Genre:nonfiction
Subgenre: humor, blog-based books
Format: audiobook
Source: Overdrive from Madison County (KY) Public Library.
The author states she will provide 102 entries to her list. She also has a scale of how bad things are:
"One punch = Annoying, like a mild rash.
Two punches= Aggravating, like a black eye.
Three punches= Disgusting, like an open sore.
Four punches= Toxic, like acid reflux or IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).
Five punches= permanently damaged, like her patience."
The entries, which are basically rants, vary in length, and the quality of the humor is very inconsistent as well. She often ends the small rants on what needs punching with "fact of the matter" bits. These are small factoids or trivia related to the item she is ranting about, and at times can be interesting.
A lot of the humor is reliant on the usual stereotypes, like man caves, guy must be some kind of caveman troglodyte. Cute, but not amusing after a while, and that is about how the rest of the book goes. It had some amusing things, which I will comment on down below, but overall, not a very good book. The book is read by the author, and for a humor book, it is fairly deadpan. In the end, this is a book that is pretty disposable; you read it once, and then you move on to something better and more interesting. Better yet, just go find the blog online and skip the book. As kids would say, this book was "meh."
2 out of 5 stars, barely.
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Additional reading notes:
Some of the things that she wants to punch in the face, with my comments:
- Early birds, like those who get to their desks at the crack of dawn and are first to turn off the security alarm.
- I can relate to this given we have a couple of these early birds at work. Exactly, whoop dee doo, so you go to bed early, or as we say in Spanish, you go to sleep with the chickens.
- Hayden Christensen's whiny little bitch act in the SW prequels are definitely punch worthy, especially for those of us who lived long enough from the original films. That is a point I agree with her. We deserved better, and instead got that. To be honest, the big mistake Obi Wan made was not kicking Anakin into that magma and finishing him off. Wuss. (Yea, I know if he had, no movies and stories later, but let us be honest, we would have been better off keeping Darth Vader's mystery mystique instead of revealing he was a whiny teen emo brat).
- Clothes are to be worn. Would you please explain the excess of shoes in your closet you do not wear? I'll wait.
- Yea, I will wait too on that one.
- Pajamas as outerwear do deserve five punches to the face.
- And I am certainly sympathetic to punching people who give offspring names starting with the same letter (or worse, the same names). Way to make life difficult down the road for your kids.
- Parking hogs do deserve those five punches in the face (and their tires slashed if I had my way).
- People who blab on red-eye flights. Yes, these people deserve their punches.
- Some of the jokes were a bit dated. For example, Skymall catalogs pretty much ceased publication.
- Staycation: euphemism for being too broke to go someplace interesting. Sounds about right. I would put that under signs the economy is bad.
- Yes, books derived from blogs deserve the full five punches, though ironic since this book is one of them. Whatever little credibility she had she just tossed for shits and giggles, to use her term.
- More on books from blogs: Exactly. Amazing how they monetize crappy writing and/or user generated content (i.e. stuff other people wrote or commented on that they in essence stole since they do not pay or reward the users) into a book. I have read one or two of those, and believe me, you really are better off reading the blog, which is free. Then again, only reason I read this one is because I borrowed it from the library, so I am not exactly paying for it. However, not as dumb as those who go and buy what you can get for free online anyhow.
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This book qualifies for the following 2017 Reading Challenges:
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