Sentence examples for funny essays from inspiring English sources

PHYLLIS GESTRIN Washington, Aug. 6, 2011 To the Editor: Reading the article about designer summers made me wonder if students ever write funny essays for their college applications.

These sharp, funny essays cover subjects from being a parent to the failings of Bill Clinton to Ephron's search for the perfect cabbage strudel.

When I was growing up in Cleveland, there was a sports-radio station that had a lot of call-ins, and they would have essay contests, and I'd always write funny essays.

"This Is a Book" is a collection of funny essays (one of them recently printed in the magazine), short stories, and Martin's trademark doodles — like the one on the cover.

Whether Rakoff is skewering the musical "Rent," describing his struggles with cancer or devouring his surroundings as he scoots from Disneyland to the Hollywood Walk of Fame to Mormon Utah, these mordantly funny essays make an inspired case for always assuming the worst.

In Rome (the "Yoga" book has several funny essays set there), or in Paris, or anywhere, really, life dwindles to stasis: "There was less and less to do, which was just as well because I had less and less energy to do anything".

In March it includes articles examining the phenomenon of preteen fashion icons and a funny essay by Mindy Kaling about the horrors of dressing for a red carpet.

(Actually, Mr. Bernstein's former wife, Nora Ephron, guessed it was Mr. Felt and wrote a funny essay about saying so and not being believed).

Davy Rothbart falls in love instantly, often with the wrong people, which explains the title of his achingly funny essay collection: "My Heart Is an Idiot" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25).

In one darkly funny essay she travels alone to Lisbon in winter, speaking no Portuguese, wandering the empty city miserably, until she meets a friendly group of clowns-in-­training and commences a dialogue by drawing stick figures; one clown conveys her affair with a superior clown.

To this end, she writes a brief, impressionistic (and often very funny) essay about every item that Kiosk carries: it's a key to understanding the significance that each object holds, whether a wooden paperweight made by a 90-year-old Japanese craftsman who won't reveal his methods or a red Portuguese sugar bowl manufactured by one of the last melamine factories in Europe.