The Potty Mouth at the Table

From the celebrated author best known for the Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Cluband described as "the funniest writer in the solar system" ( The Miami Herald) comes a new laugh-out-loud collection of essays on rudeness. Laurie Notaro thinks everyone's nuts. Or maybe there's just something wrong with her. Here, she examines the basic human condition of rudenessother people's rudeness, that isin her latest uproariously funny collection. In her trademark irreverent style, she uses her biting wit to cover other people's bad behavior ranging from bathroom etiquette (interpreting a coworker's failure to wash her hands after leaving the bathroom as a personal affront) to dinner party conundrums (did he really just pick food off of my plate?). Laurie recounts in detail such unfortunate situations as discovering that she wasn't on the viewable Facebook invite list for a good friend's party, or standing behind a woman in the pharmacy line who says to the clerk, "Hi. I was wondering if you could tell me what a staph infection looks like?" and proceeds to embark on a fifteen-minute conversation that includes sentences like, "Infection can burrow." So if you've ever found yourself wondering if the person seated next to you on the plane is being earnest when he tells the stewardess he will handle the emergency door in the event of a crash landing or spotted a chunk of something that could be chocolate under your keyboard and desperately wanted to eat it, then this collection of sometimes bizarre and always entertaining observations is for you.

Laurie Notaro was a reporter and a daily columnist at the metro daily The Arizona Republic before publishing twelve books of fiction and non-fiction with Random House and Simon and Schuster, several of which have been New York Times bestsellers. Her work covers the genres of humor, women’s fiction, historical fiction, and literary fiction. She was a finalist for the Thurber Prize, and has been awarded the Hearst Award, the Golden Circle Award, and several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.