Here are two beach books that will definitely put a smile on your face. If you can’t travel to Ho Chi Minh City this summer, this is truly the next best thing:
“So Happiness to Meet You” by Karin Esterhammer for Travelers and Fiction Lovers
This travel memoir is Karin Esterhammer’s journey that began in Los Angeles when she was laid off with credit card debt, had a non-earning husband, car loans, a huge mortgage, and an autistic 8-year-old son. She figured the cost of living was so low in Vietnam that they could move there for a year, teach English, live frugally, and return back home with money in the bank. She figured wrong. This laugh-out-loud comedy of errors provides detailed insight into life in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City – encompassing its poorest neighborhood, offerings of shared barbecued rat meals, neighbors with pet cockroaches for good luck, and being stuck there without money to get home. Sounds like… maybe not so much fun? The twist is that the author and her family came to love the place and its heart-warming people far too much to even want to return home, and you will relish every page of their journey. This is truly an eye-opening, broadening, well-written, and hilarious book. Highly recommend! Prospect Park Books – find it HERE.
INKED by The New Yorker’s Joe Dator
Cartoons, confessions, rejected ideas and secret sketches… all from The New Yorker’s celebrated cartoonist Joe Dator, whose book of more than 150 received a resounding thumbs-up from fellow humorist Roz Chast. Dator is a true New Yorker in that he is from the Bronx and attended SVA, has a deadpan sense of humor and keenly funny way of perceiving the world, and sketches hilarity for the magazine of the same name. Reminiscent of Gahan Wilson’s work in its absurdity, anyone who loves to laugh will appreciate this for themselves or as a gift; find it HERE.
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