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Title: Not So Funny When It Happened: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure (Travelers' Tales Guides) by Tim Cahill ISBN: 1-885211-55-4 Publisher: Travelers' Tales Inc Pub. Date: 30 November, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.36 (14 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: not particularly funny now, either
Comment: Mostly lame and unfunny anecdotes are contained and presented in this book. There were only a couple good laughs and they occurred in the last couple of selections.
Some selections didn't even seem particularly travel oriented, such as the one about infiltrating a fundamentalist Christian sect. And the one about the fox hunt was, I suppose, fairly representative of it's well-known author, J.P. Donleavy. But it was still very dense, overwritten and straining for humorousness. And it also didn't seem to have much of anything to do with travel.
Apart from just been dull, uninteresting and unfunny, the worst thing about this book were the little inserts, or sidebars, that were included on every other page. A number of them were, in fact, quotes from the TV show "Saturday Night Live"?!?!?! They were the little phony "thought for the day" things by "Jack Handey". For example: "I hope if dogs ever take over the world and they choose a king, they don't just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihauhuas with some good ideas"?!?! What is this only marginally clever re-cycled TV crud doing in a travel book?
Good thing I got this out of a library and didn't actually have to pay real money for it, or I would have really been unhappy.
Rating: 4
Summary: But funny to read
Comment: This book is just what it sounds like - brief stories of travel disasters. The authors range from the usual suspects (travel writers like Bill Bryson) to humorists (Dave Barry) to other well-known authors (Anne Lamott) to a few I'd never heard of but will look into now (Nigel Barlow and Luis Alberto Urrea). The stories were mostly credible and all pretty funny when you got past cringing. I also really like the interpositioning of comics and short shorts. If there's another installment, I'll definitely read it. My only negative comment is that it seemed the funniest pieces were at the front, or maybe one should just read it in small doses.
Rating: 4
Summary: Presented on a Bed of Chaff Beans and Snoose Noodles
Comment: As I travel quite a bit, mostly on business, but occasionally for pleasure, I sometimes enjoy reading travel humor. I am unsure what criteria were used to select the stories in this volume, but largely the results are amusing to hysterical. My favorite, hands down was the Bill Bryson piece titled "What's Cooking?" ("We have a crepe galette of sea chortle and kelp in a rich mal de mer sauce..."), though almost as funny were "A Train, A Frog, and Aliens" by Randy Wayne White, and "Bad Haircuts Around the World" by Doug Lansky. Many of the other pieces were also quite funny, and a few only modestly amusing, though generally sincere. A couple were downright unpleasant, namely editor Tim Cahill's own "Speaking in Tongues" and especially the almost unendurable J. P. Donleavy piece "The Fox Hunt", which was not only distasteful and crude, but not a trifle funny.
By and large this is an entertaining travelogue, and I recommend it. It is particularly good for a short plane trip, as it will take about two or three hours to read. Parts are genius, but just know that other parts are occasionally a bit of a drag.
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Title: There's No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure (Travelers' Tales Guides) by Doug Lansky ISBN: 1885211279 Publisher: Travelers' Tales Inc Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Hold the Enlightenment by Tim Cahill ISBN: 0375713298 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Pecked to Death by Ducks by Tim Cahill ISBN: 0679749292 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Pass the Butterworms : Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered by Tim Cahill ISBN: 0375701117 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 31 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure (Travelers' Tales Guides.) by Sean O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, James O'Reilly, Tim Cahill ISBN: 188521197X Publisher: Travelers' Tales Inc Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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