#humor book review

[literaryhypewoman]

Book Review: "Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice" by Elle Cosimano

As I continue to clear my review drafts from 2024, here's a look at the current book in one of my favorite series, Finlay Donovan. In book four, we find Finlay taking a road trip with the whole squad and dead bodies abound. Read the full review:

If you haven’t read any of the first three books in the Finlay Donovan series by Elle Cosimano, this is your fair warning to bookmark this page and come back when you’re caught up. Elle loves to pick up books directly following the chaotic end of the one before, so this will include some spoilers. You have been warned. Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] finds Finlay and…

[katiethedane12]

my favorite percy jackson review

And the review above it

[batvilletv]

[spearmintyy]

Review on Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Sorry for the extended hiatus! Life is crazy. But I'm coming back strong with one of my favorite books of all time :)

Rating: ★★★★★

This book is, perhaps, the ultimate comfort read. It is thrilling, clever, and completely hilarious and had me smiling on every page. Like, fully grinning while flipping through a book. In public no less!

Pratchett has mastered comedic timing in a way I didn't know could be achieved on a printed page. He uses so many clever, innovative tricks (the footnotes!) to construct a joke and deliver the punchline; and how incredible that a joke told thirty five years ago can land just right today!

The cast has so much heart-- even Nobby Nobbs, who in fact has my entire heart-- that by the end you feel like you've gotten drinks with them every week for the past twenty years. And they're kind of gross, but you love them. Vetinari is my personal favorite for his... everything. But even characters who only appear in a single page (Cut-me-own-throat, for one glorious example) come to life on the page. Pratchett can craft an entire person in a single line of dialogue.

And all that not to mention the brilliant prose. Pratchett's control over the english language blows me away. He can weave the same phrase into both a powerful symbol, novel bit of imagery, and hilarious punchline all at once. Genuinely, I've never read anyone else who can manage that, and I doubt I ever will.

Guards! Guards! is, in my opinion, the perfect foray into Discworld, which requires no prior context or reading. Just crack it open and get into it. This is my most-well lent book of my personal collection, because I can't help but force it on my friends-- so far, I haven't gotten a single complaint. Nor have any of them rated it below five stars.

Recommendations:

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. If ever a comedy-fantasy could live up to Discworld, it's this one. Eames' humor is distinct from Pratchett's, in a way that brings his own unique voice to life. He tells a story not just about fantasy (featuring all your favorite and least well known DND creatures), but also about growing old, and rock music! The Band is one of my favorite adventuring parties I've ever had the pleasure to accompany. In every bit of this book, you can tell Eames is writing something he absolutely loves, and to me it was impossible not to love it too.

Homeland by R. A. Salvatore. If you loved the campy '80s fantasy feel of Discworld, the Legend of Drizzt (starting with Homeland) is a great place to get more of it. While Salvatore's work is less satirical and more of a straight-forward adventure, he never shies away from fun and show stopping set pieces. And, sometimes, campy things are all the more fun when presented earnestly and unabashedly.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Matt Bors’s “Justice Warriors: Vote Harder”

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

There's no political satirist working today quite like Matt "Mr Gotcha" Bors, whose 2023 masterpiece Justice Warriors just got a timely – and brutally funny – sequel, Justice Warriors: Vote Harder:

https://www.mattbors.com/store/p/justice-warriors-ffzgn

You've doubtless seen Matt Bors's work, which has repeatedly attained viral liftoff, most notably with his Mr Gotcha strips, easily one of the most useful additions to online political debate in internet history:

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Last year, Bors, along with Ben Clarkson and Felipe Sobreiro, published Justice Warriors, a postapocalyptic cyberpunk graphic novel in the vein of Warren Ellis's classic Transmetropolitan:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

Justice Warriors is the tale of Bubble City, a domed enclave walled off from the teeming masses of the UZ (which stands for "Uninhabited Zone" – see what they did there?). Bubble City runs on vibes, therapy-speak, social media nonsense, memes and garbage hot-takes. And while there's a lot of broad satire here, the thing that makes Justice Warriors stand out is how its creators do the relatively straightforward futuristic exercise of asking themselves, "What if deeply unserious nonsense was taken seriously?"

Others have done this before – Mike Judge's Idiocracy, say – but Bors, Clarkson and Sobreiro attain a density of sight gags, trenchant wordplay, and outrageous cyberpunk imagery that is just next level. Think Al Jaffee meets William Gibson, with art direction by Vaughn Bode, who's had one too many at the Mos Eisley Cantina. To that, mix in all kinds of MAD Magazine style fake ads and social media postings, layering joke on gag, all of it walking the fine line between "you gotta cry" and "you gotta laugh."

Justice Warriors did big numbers, selling out three printings, and now the gang is back together for the sequel, Vote Harder, which drops just in time for the final, all consuming election-season media apocalypse.

Vote Harder sees Bubble City facing its first election in living memory, as the mayor – who inherited his position from his "powerful, strapping Papa" – loses a confidence vote by the city's trustees. They're upset with his plan to bankrupt the city in order to buy a laser powerful enough to carve his likeness into the sun as a viral stunt for the launch of his comeback album. The trustees are in no way mollified by the fact that he expects to make a lot of money selling special branded sunglasses that allow Bubble City (and the mutant hordes of the Uninhabited Zone) to safely look into the sun and see what their tax dollars bought.

So it's time for an election, and the two candidates are going hard: there's the incumbent Mayor Prince; there's his half-sister and ex-girlfriend, Stufina Vipix XII, and there's a dark-horse candidate Flauf Tanko, a mutant-tank cyborg that went rogue after a militant Home Owners Association disabled it and its owners abandoned it. Flauf-Tanko is determined to give the masses of the Uninhabited Zone the representation they've been denied for so long, despite the structural impediments to this (UZers need to complete a questionnaire, sub-forms, have three forms of ID, and present a rental contract, drivers license, work permit and breeding license. They also need to get their paperwork signed in person at a VERI-VOTE location, then wait 14 days to get their voter IDs by mail. Also, districts of 2 million or more mutants are allocated the equivalent of only 250,000 votes, but only if 51% of eligible voters show up to the polls; otherwise, their votes are parceled out to other candidates per the terms of the Undervoting and Apathy Allotment Act).

Despite the structural advantages afforded to Mayor Prince – like the fact that residents of District 12 on floors 120-145 of the Bubble each get 2048 votes, while District 1 (floors 1-7) only get a single vote – he's not taking any chances. Officer Schitt (a humanoid poop emoji) and the lovelorn Officer Swamp (an anthropomorphic catfish) are each prowling the Uz . Swamp – suffering from a head injury and gripped by a delusion that a TV cowboy has sent him to infiltrate the Flauf Tanko campaign – is playing spy/provocateur, while Schitt hunts dangerous subversives.

What unfolds is a funny, bitter, superb piece of political satire that could not be better timed.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/11/uninhabited-zone/#eremption-season

[non-conventionnel]

“If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?” ― Jerry Seinfeld

[hotvinimon]

wtf ?? 😭😭😭😂😂😂

[in-the-stacks]

Presenting Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen. Reviewed by Read Local for In the Stacks.

https://www.inthestacks.tv/2024/07/read-local-bad-men-by-julie-mae-cohen

[vanebookrecs]

(SPOILERS!) My simple review on "Somewhere Beyond the Sea" by T.J. Klune. Such a great read! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too!

[beaconforlove]

Humanic creatures let out a diabolical laugh

Terrifying the innocent and left to starve

She stands a foot onto the sand

Engulfed the haunting darkness, whatever those mystical beasts intend

Glistening orbs roamed, her soft cries echoed into the deafening silence

Nails digged into her clammy palms, echoes a shaky breath

For the reality left undiscovered

A little girl born fierce and a potential threat

The sooner she realises, the sooner it will happen

Conquering the territories, raising an empire

Divine play by the her ought to be The weapon

[inabooknook]

I'm staring To Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin

I definitely enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a great, fun, humorous book. The story follows a young man who is hired for a rideshare job, and ends up taking a woman cross country with a mysterious box. The story is at points interesting, poignant, exciting, and extremely timely. I absolutely am recommending this, because it takes the issues we are currently experiencing in our country and turning it into an interesting fable. The story is so well though out, insightful, and with the right amount of sarcasm that makes a book engaging. Seeing a book by Jason Pargin that is not from the John Dies At the End universe is so awesome because it shows his talent and storybuilding. Highly recommend!

This ebook was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[allthingslinguistic]

March-April 2023: Bluesky, Barbie bouba/kiki, and Bea Wolf

My newsletter for March-April 2023: Bluesky, Barbie bouba/kiki, and Bea Wolf

In April, I made an account on bluesky and enjoyed some wordplay there, which is still (so far) going strong as a twitter replacement. The main episodes of Lingthusiasm these two months were Bringing stories to life in Auslan – Interview with Gabrielle Hodge, which was our second bimodal bilingual episode, this time in Auslan and English, as well as Tone and Intonation? Tone and Intonation! The…

[batvilletv]

If Todd Phillips really is done with DC Universe after Joker 2... what a disappointment of a film. Where will this Joker character go from here? A cliffhanger like The Sopranos. That's it, you just sopranos joker. But shitier.

[diannestorytime]

“In paradise there are applications for spraying eau de Cologne and the Philharmonic Orchestra plays Brahms for such a length of time you’d rather be in hell or purgatory.”

[percontaion-points]

Gate Crashers chapters 23 & 24

Click here for the rest of the series!

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions

Chapter 23

Lost in the maelstrom of prior meals, the helmsman had driven Bucephalus through the window six meters from dead center.

Chapter 23 summary: Back over with Felix, he’s anxious since the morning brings the first real test of the portals that they’ve been working on for close to three years now. He goes to the bridge, where he starts to work on getting the last minute details ready. 

Then the ship starts to move while the wormhole is opened up. It takes up too much page-time without actually going anywhere. 

Right before they go through, the captain asks if the helmsman is ready to “thread the needle”, and promises a bottle of Jack to the man. However, the man wants to know what he’d get if he can’t, to which Felix replies “we would all instantly and immediately die.” 

They go through, but the transposition is unpleasant for all involved. Every single crew member immediately begins to vomit profusely. 

Chapter 24

She pushed back from the table and stood. “We’re a couple of years behind schedule, and we’ve picked up a shipload of people whose scientific expertise is limited to things that go boom, but in two days, we reach the system this expedition was launched to explore. It’s our limelight. Let’s be ready to shine.”

Chapter 24 summary: The Bucephalus sends word to Maggie that they’re going to be there soon. 

We briefly jump over to D’armic, who finally gets out to the “human wildlife preserve” fence, only to find the one buoy is gone. I don’t know what to think about any of this, since those other aliens have been following Maggie for some time now. 

Meanwhile, Bucephalus jumps out of the next wormhole, only to almost crash into Maggie. Allison is obviously pissed that they almost killed all of them. Felix apologises for it, but says that being too far away would mean that they’d be weeks, if not months, behind or ahead of Maggie. 

The crew of the Bucephalus boards Maggie, and they all have dinner together; this is mercifully skipped over to after they’ve left. When they’re gone, the crew of Maggie kind of agrees that the military presense is fucking unnecessary. That they’re supposed to be peaceful explorers… Not conquerors. Then, they talk about how Maggie is going to have to push herself to her fastest speed to keep up with Bucephalus. Then I think that they’re going to jump. 

[massiveladycat]

you dont understand i have never loved a book character more

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