Real Life - Real Laughs

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Cate Burns' latest book </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><em>Real </em></strong><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>- </em><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><em>Life Real Laughs: Humor When You Need It Most</em></strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> consists of 38 non-fiction vignettes of heartfelt humor that explore drama vulnerability and adventure from an absurd and quirky point of view. She highlights four themes. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Part One </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Through the Needle's Eye</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> examines adjustment: to someone else's toilet habits to living with no testosterone or estrogen to feeling a ghost's power over her to making friends with a large spider.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Part Two: </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Friends?</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> ponders the mysteries of friendship from people who over-confide to a wild seal who rejects Burns' companionship to bad communication with a young child. She compares four close relationships with males named Henry.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In Part Three</span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Keeping Sane Mostly </strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Burns investigates the limits of experience: fun ways to die coloring all her clothes and bed sheets red what happens to noses in dark rooms and a Countess hairdresser.</span></p><p><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Being Brave or Not </strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Part Four wonders what courage consists of in situations such as: jumping off a cliff painting a stadium with boxing gloves or being hooked on bad relationships. She also reveals a dentist's hidden secret.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Burns expands personal non-fiction humor broadening the base from David Sedaris Curtis Sittenfeld Mary Karr and Augusten Burroughs. In the tradition of authors such as Shel Silverstein Bill Mauldin Herman Hesse William Blake and JRR Tolkien Burns illustrates many vignettes with her original paintings drawings or family photos all in color. </span></p><p></p>