Needless to say, effective humor is extremely personal. For those who have found Barry funny in a good way, these latest...
Humorist Barry (You Can Date Boys When You're Forty: Dave Barry on Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About, 2014, etc.) departs from the collections of his now-defunct syndicated newspaper column and his goofy full-length novels to write a dozen original essays gathered loosely around a theme: happiness and its discontents.
In a semiserious introduction, the author notes that the topics of the essays might seem random at first but that they all touch on happiness in some way, however oblique. He carries out his quasi-theme as promised, providing laugh-out-loud moments throughout the book. In one essay, Barry discusses homeownership. Though it may constitute a significant part of the American dream, it is often not a good way to achieve happiness. In the longest essay, about the author’s travel to Brazil, where supposedly friendly citizenry rob tourists regularly, Barry shifts into an exploration of the Brazilian mania for soccer. This then leads into an extended discussion about his daughter, a high school soccer player, and ends with a critique of recent World Cup matches and how futile it was to hate the Belgian team even as its members were defeating the U.S. national team. Additional essays cover Barry's travels to Russia with fellow writer Ridley Pearson, Barry's experiment wearing Google Glass, the mindlessness of 24/7 TV news, why Barry's own generation (he was born in 1947) seems less content than the generation that came before it, advice to his daughter as she reaches the age she can obtain a driver's license and a letter to his infant grandson centering on the ritual of circumcision.
Needless to say, effective humor is extremely personal. For those who have found Barry funny in a good way, these latest essays will cause outright, prolonged laughter.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-16595-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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