firenze sur: Why Grizzly Bears Should Wear Underpants

Rating: ★★★
16/02/14

Sunday. 6.34 p.m.

I have a million books on my currently-reading shelf.

I'm reading a new one.

And, apparently, I don't care.

Why Grizzly Bears Should Wear Underpants

I chose a Matthew Inman book for my Sunday-funny-light-sometimes-not-so-light read. I need some laughs with my classics, you know. Anyway, it wasn't what I expected. Quite a disappointing start (and it didn't get much better). This is the guy that created a hilarious book called How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You. So my train of thought was something like this: “Wait, what? What happened? What am I reading? It's not comedy, it's not drama, what is this? Should I keep reading this? Oh, this is going to be a painful read. Oh my god, this isn't funny. If there's no comedy in this, I just look like a ridiculous grown-up woman reading a book with silly pictures. Okay, I know I can't call myself a grown-up but I kind of look like one and that is what people would think if they saw me reading this thing. This is just sad. Gah! Maybe if I fake a smile. … … … Can't. I need cupcakes. Why do I need cupcakes?”

Babbling over. So. The book. Well, after that first comic, it got a bit better. The second one is called “American vs. British accents”; it was funny-ish. Still an improvement. The third one, “What it means when you say literally”, okay, that was funny. And educational. Some people don't know when to use that word but want to use it anyway because they think it makes them sound smart. Well, it doesn't.

Sample:

Other comics I liked: “Cobwebs” (been there, done that), “If my brain were an imaginary friend” (that's one the best), “The crap we put up with getting on and off an airplane” (so true), “How to fix any computer” (well... I use Linux; if I can use it, then it's not that hard, believe me), “This is how I feel about buying apps”, “When to use i.e. in a sentence” (not funny but helpful), the metric system reference and... I don't think I can mention another one. According to the book description, I was going to get "brilliant, irreverent comic hilarity".

I'm still looking.

So, to be honest, there are some good comics in this book. They're about ordinary situations to which everyone can relate to and all that with humor and irony (sometimes, sarcasm). However, other comics are completely forgettable. Unfortunately, there are plenty of those. Some pictures seemed to be there to simply fill a page and nothing more. I wanted to finish those to get to the next page. And so on. And so on. Until I reach to the funny joke that I didn't want to stop reading because I kind of knew that the next one wasn't going to be that good.

I like Inman/The Oatmeal/whatever. I like him. He doesn't know that because he doesn't know I even exist, but I do like him. And I loved “How to tell if your cat...”. Having read that one, I can't give this collection more than three stars.