A reader told our new editor there should be more humor in this beloved weekly. To which I can only reply: What am I, chopped liver? 

Granted, humor is always in short supply. Go into a bookstore and one of the smallest sections will almost always be humor — behind self help, romance, biographies, travel, and mystery. And a good part of that humor inventory is Garfield and Snoopy collections. 

I came here several millennia ago to write a humor column. In the past, I’ve been able to wring humorous material out of two unlikely sources — Canadians and finance — so PT seemed to provide enough material. And it has. 

The humor book I wrote about Canada (Tundra Books, Montreal) included attempted jokes about how cold it is up there (people jump into burning buildings) and perceived cultural lag (Q. If it’s noon in New York, what time is it in Toronto? A. 1954). The book received pretty good reviews and decent sales. I lived in and wrote columns in a Montreal daily at the time, plus, my son was born in Montreal. Plus, my joke book was illustrated by Aislin, Canada’s best-known political cartoonist (aka Christopher Terry Mosher). 

I later wrote a humor column for the major investment website, San Francisco-based MarketWatch, for three years, but how many jokes can you get out of stimulating your private sector? 

I’m always on the lookout for humorous books, but it’s not easy to find them. In the winter especially, they provide a much-needed lift to one’s spirits.

Humor writers whose clever and iconoclastic books I like are those by P.J. O’Rourke, Christopher Buckley, and Joe Queenan. Also: Jerry Seinfeld. Give ‘em a look, humor-seeking bibliophiles. The late O’Rourke’s book about Congress has one of the best titles ever: “Parliament of Whores.”

There are really no humor periodicals in the U.S. any more, except perhaps “Funny Times,” but The Onion online has its moments. The Onion is pure headline humor, and I’d argue that this may be the funniest one ever: “Balsamic Terrorists Bomb Hidden Valley Ranch.” 

The New York Post is a trashy tabloid, but it always runs funny headlines, like the classic “Headless Body Found in Topless Bar.” My editor at the San Francisco Examiner, Phil Bronstein, had that one framed for his office. Phil appreciated a joke. After all, he was married to actress Sharon Stone.

A selective reading of comic strips, all now available on the web as well as in daily newspapers, also has a salutary effect for humor. Among my faves are “Doonesbury” (it’s largely reruns now, but they’re all wickedly clever) and “Pearls Before Swine.” I used to occasionally play golf in a foursome with “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz in Santa Rosa, California, but I rarely read his “Peanuts.” 

A Leader column I wrote a while back about the most worthwhile comic strips got a lot of email response. 

Also, the delectable humor of Dorothy Parker is usually a fine read. She once memorably defined wit, her specialty, as “saying the wrong thing the right way.” 

Humor is out there, but you have to look hard for it sometimes. It’s like panning for gold, but it’s well worth it. Keep smiling.

I’ve been checking PT’s temps every day while on vacation down in Sonoma County in Northern California. Looks like it got bitterly cold up there. Fortunately, the couple who are housesitting for us are both Canadians, so it didn’t phase them one bit. Actually, it was kinda homey to them. 

Speaking of funny, you could do a lot worse than watching playwright David Mamet’s often-brilliant script and movie, “State and Main.” It’s about a Hollywood movie being shot in an insular New England town. It stars — who better? — Alec Baldwin as its skirt-chasing, sociopathic star. Truly a comedy classic. Which leads us to a great Mamet line I saw in a recent interview: Q. Who is the most fetching female in film history? Answer: Lassie. 

Peripatetic PT humorist Bill Mann has been a columnist at the San Francisco Examiner, Oakland Tribune, and at climatic opposites Montreal Gazette and Honolulu Advertiser. Contact him at newsmann9@gmail.com.