Paperweight

A collection of short pieces by actor/author/comedian Stephen Fry, published in 1992, most of it originally written for radio or newspapers. They range from silly humor to more serious opinion pieces (although even the latter mostly tend to have some humor in them). There are also two pieces of fiction: a Sherlock Holmes pastiche which was lightweight but pleasant enough, and a two-act play that he wrote when he was twenty-two, which unfortunately was trying way too hard to be edgy and transgressive and mostly just ended up being kind of uncomfortable.

All of it showcases Fry's usual style: highbrow references, a twenty-dollar vocabulary, and a lot of esoteric wordplay, all of which might feel insufferably pretentious if it weren't show more produced with genuine enthusiasm and a refusal to actually take itself seriously that often cheerfully teeters over into self-deprecation. Which I suppose isn't for everyone. I generally enjoy it well enough, although this collection did make it clear to me that I enjoy it more in verbal than written form. I could watch Fry babbling away as the host of QI all day, but a little bit of these pieces goes rather a long way. Which, in fairness, is something Fry himself is well aware of, and he warns us flat-out in the introduction that this really just isn't something suitable for reading straight through, but is best dipped in an out of a little at a time. I really should have taken that advice better, honestly. I read it over the course of about six days, but even that was too high a dose, and it started to wear thin for me well before the end. It didn't help, either, I'm sure, that a lot of the contents haven't traveled well across multiple decades and the Atlantic ocean, as there were a lot of very specific references that I'm sure would have been a lot more meaningful to someone in Great Britain in the 1980s than to an American in the 2020s.

Rating: I want to give this a 3/5 based on how much I ended up enjoying it, but that feels unfair, really, because I probably would feel more enthusiastic about it if I'd read it the way it was actually intended to be read. So I'm going to bump it up to a 3.5/5. show less

Clssic Fry, wry, witty, self-deprecating but erudite underneath it all. A delicious basket of niblets for snacky read cravings.

A varied collection of work from Stephen Fry containing mostly articles from radio/magazines, along with a short play and even a piece of Sherlock Holmes fan fiction! Due to the variety of material it is inherently a hit and miss affair depending on the reader's individual tastes. One of my favourite sections was the collection of columns written for The Telegraph in the 80s/90s. Despite being around 20 years old, these were eerily relevant with talk of war in Iraq (the first Gulf War), the economic recession and the conflict between fundamentalist religion/spiritualism and rationalism. All of these are, of course, tackled by Stephen's trademark wit and humour.
So, whatever your tastes, Paperweight should make an excellent addition to show more any Fryphile's collection. show less

Clssic Fry, wry, witty, self-deprecating but erudite underneath it all. A delicious basket of niblets for snacky read cravings.

A big collection of Fry's stuff, of varying quality. I think he's hilarious -- I even read his novels and liked them, especially the "Revenge" one -- but this many disparate items between two covers guarantees some unevenness.

Latin! or Tobacco and Boys.(originally published in Tatler)
Twenty-six-year-old Hampshire prep school master Dominic Clarke is a droll caricature. He is smitten with thirteen-year-old Rupert Cartwright of Lower 6b: ‘A shining sun, whose very smile ripens fruit and opens petals.’ Clarke’s lessons are a tour de force of sexual innuendo: ‘Boys who rub me up the wrong way, Elwyn-Jones, come to a sticky end.’

Wer seinen englischen Wortschatz um nie geahnte Wörter erweitern will und sich dabei intelektuell amusieren möchte, sollte diese Sammlung von Essays unbedingt lesen.