John Mulaney
5.9K posts
John Mulaney
@mulaney
⬇️ Get tickets for MISTER WHATEVER tour
Katılım Eylül 2009
6 Takip Edilen1.3M Takipçiler
February #MulaneyReads! (I thought it was a leap year, I realize it’s March 1 now.)
Two books this month. One led me to the other.
“Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and an American Awakening” by Jim Newton.
In bad times we need reckless trouble makers to pursue absurdity and offer something stupid and fun and free.
I have read a half dozen books about the Grateful Dead. Jim Newton’s new contribution is totally different. A thoughtful cultural and historical diorama to view Jerry Garcia and the Dead and their time and place. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A DEAD HEAD OR EVEN FAN TO APPRECIATE THIS CHRONICLE. You will see something of our world in it no matter what.
In “Here Besides…” Newton mentions the second novel by Ken Kesey “Sometimes a Great Notion” which is our second Mulaney Reads pick!
I’d never read any Kesey. Not even the big famous one. I have a pattern of not reading many books that are high-school assigned and famous like Cuckoo’s Nest. So I picked up “Sometimes a Great Notion” - this propulsive family story of a logging community in Oregon in the 1960s- with no expectations. I loved this book. In a really isolated outcast community the people that populate the book are outcasts from each other. There’s something so hard and remote about the lives they lead. Lives that have no nostalgia for a better time because it’s always been this hard. I don’t know what it’s like to be driving around the country in a bus on acid for half a decade but while he was doing that Kesey wrote a truly great American novel.
Buy them wherever you get books.
ByeBye
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MISTER WHATEVER at the Hollywood Bowl on sale now. Get tickets at johnmulaney.com #netflixisajokefest
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Glasgow 2nd show on sale now, get tickets for MISTER WHATEVER in the UK and Dublin at johnmulaney.com
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Mister Whatever at the Hollywood Bowl on May 8th. Get tickets this Wednesday at 12PM PT before general on sale this Friday with presale code: MISTER at johnmulaney.com
#netflixisajokefest
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#MulaneyReads Read “The Remembered Soldier” by Anjet Danjee.
I have been really into novels and poems about the First World War (and its aftermath) since I first read Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in high school. Memoirs like “Goodbye to All That” by Robert Graves and the Pat Barker “Regeneration” trilogy, as well as Sebastian Faulk’s amazing “Birdsong” have been favorites of mine for years.
So much powerful and existential writing came out of that early 20th century nightmare. “The Remembered Soldier” is a brilliant addition to that group. A soldier named Noon has spent four years at a hospital since he was discovered wandering the trenches with no memory of who he is. Then one day a woman arrives and says she is his wife. He leaves with her and we watch two people figure out how to be married after a war wiped away all of their history. It’s a knockout.
Buy it wherever books are sold.
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I have to go now. My son wants to weigh me. He calls it measuring but it’s a scale.
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Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte. This is the newest of the end of year books being published in 2024 but I only read it last week. I felt like I knew each of the damaged maddening people in these internet soaked stories and I have a feeling you will too. I read this in one sitting. #MulaneyReads
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#MulaneyReads wishes you a Very Dark Holiday Season. Here’s four nasty and fantastic ones to end 2025. I once read a quote by Loren Eisley, “live among the haunts awhile.” I’ve always loved that line.
I’d like to suggest that these heavy haunted books will, in their own way be a lovely escape.
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