I was somewhat filled with trepidation when we selected Humor Me! as the theme for the 2025 Spring Read. Perhaps it was a career working with troubled kids and families or maybe I am “just one of those people” but I find my personal humor somewhat dark. I am often the only one in the room laughing at inopportune times or who faces a sea of blank faces when I try to tell a joke. I’m Kathleen Holt in Cimarron and am here to help wrap up the 2025 Spring Read – Humor Me!
We’ve read four very different books with topics and themes ranging from Colonial America, to travel in the 1950s to growing up in the 1980s to modern tales drawn from a graphic novel by a podcaster. You’d think that would have been the proverbial “something for everyone,” but as coordinator of the Radio Readers Book Club, I can tell you that I found humor in the fact that for every, single one of these books, I received an email or two stating, “I hate this book” followed almost immediately by another email or two stating, “This was one of the best books I’ve ever read.”
Of course, we started last January exploring the fact that literary humor is not necessarily comprised of page after page of jokes but is often instead a storyline designed to give readers respite from dark stories. Sometimes fiction that makes us laugh can provide profound insight. It can allow us to address controversial or uncomfortable subjects – and it can certainly release tension both in the story and in the reader.
So, here we are ready to spend a couple of hours exploring the topic of humor as we’ve found in these four books. The live, on-air discussion is slated for Sunday afternoon, May 4 – just a couple of weeks. We’ll see if our book leaders agree on the definition of humor – whether it if is satire, a good joke, a prank or the surprise of something unexpected, or something entirely different. Tune in at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 4, 2025.
Who will be joining us in the studio to explore these varied books? Let’s take a look.
The theme of the 2025 Spring Read was Humor Me!
Our first book was The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, and we’ll hear from Charles Forrest Jones of Lawrence and Creed CO as well as Bob Seay of Lamar as we travelled back in time to explore the Puritans journey to America as we explore what claiming to be a Puritan nation means in today’s world.
Julie Sellers from Atchison KS – what we know to be the Flint Hills - will lead us discussing author Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America as we discuss the humor of the 1950s and ‘60s as it compares to Bryson’s humor in his later books. Julie is new to the HPPR Book Club, so we’ll look forward to getting to know her as part of the live discussion.
Tito Aznar, originally from Argentina. is currently a resident of the Oklahoma Panhandle. He’s been at Panhandle State University (OPSU) almost 20 years where he teaches English and Spanish when he’s not directing theatre productions. Tito will lead the discussion of What's So Funny?: A Cartoonist's Memoir by David Sipress published in 2022, an, according to Roz Chast, “illuminating, and hilarious memoir that will perhaps clarify what dark forces are at work when it comes to becoming a cartoonist rather than an a podiatrist, a billionaire tech mogul, or someone who is deeply into collecting owl figurines.”
And the final humor selection is the graphic novel Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh published in 2013, and described by the author as a book with pictures, words and stories as well as the secret to eternal happiness. Our book leader Matt Kliewer, who grew up in Cimarron, KS, is now at Austin Community College in Texas, so he’ll be joining us through the wonders of technology.
And remember, health – according to the Mayo Clinic--.is about more than diet and exercise. It’s also about finding moments of humor, joy and human connectedness. So, join us for some of that connectedness on Sunday, May 4 at 1:00 pm for the live on-air discussion of Humor Me!
