I Shudder audiobook

Hilarious and occasionally bittersweet. If there is a funnier man than Rudnick writing, I haven't come across him. This collection of essays provides a sweet coda to I'll Take It, and there is an hysterical account of Rudnick's time as the script writer for Sister Act. By the time the movie was made with Whoopi Goldberg instead of Bette Midler, Rudnick had fled back to New York (he is an improbable figure for the West Coast, or indeed for anywhere other than Manhattan) and removed his name from the project he had created. But he is gentle enough to say that he doesn't mind the adaptation as filmed. It just wasn't his.Highly recommend.

This is a really quirky, creative, and occasionally enlightening read. I was never entirely sure if the author was speaking of actual events, or creative fantasies but that made it really entertaining either way.

Hilarious

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories by Broadway playwright Paul Rudnick, especially the sections on I Hate Hamlet and William Ivey Long.

I don't know why this book was so funny, but within four pages I was laughing out loud. Not just titters, but full-on brays of laughter. Rudnick's humor grows slowly and comes out of nowhere. Do all his friends have a knack for saying the worst possible thing, or does he just remember the stories that way? I don't know. Either way, this book made me laugh consistently and frequently, and I can always use the chuckles.One thing I didn't like: interspaced with the memoir-type anecdotes were fictional pieces about someone named Violette something or other. I read one and a half of these and was so uninterested that I skipped the rest of them. Didn't appeal to me at all.Most fascinating fact: Paul Rudnick lives off nothing but junk food. Never eats meat or vegetables. I find this fascinating, and it gives me hope that my picky child might not starve.I'd recommend this book for people who like David Sedaris, because the humor is similar, if not quite as bitter and bizarre.

Paul Rudnick cracked me up time and time again, and I wasn't surprised that the recommendation quote on the cover came from David Sedaris, who helped to pave the way for humorous memoirs like this. (And, you will be turning back to that front cover quote several chapters into the reading, causing you to once again laugh out loud. Trust me.) Mixed in with the rambling stories shared throughout the chapters are some outright bizarre 'diary entries' by a fictional character (I assume) that are seriously over the top. Funny, odd, and irreverent-- this is a fun read that serves up the laughter.

People who can write can make anything interesting, and it appears people who can write comedy can make anything funny. Paul Rudnick pulls it off here. The fiction sections (which are 1/4 of the book or less, maybe?) are excellent, if rather dark, satire. The non-fiction sections read to me as much more of a cautionary tale than I think the author intended them to be, but I still enjoyed them very much. The author has a gift for the unexpected turn of phrase, especially in dialogue, that made me shout in sudden laughter on many occasions. With the caveat that you should avoid this book if you are easily offended, I recommend it.

Enjoyable from beginning to end. There is a nice variety of essays in this collection. Some are thought provoking, some are light hearted, some have a touch of sorrow, but all have a great slice of humor. I found myself laughing out loud more than once. I couldn't help it -- I wanted to be friends with Paul and be part of his cast of kooky characters. Interspersed with the essays is a continuing work of fiction, a story that grows as a character study of one curmudgeonly old man. Well worth the read, even if you're not already familiar with Paul Rudnick's plays for stage and screen.

Oh-my-gosh. Rudnick's novel, "I'll Take It," remains at the top of my list of much-loved humorous books. "I Shudder" is a mixture of essays -- about growing up in NJ, about his plays, about his screenplays, about his family-- mixed with diary entries from the fictional Elyot Vionnet. The collection is dryly funny and, when he writes seeing the AIDS quilt and the enormity of the loss it represents, heartbreaking. He's compared to David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs; while he is well-able to offer sharp insights, he's not a guy looking to put the fun in dysfunctional.

I enjoyed this book, mainly the stories about show biz folks (the final chapter about William Ivey Long is especially charming). Elyot Vionnet did wear on me, particularly when he veered into the land of absurdity with "Mr. Christmas." But I have to say that perhaps my favorite passage in the book is Vionnet's dissertation on why cabs are superior to public transportation ("people who take the bus have given up.") Despite the fact that he disses my lovely neighborhood of Inwood, I thought this was brilliant and hysterical.