability, and--above all--humor; this book really doesn't take itself too seriously. The book offers a dictionary of quotations for such selected words and concepts as love, marriage, life, lawyers, and advertising, the jewels of wisdom coming from such individuals as Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and H. L. Mencken. Several specific topics (such as American Presidents, music, and fine art) are singled out for special attention. There are also interviews with personalities such as P.J. O'Rourke, Larry Gelbart, Florence King, and Carrie Fisher. No subject is taboo or safe from the skewering stick of sarcasm, and many of the statements are thought-provoking or just plain funny enough to make special note of. Amuse your friends or pester your enemies with curmudeonly quotes on all manner of subjects.

Calling all cars! Calling all cars! Be on the look-out for a funny, acerbic collection of smart-alec quotes from the 20th century's greatest cynical wags. Suspect is armed and dangerous with several witticisms, hilarious one-liners and quips. Proceed carefully; you could die laughing.

This book is a collection of antidotes about specific rich people, interspersed with quotes about rich people as a whole. It's a cute book, and a good gift, but not the type of book I would have purchased for myself.

This is not really a book, but rather a collection of highly entertaining anecdotes about people who have a) far more money than me, and b) far more money than a lot of them know what to do with. The Diet Coke foibles of Christina Onassis are the most fun, but she has lots of company in the crazed rich person department

Any devotee of the French language will enjoy this book. There's an alphabetical list of French expressions that have crept into the English language. I can't say I had heard of all of them before reading the book but, in several cases, the author includes a blurb in which the expression has been used, often a rather esoteric review in the arts. There's an interesting piece on the opposite phenomenon, the dreaded fear of franglais and the attempts to eradicate all remnants of English in the French language (an impossible task). The book is very amusing...a quick read that you can come back to from time to time.