Sunday, February 19, 2012

Hilarity Ensues (non-fiction book)

Completed: 02.19.12

Author: Tucker Max

Special notes: Purchased on Kindle

Synopsis: Third book from Tucker Max exploring his past endeavors involving random sex, drinking, and other forms of debauchery. Selected stories include: His time in Cancun while enrolled in law school, hilarious sexting moments with random fans, the story about his relationship with a former Miss Vermont pageant winner, and the bachelor parties and weddings of his various law school friends.

Highs: All of the sexting conversations, "Drugs are Bad, MMMMMK?", most of the bachelor party/wedding stories.

Lows: World's Deadliest Vacation, Tucker Max: Knee Abuser, and the added content in the MissVermont story.

Thoughts: I really want to rag on it, but it wasn't that bad. On the whole, it was better than Assholes Finish First, which had quite a few misses, several stories that were originally on his website, and the entire second half was, even admittedly, lower quality than the first half. Thinking about it, though, the overall quality of the good stories from Assholes Finish First were better than Hilarity Ensues. Neither were as good as I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, however.

Hilarity Ensues had a couple of really good stories (Drugs are Bad, Mmmmmk?, most of the wedding/bachelor party stories, and all of the Sexting bits), but nothing that I'd really put in the ranks of his "best" stories (which AFF had at least one or two). It also has what, in my opinion, is his worst long story (The World's Most Dangerous Vacation, or whatever) where he visits the crew of Deadliest Catch or whatever the crab fishing boat show on Discovery is called. Cool, Tucker, you puked a ton on the boat ride there. Awesome.

He tends to center his books around one major anchoring story (Tuckerfest in AFF and the Austin Road Trip in IHTSBIH), and this one's is apparently the Miss Vermont story. It's kind of a disappointment that this is his big story, since most of it was already on his website for years before he conveniently took it down shortly before I suppose he decided to put it in his book. He advertised that there would be plenty of new stuff in the story to make people who've read it before want to read it again, but...it's not really worth it. He also gets pretty preachy at a few points, both in this story itself and in the entire book. It's also kind of sad that he rags on this girl throughout the meat of his story, but at the end decides that it's the mom's fault her daughter is the way she is and goes at it with her mother. However, he doesn't apologize or think twice about what he's said about MissVermont. Tucker has always come off as charismatic and justified in his asshole behavior, but at points during this story he really looked like a real jerk.

Naturally, his books are never supposed to be taken under a refined literary scope, and I won't do that. I was a fan of his since I was an immature high schooler reading his website, and I've kept up with him since when I need a laugh or two. So, in the end, I'd rank this one second on the whole but not to expect a lot from the individual stories.

Would I read it again? Yeah probably, but not for a few years.

Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

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