Joey Green

This book is an easy read, and has a great many super quotes. It is an unfortunate book, however, in that the juxtaposition of the quotes, purporting to demonstrate similarities between Groucho Marx and John Lennon are actually a mish-mash of unrelated quotes stuck together in a sort of bizarre manner, much like the Google Ads that show up on websites based on a keyword that is only poorly understood by the cyberbrain listing them. Just because both of them use the word "wife" or "pig" or show more "neck tie" in a statement does not mean that the statements are demonstrating a commonality of minds - only the fact that they are both speaking (roughly) the same language. Though I do think you could find a great many areas of similarity between Marx and Lennon, the entire book is an exasperating conglomeration of squished together quotations that often clash like mis-matched reds. Read and enjoy it for the quotes; ignore the attempts of the author to make something more out of it. He's just playing mind games with you in the end, and if you have any critical thinking ability at all, you'll resist his attempts to sucker you into his strange, Google-surreal world. show less

I found this book annoying and not funny--until I got the joke. Its subtitle is "If Famous Authors Wrote Advertising," so I thought it would be a spoof of advertising. But the commercials made by writers and philosophers actually have very little to do with advertising, so eventually I realized the point of the book is actually to mock the writers and philosophers. The author's foreword actually gives this away, by talking only about literature and how most people don't know anything about show more it (e.g., claiming most Americans think Oscar Wilde makes bologna).

It's still not particularly funny, with some exceptions. "Catcher in the American Express," which a literary reader can easily guess is a parody of Catcher in the Rye, is funny just because it adds Holden Caulfield's gratuitous swearing to the American Express slogan "don't leave home without it." Nietzche doing "Where's the Beef?" is also funny. So is "Mmmm Mmmm Good," a Campbell's Soup-themed parody of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle--but that one is disgusting and will probably offend older and more genteel sensibilities. That's about it--the other parodies didn't make me laugh. I think I'll dump it in my library's donation bin.

Unless you're broadly familiar with literary classics, the jokes will be lost on you. show less

I read this book as an electronic advance reading copy provided by Edelweiss, and I have submitted my comments to the publisher via that web site.

Intended more for humor than utility, this book disappoints on both fronts. Only 10% of the tips are actually useful. The rest are highly specialized (how to administer asthma medication to a pet rodent) or of questionable legality (how to electrocute a hotel room intruder). An ordinate amount involve menstrual pads, which I suppose the male author show more finds hilarious. The book is padded with random trivia and film/book references that do not contribute to the work. Not recommended. show less

This is indeed an interesting and unusual collection of helpful hints. I’m not going to paint my house with powdered milk, but some the hints actually made sense. The author includes a section on each product that tells about its history and as well as some strange facts. I found that to be more interesting than the hints, although his hints on 20 Mule Team has inspired me to add it to my shopping list!