Book 1

Real Time with Bill Maher is one of our favorite shows. We watch it whenever we find it while surfing channels. A few days ago Carol Leifer was one of his guests. She was promoting her book - When You Lie About Your Age The Terrorists Win. The title was really intriguing and the discussion motivated me to search for this book and place a hold on it. I was a few pages into Oil on the Brain when the library mailed me saying the book had arrived.

Let me tell you I had no idea about Carol before I read this book. I gathered from the note on the dust jacket that she is a stand up comedian and has written a number of scripts for SNL and Seinfeld. I checked out the book and started reading the first few pages in the library. The book is definitely a page turner. It's like taking a peek into some stranger's diary and by the end of the book you feel you have become aquainted with the person.

The book starts off on a funny note. It's a random collection of events that the author has gone through. We can read the book in any order and not miss anything as each chapter covers an event and each event is not really related. Some chapters such as "40 Things I Know at 50" and "Shhh! I'm Driving" are really hilarious. A few like "Sticking with Gravity", "Five Lessons of Animal Adoption" convey a message served with humor. "Creating a Jew", "Soul to Sole" and "76 Trombones" are more serious chapters which cover some somber memories of the author.

I read the book with the image of Carol standing on a stage doing a stand up act where she narrates the book. The book is written in such a way that it is much better to read when we think of it like a stand up act. On the whole it was a good read (I did finish it within 3 days). It's more like one of the Chicken Soup series books but with much more humor. I will not buy a copy of the book but I would definitely recommend my friends to read the book once.