Such a delight, such a fiercely enjoyable delight. I suggest that everyone have at least one copy of this at their homes, for laughter and mirth is always in short supply in our moribund lives these days and this volume does one of the best jobs a book has done to liven your mood. There are some outright classics, some you've read elsewhere, some you've seen adapted as a film and other such gems herein. Go on, help yourself to generous dollops of wit and humour collected from the myriad editions...

This was a wedding present to me from C, and I read it throughout our honeymoon. I felt like a person of timeless, wood-barreled taste and class, going back and reading pieces by James Thurber and E.B. White. Good stuff from the magazine's more literary days (is it me, or are 77% of their articles now about Chanel?)

This is a good sample of many great humorists, some of whom did their best work in the New Yorker. It runs the gamut from classics like E.B. White, James Thurber, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and S.J. Perelman to recent works from Jack Handey (yes, he is a real person), Garrison Keillor, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and even Noah Baumbach (who has had a phantom career writing humor for the Shouts and Murmurs column in the New Yorker).In Fierce Pajamas I have also discovered the key to reading

Definitely not a "cover to cover" read but well worth picking up a few times a month. Ian Fraizer, Jack Handey, Steve Martin and many other fantastic humorists are here who you would otherwise probably not read unless you have a subscription to The New Yorker (and the time to read every issue). Paul Rudnick's "Teen Times" has headline gems like "Cancer: Shut Up!" and "Sweatshops: Can't They Make Our Clothes Without Touching Them?" and Jack Handey's "Thank You for Stopping" is another selection o...

This is a long, mixed bag, but there are a few gems that make it worth picking up and plodding along through from time to time. The Rather Difficult Case of Mr. K*A*P*L*A*N; Annoy Kaufman, Inc.; It's Fun to Be Fooled; Are We Losing the Novel Race?; and Insert Flap "A" and Throw Away are a few of the pieces that stood out for me, but I have to admit that A Note on the Type was quite possibly my most favorite part. I was so charmed by it I read it twice.

Fierce pajamas, according to E. B. White, refers to those garments worn to bed in this illness-ridden plagued world, a world wholly unlike the vivacious livelihoods within the pages of a 1930s issue of Harper's Bazaar. It is a lifestyle unattainable, writes White, without vast quantities of quinine on top of delirium. Vogue is the good life, to make no mention of those portrayed within The New Yorker.What was considered early in its life as the quintessential American humour magazine, The New Yo...

I listened to the CD version of this book while I was driving back from Grand Marais. Some of the pieces in here made me laugh aloud: "Hassidic Tales, with a Guide to their Interpretation" by Woody Allen, "In the New Canada, Living is a Way of Life" by Bruce McColl," and "Writing Is Easy!" by Steve Martin. The one that made me laugh so hard I almost crashed (a liability of listening while driving) was "Glengarry Glen Plaid" by Frank Cammusa and Hart Seely, wherein a phone rep abuses a would-be b...

Humor writing is a tough market. Funny means very different things to each one of us. So, a good way of doing a humor book is like this-build a reader (remember learning from well worn readers in grade school?) of many varied styles and topics.This collection is wide ranging, going back to Dorthy Parker articles from the 1920's to Steve Martin from a few years ago. The array of writers gives it a cocktail party feel--breezing from one wry smile to another winking eye.To be sure, this is grown-up...

Provides little more than inner "Huh, that's funny" laughs. Some of it gets pretty hilarious, but most of it (in particular, a piece where a man can speak only in clichés) has already been done to death, diluting the humor a bit. Thinking man's funny, I guess.

Ugh. I made it about halfway through, thinking surely there must be something funny just around the corner, but it turned into an awful slog through pretentious, unfunny garbage. Maybe it has something to do with the lack of diversity in authors--out of 138 pieces only 18 are written by women. (Don't know the numbers on authors of color but I'd guess they're abysmal as well). There were a few saving graces--E.B. White's beautiful writing, Geng's Love Trouble is my Business, Gerber/Schwartz's Wha...

Talk about a mixed bag. Any collection of humor is going to be received differently, but a collection of humor from across decades, some by professional writers, some by actors and some by outright nutjobs is going to have its pieces of genius and its utter flops. Because this is an anthology of humor, the subject matter is all over the place. Communication with the dead, miscommunication in the household, a real-life affair with a literary character, an interview with a man who can only speak i...

Some of the pieces make me laugh out loud, others leave me smiling and a few have caused me to scratch my head and wonder what I've missed.

This collection of New Yorker humor pieces is priceless. The essays from the 30's and 40's are still hilarious and represent the work of some terrific writers. Jack Handy has a modern piece that totally cracked me up. Check this out.

Contains very funny pieces by Steve Martin, James Thurber and Groucho Marx; unfortunately, it also has some dated stuff and I was unable to relate. Worth checking out of the ilbrary, which is where I stumbled upon it.

The sort of stuff that would give Oscar Wilde an erection, Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New York collects some of the best short pieces published in this much revered publication through out its long life. There are short stories, editorials and satire from E.B. White, Woody Allen, Mike Nichols, Groucho Marx, Ogden Nash, James Thurber, Steve Martin, Garrison Keillor, Dorothy Parker, John Lardner, Phyllis McGinley, Jack Handy, and many more. Filled mostly with clever obs...

Most of the pieces are pretty good. Jack Handy has an especially Handy-licious one. A few are too dull to finish.Don't try to read this book cover to cover, unless you really, really like New Yorker humor. I made it about 2/3 through over the course of a month before giving up.I think this is best suited for a bathroom book or a breakfast book - when a couple of pieces are read at a time. I checked this out from the library and did not have enough time to take it slowly.

The New Yorker collected humorist essays across nearly a century and to me--most of them were boring.I realized how much of white, middle to upper class written humor rests on allusions. It's very insular. If you're not steeped in the culture, you're really not going to get much out of it. I can't how many I read but these are the essays I liked in the book and would read again. Also, these are the ones I would recommend to anyone instead of reading the whole book stubbornly as I did:Here's a re...

I doubt readers will love every selection, but am certain they will find at least a few entries to love in this collection. Some of the stories are dated and others seem aimed at specific audiences, but if you enjoy reading The New Yorker, you'll love it. Many of the authors will be comfortably familiar. A few choices I had read before and remembered, but it was still fun reading them again. I fell in love again with Mitty.

Reading Fierce Pajamas felt like being out at a bar with Charles Bukowski, Hemingway, and Dorothy Parker -- but everyone is drinking mocktails, sober as the proverbial judge. This is a long collection of short humor pieces from the New Yorker that doesn't happen to be particularly funny. Many of the older pieces are so dated that the modern reader has no idea what people, places, and incidents they refer too, and many others are maddeningly New Yorker-centric. The few classic pieces here, such a...

I didn't understand 80% of the humor - and if I weren't marooned in the wilds without interet, I might never have soldiered through the tome. But then what humor I did get was so rip-roariously funny, it was well worth the reading. Particular jewels that stick with me are (1) "Love Trouble is my Business" - a brilliant short story in which "Reagan" and "read Proust" are in every single sentence - must be read to be believed (2) "Tennis Personalities" ... an opinion piece with an opinion I endors...