A collection of various short stories/essays/lists from the infamous McSweeney's magazine/website.One of the rare books that consistently made me laugh all the way. Not as funny as the [book: McSweeney's Joke Book of Joke Books] but still a grin maker. ( )

We had a 26books blogger meet-up recently and we each brought a book to exchange. I got this one from Ann. It’s an anthology of writing from the humour section of McSweeney’s, the American book, magazine and website publisher. It’s patchy.

There are high points, notably John Hodgman’s Fire, The Next Sharp Stick? and J M Tyree’s On the Implausibility of the Death Star’s Trash Compactor, but too often the jokes can’t sustain even the short pieces devoted to them.

For example, Jim Stallard’s No Justice, No Foul has a very simple premise: for years the American Supreme Court has solved disputes within its number through basketball games. And that’s it. Over twelve pages the descriptions of basketball games - hey, it’s funny because they’re judges, see? - wear thinner and thinner.
Full review: http://www.26books.com/?p=271

Awesome, because I have two pieces in it. ( )

The comedy that makes us laugh the most never has a universal appeal. Nothing makes everyone laugh and it seems the more specific to the audience the humor is, the more effective it is. We laugh hardest at inside jokes, so long as we are in on them. "Created in Darkness" is like a collection of inside jokes. You have to be attuned to the specific wavelength of the authors to really laugh at the humor involved in a transcript entitled "Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002, for 'The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings' DVD (Platinum Series Extended Version." But if you are on that wavelength, you will laugh harder at this and other pieces such as this like nothing else you will read. Not everything will work of course, but none of the pieces are exceptionally weak and the net is cast so wide that if your sense of humor is offbeat in any way, more than likely you will find more than enough here to make giggle.

(This review originally appeared on zombieunderground.net) ( )

It might not be all gold, admittedly, but I end up cackling every time I flip through this book. The bit with Chomsky and Zinn doing commentary for Lord of the Rings is some kind of genius. ( )