Curses! Broiled Again!: Curses! Broiled Again!
By Jan Harold Brunvard
Myth and Legend
Curses! Broiled Again! is a book of a lot of urban legends. The legends are about horrors, Cars, animals, accidents and mishaps, sex and scandal, business and government and academics. The book is about a woman who writes legends in a newspaper. She hears legends from people and people write to her about legends they've heard.

My favorite one is called The Unstealable Car. It's about this guy who has a classic sports car and every night he keeps it parked in a garage, has cardboard sheets under the wheels, has thick steel staples sunk into the concrete of his garage, and attaches the car using heavy chains around the car and staples, which are secured with several locks. He parks the car facing the garage wall, with a tarp on top. When he takes off the tarp to reveal the car, it's all locked up but is facing the garage door and there's a letter under the wiper blade is a note that says, "If we want the car, we'll take it."

The author wrote a bunch of short stories. I liked the book because it was a lot of stories so it flowed very well. I would recommend this book to people who like legends and short stories.

#5, 2006

Subtitled, "The Hottest Urban Legends Going," this book is based on the author's syndicated column in which he debunks (most of the time, anyway) the various urban legends that are being passed around at any given time. Things like the teenage girls who supposedly died after having their insides "cooked" by too much tanning booth exposure, and things like that. Some of the stories were interesting, but I didn't like the author's writing style much. Also, the book is sadly outdated, having been published in the late 1980s - by now, it's pretty much common knowledge that none of this stuff is true, and it's also a lot easier to look up info about urban legends, now that we've got the Internet. So, I wouldn't really recommend it, and in fact, I skimmed through some sections pretty quickly, as I just wasn't that interested in reading every word of what this guy had to say. ( )