Yesterday was a bit overwhelming with SOOOO many posters on so many blogs all commemorating 9/11 with memorials from the heart felt and personal to the polemic and political, and representing most all points of view. The above is my nominee for the best memorial. (Sadly I have forgotten where it is from and will update and give credit where due when I figure it out.)
With all that heavy, heavy I felt it was a day to laugh as well as cry and was so pleased to have come across Forever Erma last week,
a compendium of her best loved columns including her first from 1963 and her last from 1996 and covering a range of themes and dates in between.
I first started reading Erma’s newspaper columns when I was in junior high school. I know it was supposed to be for women, but I always found Erma’s writing to be about families and houses and her humor accessible and entertaining. And when I read her, I laugh OUT LOUD. REALLY LOUD. Most all of the included columns were familiar to me from my years of reading At Wits End in the newspaper and having read most of her many books, which I always asked for for Christmas and birthday wish lists and which I inevitably read again and again until the covers were worn, the pages loose and the poor book all but falling apart. Most of the books I read back when I’d just begun to count my age in double digits have long since been lost and forgotten, but Erma’s books remain true blue, standing sentinel on the shelf and ready to make me REALLY LAUGH again, and again and again and again.
A note about links—Book covers that appear in posts on this blog link to Worldcat, a meta search engine for public libraries. By entering your zip code (just once) Worldcat will locate the nearest copy. Book titles that appear in blog posts link to an Amazon.com sales page for that title. (Please note the link is provided only as a convenience; I am not shilling for them and do not receive any commissions from them.) When book covers appear in the sidebar they link to an Amazon sales page. When book titles appear in the sidebar they link to LibraryThing.
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September 16th, 2007 at 8:42 am
I LOVED Erma Bombeck and always wanted to be her. I wrote a weekly column once for a local newspaper which was my attempt to be Erma and I discovered it was much more difficult than you would think. It turned out I did not have the flare for it.
September 16th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
not sure whom I’m quoting, but this brings to mind “dying is easy. comedy is hard”
October 20th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
I recently picked up “Best of Erma” at a library book sale (I had read her as a junior-high kid also) and couldn’t believe how much funnier she seems now (even though I liked her then), now that essentially I am living her life. Dead animals in walls, teenagers who make me feel lousy, the works….yes, I love Erma. Another favorite of mine (then and now) is Jean Kerr. I recently reread Penny Candy and cannot get over how good it is. Check it out (in your spare time, of course).