
I Must Say
by Martin Short
Martin Short: chaos in a bow tie.
For you if
you need a reminder that joy and craft and absurdity are their own form of resistance
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$18 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Short’s memoir is pure generosity — a chronicle of performance, friendship, and relentless positivity. Behind every pratfall is a craftsman obsessed with precision and heart. It’s a study in how to turn grief, awkwardness, and absurdity into grace — one perfectly timed bit at a time.
Where This Book Lives
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

Best in Show(2000)
dir. Christopher Guest
Dog show devotion, played entirely straight-faced.
Five eccentric owners and their dogs compete at the prestigious Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show, in a mockumentary that never winks at its own joke.
Why it’s here: An ensemble of oddballs taken completely seriously by the camera, which is the whole joke and also the whole warmth — nobody here gets to be a punchline without also getting to be a person.

Never Let Me Go(2010)
dir. Mark Romanek
Raised for a purpose they never chose.
Three friends grow up together at an idyllic English boarding school, slowly coming to understand — and largely accept — the specific, limited purpose their lives were engineered to serve. Adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in its quiet, devastating restraint — no uprising, no escape plot, just people trained from childhood not to fight their fate. Pedagogical in showing how a society justifies using some lives for others' benefit, one small acceptance at a time.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
milk and honey
Rupi Kaur

The poems that gave survivors their words.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Nineteen Minutes
Jodi Picoult

The novel that asks who made the shooter.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
M Train
Patti Smith

A love letter to lost time and black coffee.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Camera Lucida
Roland Barthes

When looking becomes longing.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
Each Little Bird That Sings
Deborah Wiles

She grew up in a funeral home. She thought she understood death.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
I'll Give You the Sun
Jandy Nelson

Twins. Three years. Something broke them apart. Both of them tell it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan

Her mother died. She became a bird. Leigh goes to Taiwan to find her.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
When Sadness Is at Your Door
Eva Eland

Sadness arrives at the door. You can let it in.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
