David Bruce

The Funniest People in Books David Bruce

This is one-half of my previous book "The Funniest People in Books and Music: 500 Anecdotes." This book contains 250 anecdotes about authors and books, including these: 1) The first of the two most important events in Orville Prescott's life (the other was becoming daily book critic for "The New York Times" in 1942) occurred when he was six years old and his Grandmother Sherwin offered him a $5 gold piece if he would learn how to read. Although he didn't quite know what a $5 gold piece was, he knew that it was desirable, and therefore, a few days later, he read a few pages out of a first grade primer to his grandmother and received his rewards-the $5 gold piece and the discovery of the joy of reading. 2) When playwright Neil Simon was a child, he told his mother that he liked chocolate pudding, so she made choco-late pudding for dessert 15 days in a row. Finally, he got tired of always eating chocolate pudding for dessert, so he said that he didn't want the pudding. His mother said, "But I thought you liked it."