Finished: 02.20.12
Did I pay for it?: No
Do I feel rewarded for reading this?: No
Do I feel bad for reading this?: Kind of.
Length: Approximately 220 pages.
Synopsis: More of the same from Tucker Max. This is a "best of the rest" collection, as he is retiring from the "fratire" genre that made him famous and wanted to scrape the bottom of the barrel to give his fans what had to be the entirety of his creative output. The book consists of two parts: the first being an "advertising" section, containing a story from each of his previous three books that he considers some of his personal favorites; the second consists of stories that he felt did not make the cut for his other books. Stories in the section section include random tidbits, more stories making fun of fat girls, a story on his trip to Nantucket, and a trip to the doctors after some sexual escapades in front of an x-ray machine.
Highs: The drunken showing to a Muslim wedding, some of his tidbits, and the stories about how guys will try to pose as him so they can meet women (for the sheer absurdity of it). The broken headboard story.
Lows: The fact over a quarter of the book is already published material. The story about a girl using Tucker to get back at an ex girlfriend. The DBA story that halfway consisted of just letters in a newspaper.
Views: I got this book for free off Amazon.com for my Kindle, and I am glad for that because I would have been very upset if I paid more than a quarter for it. The fact that over a quarter of the books is recycled material used in an "advertising" sense is bad enough and puts a bad taste in a reader's mouth. Granted, the reasoning behind it is understandable: Max feels that the fact this book is free will attract new readers, and--after reading a few of these "favorite" stories--they will be enticed to buy his other books. I get that and think it's clever. What I don't appreciate is the fact this point was not advertised anywhere--on his site, Amazon, nowhere. What further hurts my opinion on this book is that I recognize several of these stories from his website before he dramatically reduced the amount of material on his site. Two or three of the stories in the book may have been original. What's even worse is the fact these stories were only removed less than two years ago, so it's not like I'm remembering these stories from a very long time ago or anything. A good bit of what I think was new material was very poor and appeared to just be added so to pad the length of the book.
That being said, it's not that bad--especially for someone who may be new to the author. While these stories are recycled, they really aren't that bad and show the author while he was probably at his peak--before he became spoiled with the success of his first book. I laughed several times, and--in a strange inversion of my opinion on his last book--felt that the bad stories in this one were not as bad as the some of the stories in Hilarity Ensues. Highlights for me include the Muslim wedding story (which had some hilarious one-liners), parts of the "Nantucket Sucks" story, and several of his little blurbs (one that comes to mind is his visit to a Chinese restaurant, where he sees two Chinese children making fun of white Americans by stretching their eyes out and saying "Baseball! Hot Dogs! Baseball! Hot Dogs!"). Unfortunately, the lack of effort in writing this is easily seen and detracts from the experience.
With the conclusion of this book, I plan on stepping away from Tucker Max. His stories were hilarious, and I've enjoyed them throughout the latter part of my life. However, he has retired from this genre; and I'm more than ready to move on to greener pastures.
Rating: 1.75 out of 5 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment