The book this week was my pick and, while I did enjoy it, I wish I had picked a different Dave Barry book to review.
It was comical, and very obviously overly satirical. It fell into stereotypes to show you how ridiculous some of them actually are. It made commentary about airport security and how useless it really is (and this is post 9/11 we're talking about.) I mean, it's a very chuckle worthy book.
But having read his other humor (non-fiction) books, this one just didn't hold up. The other things I've read have side-splitting humor and this just... didn't. Fiction is not really Barry's forte, I don't believe.
However, it WAS still funny, and it made me smile and you shouldn't be turned off from reading it. I just wouldn't start with this one if you've never read anything by Dave Barry and you want to. Try one of his other books first.
This is one of those books that is pretty funny throughout, with only a few literal lol moments. I like books like that. It's like British humor (except Barry is American).
I have to correct Cassy on one point... the book was published in September 1999 (I kept checking the spine label on my library copy when the characters were in the airport, because it really is weird to read pre-9/11 airport scenes, even though I did some flying pre-9/11 myself). The movie was supposed to be released in '01 but they postponed it to '02 due to 9/11-related sensitivity (there's a nuke on a plane at one point, for goodness' sake).
I liked the characters pretty much across the board in terms of writing (there are some characters you just aren't supposed to like) which I love. It's hard to give over a dozen characters relatively equal billing, but he did it, and I love it. It's a technique I'm actually trying to recreate in my Camp NaNoWriMo novel right now (and failing, pretty much).
I have to correct Cassy on one point... the book was published in September 1999 (I kept checking the spine label on my library copy when the characters were in the airport, because it really is weird to read pre-9/11 airport scenes, even though I did some flying pre-9/11 myself). The movie was supposed to be released in '01 but they postponed it to '02 due to 9/11-related sensitivity (there's a nuke on a plane at one point, for goodness' sake).
I liked the characters pretty much across the board in terms of writing (there are some characters you just aren't supposed to like) which I love. It's hard to give over a dozen characters relatively equal billing, but he did it, and I love it. It's a technique I'm actually trying to recreate in my Camp NaNoWriMo novel right now (and failing, pretty much).
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