Mirth of A Nation

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A bit of a departure for me, I picked up this book of short humor pieces awhile back, and finally got around to reading it. I guess I needed some cheering up?

And… well, I was slightly disappointed. It's not that there's not some funny stuff here. Dave Barry has a couple of articles. P. J. O'Rourke has one. And a few other authors made me chuckle as well. The editor, Michael J. Rosen, seems to be a pleasant enough guy; he wrote this in association with the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. Which actually has a unicorn in its garden. Although if you acknowledge its existence, they take you to the booby hatch.

But way too many of the articles were clever without being funny. Or inventively bizarre, while being too sophisticated to actually be caught telling a joke. Perhaps there were some ingenious parodies. But if so, they were unfortunately of works I'd never heard of.

But, hey, you might like it. The low price at Amazon, as I type, is $0.01, plus shipping. And 99 cents for a Kindle version. I think I get a cut of that if you order from the link!


Last Modified 2024-01-28 2:43 PM EDT