Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a find, 14 Nov 2007
Wow.. Thanks to whoever left this book on the train. It brightened up my otherwise dull journey. Guess what I'm getting everyone for Christmas!
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oh. My. God., 2 Nov 2007
I have never laughed so much when reading a book. In fact, I am not sure I have ever laughed so much, so much so that a little bit of wee came out. I had heard that this was going to be good, but I was a little sceptical. 'Let's all take the mickey of the modern world, oh how funny' is something that everyone seems to be doing at the moment. But it is done with such finesse, such wit and skill that this book really stands apart from the rest of the crowd- they whimper in its shadow. And they're probably paperbacks too.
The book's basically a day in the life of someone who reads everything they see, and I mean everything: junk mail, ingredients, adverts, spam, road signs. You go through the day and see all the stuff as the character does, except everything is a parody or a satire of the real thing. One of my favourite bits is a spam email from a Nigerian prince who speaks perfect english and is a bit embarrassed about the whole asking-for-money thing. There's also moisturiser labels for today's uber-masculine men, diet strategies boasting of calorie-free products (where calorie free actually means you get all the calories for free) and product recall based on babyfood containing glass and tiny notes with swearwords on.
You can't fail to love this book. It's so accessible. Even my Grandad laughed, and he's dead.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The boys done good, 6 Nov 2007
This book does not contain a parody of user-submitted reviews to popular retail websites, which is a bit of a relief as otherwise this missive of mine would only come across looking like a parody of a parody. It does, however, contain well-executed spoofs of just about every other type of written communication we have around us in the dizzying modern world in which we live - text messages, e-mails, adverts, magazines, newspapers, food labels... Anything and everything is grist to the satirical mill of this pair.
Speaking of the authors, I should immediately declare an interest here and admit that I know Messers Stickley and Wright - or at least, I've met them, anyway, having been acquainted with them a few years ago at university. They were a couple of years above me but I knew them from the creative writing society - Luke Wright I didn't really know that well and don't think I ever spoke to but I recall him being at several of the meetings. Joel Stickley I knew a little better, he was the president of the society and we got along quite well - I was always impressed by the stuff he read out, and it was when randomly checking the internet to see whether he'd had a novel published yet that I discovered this book was coming out and placed my order. And I am very glad that I did.
Like a television sketch show, not every single joke hits the mark but it doesn't really matter because you know there's always another one along on the next page. It's the perfect sort of a book to dip into or out of while you are, say, waiting for a bus, and some of its piercingly accurate and at times rather depressing echoes of modern life will strike a chord with anyone who has ever, for instance, worked for a temp agency doing boring office admin work. It's not a completely disparate collection either, as the reader who pays attention will be rewarded by seeing recurring threads and names and themes running through the book.
While it is amusing, some of the realities of modern life it covers can be quite bleak at times, and in that respect it evokes the much-missed BBC Three animation "Monkey Dust". But like that show, it makes you glad there are still people in the world who can point out the madness that is around us and know it for what it is - so even if nobody has any solutions, we can at least have a decent laugh about it along the way.
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