Danny Wallace

Very interesting junior school novel which is at times hilarious and other times absolutely heartbreaking. Layout and illustrations similar to DOAWK, but this book actually has a lot more depth to it than first appears. This is the story of Hamish who lives in the Fourth most boring village in the UK. (Not the first...but the fourth...so it is terribly, terribly boring.) Hamish's father has recently disappeared and this has coincided with a rise in complaints and grumpiness from all the show more adults living in the village. The only thing Hamish has left to remind him of his father is an explorer watch. The book opens with Hamish sitting in a classroom when the world just stops...the teacher is mid sentence, the boy next to him is picking his nose, birds are flying by outside and everything just stops...except Hamish and his watch and the town hall clock! Hamish is at first a little freaked out by this (understandably) but when the world starts up again, he realises that this is his opportunity to get revenge on a kid who is bullying him. Then when the next PAUSE happens, creatures come out of the woods and start stealing adults who are stopped. Terrible, hideous creatures that might take Hamish unless he pretends he is stopped too. The pauses get longer and the monsters wreak more and more havoc They even steal his mother and his broody 15 year old brother (James not Jimmy).
No one will believe Hamish and he feels helpless to stop them....until he meets a girl with a blue streak in her hair who doesn't pause like the rest of his village.
An interesting fable about learning to work together to sort out problems (Hamish must team up with people he doesn't like), about hoping for something and having part of that hope realised but the rest dashed! (SPOILER ALERT: Hamish believes his Dad has been stolen by the Terribles rather than disappeared to another life somewhere else.)
Some parts are hilarious - the dentist and the moody brother particularly - the poems he writes for his girlfriend are very funny. The part where he gets revenge on the bully might make some cringe - Hamish pulls up the bully's trousers while he is on the toilet during a pause so he disgraces himself - but Hamish feels very awful afterwards proving that just because you CAN do something; doesn't mean you SHOULD!
This appears to be the first in a series as Hamish and Alice appear to embark on a quest to find Hamish's father.
Good introduction to fantasy/horror for younger readers. show less

Sometimes books are the main event; sometimes they're good to keep you company. Danny Wallace's mildly amusing 'join me' definitely belongs to the latter group and kept me entertained without demanding my full attention.

Who is Danny Wallace and why does he want me to join him?

He's less well-known than friend and fellow funny bloke Dave Gorman, which explains the note on the front cover describing Wallace as the co-author of an earlier published book, 'Are You Dave Gorman?' Essentially, show more Gorman makes a living from pursuing odd obsessions, such as meeting numerous men who shared his full name, and then performing stand-up comedy and writing books about his experiences. It seems that Wallace, nominally self-employed as a games reviewer when the events depicted in this book occurred, wants to do the same. His laddish feat? Creating a cult / collective of increasingly diverse people, all of whom are prepared to 'join' him. Why? Sort of because his Great Uncle Gallus attempted to create a commune many years ago, but mostly because he was bored and lacked direction in life. Definitely not because his friend made a bet that he couldn't get a hundred followers. Nope. It wasn't a bet. Or a cult.

I'm still not very clear about this whole 'join me' malarky?

Nor was Wallace. As his followers dutifully sent him their passport photo as proof of their dedication to the collective and started calling him The Leader, Wallace scrabbled around for some cause, something for his followers to actually do. Clutching onto the idea of 'making an old man happy', Wallace gradually began to give his group some purpose as he continued jetting back and forth between an increasing number of counties and even countries to increase his follower count and inspire his membership. He frets that a nemesis within the group may be plotting a coup and tries to avoid telling his increasingly irritated girlfriend Hanne that he has accidentally started a cult.

Sounds bizarre. Do I want to read this?

Possibly. It's mildly entertaining from the outset, when Wallace uses a very short prologue to address the reader as if you were in face to face conversation ('You look lovely today, by the way.') The book is full of trivia - about giant squids, gnomes, anything the joinees are interested in. Wallace light-heartedly styles himself as the new Jesus ('"I'm not saying that I'm the new Jesus. I'm just saying that there's a very good chance that I might be."'), beginning each chapter with a short verse written in biblical style. This is laddish behaviour taken to extremes and it's not surprising that he refers to himself as a boy on several occasions and, in case all his gadding about has confused his readers, reminds us that '"I'm not a travel writer. I'm a bloke."' Righty-ho.

Hmm. Is this a bit too...silly?

It's light-hearted infotainment: treat it as such and you'll be fine. He speculates airily about whether his potential nemesis, Joinee Whitby, has mental health problems, while he flies to Scotland on a whim, then Paris on an even, erm, whimmier whim. He doesn't want to be associated with wackiness, but clearly his behaviour and collective is quite wacky - he recognises he wouldn't join himself!

That said, there is a genuinely lovely side to this story; many old men are made happy and many of the joinees use the collective as an opportunity to pursue acts of kindness. There's some reflection on how we can treat obstacles in our path and whather one bad apple should be allowed to spoil your perception of the bunch. If you can overlook Wallace's increasingly cavalier treatment of Hanne then it's quite heartwarming in places and it's kind of a shame that the Join Me website hasn't been updated since 2012 (although there are still joinees posting in the forum). Of course, you don't have to read the book to recognise that the world would be a lovelier place if we all committed more spontaneous acts of kindness, and we don't need to limit ourselves to just making old men happy.

I'm sure you've all seen variations on the slogan 'I can only please one person per day...today is not your day and tomorrow doesn't look good either'. Perhaps we should channel the spirit of Wallace's Karma Army and update the slogan to 'I can please one person per day...how can I help you?' show less

Danny Wallace takes on a controversial topic—the pervasiveness of obnoxious, selfish, dismissive, and condescending behavior—in a book subtitled: "Understanding the Culture of Rudeness—and What We Can Do About It." Wallace was raised to be polite, so he was shocked when a confrontation—admittedly minor in the scheme of things—shook him to his core. He calls it the "Hotdog Incident," and it involved an unpleasant encounter with a server who was supposed give him and his son food, show more but instead kept them waiting for over an hour. When Wallace complained, rather than trying to mollify him, the woman enraged him by making cutting and sarcastic remarks. Wallace decided to write a work of non-fiction in which he would explore the following: Why have bullying and other forms of verbal abuse become so pervasive that campaigns must be launched to counteract them? Why do so many people in the media, politics, and show business feel free to say or tweet whatever pops into their heads ("just being honest")—no matter how hurtful it may be?

The author tackles his subject with humor and also offers the opinions of scholars in such disciplines as psychology and ethics. Wallace provides some history (unsurprisingly, rudeness goes back to ancient times), discusses possible causes (among them are overcrowded urban areas, insecurity, narcissism, and prejudice), and offers ideas on how we might bring about a cultural shift that could lead to greater civility. Although he uses off-color words occasionally, most of the time Wallace's writing is intelligent, organized, and enlivened by entertaining anecdotes. For example, in the introduction, he speaks of Omar Hussain, who left England to join ISIS in Syria. When Hussain reached his destination, he was shocked—not by the cold-bloodedness of his new comrades—but by their atrocious manners. They did not even have the decency to line up and wait their turn, stole one another's shoes, and spoke in loud voices while he tried to get some sleep.

We all know what the problem is. What few of us realize is how toxic rudeness can be. It can have a negative impact on your health and your ability to think rationally. When a doctor encounters an extremely rude patient, the physician may become so irate that his performance suffers for the rest of the day. The uncouth maneuvers of motorists often lead to accidents or road rage. When employees deal with discourteous customers or colleagues, they are likely to take it out on their families that evening. Kids who are mocked by their peers frequently become withdrawn, depressed, and/or furious. Rudeness, alas, is a global problem, partly because we are "more stressed, more time-pressed, tired, fed up, angry, and put upon." The bottom line is that "we need politeness because it is right, it lifts our spirits, it makes things better, it lubricates the day, and helps everything run smoother." Danny Wallace challenges each of us to be less tolerant of boors, and to try to make a difference by setting a good example of how one ought to act towards his or her fellow human beings. It is everyone's responsibility to foster "a culture of kindness and mutual respect." show less

I hadn't known what to expect when I picked this book up by chance, but I'm glad I did. I laughed a lot while reading this, and nodded a ton. I learned a lot. Turns out experiences I've had and feelings that resulted are part of the human experience, in a way. I liked how Wallace took effort to provide insight into Eastern and Middle Eastern views of rudeness, although this was firmly framed through a Westernized perspective. The way he threaded his research and findings into his stories and show more others' was seamlessly done. He's not afraid to poke fun at himself and admit that he's not perfect, which I greatly appreciated. Books like this sometimes have authors who think they're flawless, which is a great way to get me to stop reading. Not the case here--I couldn't put it down. I felt much better about myself as a person, actually, afterward. show less