Like Twain -- or more contemporary humorists Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor -- Patrick McManus shares the belief that life's eternal verities exist primarily to be overturned. In McManus's world, all steaks should be chicken-fried, strong coffee is drunk by the light of a campfire, and fishing trips consist of men acting like boys and boys behaving like the small animals we've always assumed they were.

In this, the tenth hilarious collection of his adventures, wry observations, and curmudgeonly calls for bigger and bigger fish stories, McManus takes on everything from an Idaho crime wave to his friend Dolph's atomic-powered huckleberry picker to the uncertain joys of standing waist-deep in icy water, watching the fish go by.

Norman Thelwell took his first kitten home in a shopping-bag slung from the handlebars of his bicycle at the age of ten. He still has the scars to prove it. Magnificat is a comic tribute to the mysterious relationship human beings have long had with the feline species.

Has this ever happened to you? You're reading Romeo and Juliet but you keep getting frustrated because there's no bank heists and barely any surfing. You're halfway through watching Point Break on your laptop when you slam it shut, shouting "this doesn't even rhyme!" You're trying to hold a copy of a Shakespeare play and your Point Break DVD in the same hand so you can pick up a cup of coffee with your other hand but they don't fit together and they slip out of your hand so you try to catch them with your other hand but that spills coffee all over your white t-shirt and the play and the DVD and the cup hit your toe and you cry out in pain but then you glance at the title of the play and it's Much Ado About Nothing which just adds insult to injury so you throw your head to the heavens and scream "there has to be a better way!" Well now there is. Point Break and Shakespeare, together at last.

A riotous collection of bathroom graffiti and words of wisdom, "The Porcelain God Speaks" is a paean to anonymous bathroom philosophers everywhere. Featuring important commentary on religion ("Jesus Saves But wouldn't it be better if He had invested?"); Politics ("Bread not Bombs--but we tried bread and found it would not explode"); Psychology ("It's my parent's fault more than the drug's"), among many other pearls of wisdom, "Porcelain" is a witty, humorous and edgy guide to the best of the bathroom wall. With each page illustrated in inspiring full-color, "The Porcelain God Speaks" is a literary and artistic milestone in bathroom studies.

Texas-born Jacque Lynn Schiller is an accomplished satirical writer and humorist. She is also the wife of Tom Schiller, a writer for the original Saturday Night Live.