HPPR Radio Readers Book Club

We started with the Puritans, traveled the 1950s, visited the New Yorker and now we’ll explore blogger and web-comic creator Allie Brosh in a graphic novel. Bill Gates, said, “I love her approach—looking, listening, and describing with the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian.”

Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Julie A. Sellers, author of the novel Ann of Sunflower Lane. Welcome to this High Plains Public Radio Radio Readers Book Club BookByte of What’s So Funny? A Cartoonist’s Memoir by David Sipress.

Hello! I’m Tito Aznar for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2025 Spring Read. Figuring out who we are can be messy business. It’s full of contradictions, self-doubt, pressure, and, if we’re lucky, some moments of clarity.

In Art Spiegelman's MetaMaus, the reflective companion to his graphic memoir Maus, Spiegelman claims that in creating graphic narratives, "You've gotta boil everything down to its essence. . . It's a great medium for artists who can't remember much anyway."

This is Linda Allen in Amarillo for the Radio Readers Spring Read “What’s so Funny?” has been on my mind since I read it. The 2022 memoir by David Sipress has me considering and revisiting principles I studied and applied during my education and vocation as a psychotherapist.

Hello! I’m Tito Aznar for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2025 Spring Read. Family shapes us in ways we don’t always recognize at first. Family gives us our first ideas about success, love, failure, and identity. Sometimes, it supports us; other times, it feels like a weight we’re constantly trying to push against.

This is Leslie VonHolten from the High Plains of Kansas with another Radio Reader’s Book Byte. Isn’t creativity an interesting element of being human? Such a mystery—where does it come from, and how does it manifest? I’ve found myself grateful for the various ways creative thinking appears in our lives.

Greetings from Goodwell in the Oklahoma Panhandle! I’m Marjory Hall with a BookByte for the Radio Reader’s Series. Don’t you think most people have been taught that rhetorical questions are great attention-grabbers? After all, such questions immediately invite the reader into the conversation.

Hello. This is Phillip Periman in Amarillo reviewing David Sipress' book, What's So Funny? for the HPPR Reader's book club. Sipress, a regular cartoonist for The New Yorker is also a native of NYC. He has written a memoir that engaged me as a reader in both worlds.

Hello! I’m Tito Aznar for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2025 Spring Read. Many of us often see creativity as a gift, as something we either have or don’t have. In What’s So Funny?, David Sipress shows us that creativity can be much more complicated than that.