Note: This is book #23 in my 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge for 2008.
This book by Stpehen Colbert (of The Colbert Report basic cable fame) is pretty much what you expect: his TV show in book form. For those of you who don’t know, that shtick involves playing a character that parodies ultra-conservative media pundits like Lindbaugh, O’Reilly, and Dobbs. Just about every line is dripping with that old comedic staple irony, so that after a minute or two any reasonable newcomer to the act can discern the implicit comedy and subtexts. Or so you hope. At any rate, Colbert’s character is bombastic, outrageous in his opinions, and jingoistic in his attitude towards the U.S. of A., and completely absorbed in himself and his own perceived infallibility as a self-appointed pundit.
It’s not a unfunny act, aided as it is by the real comedic genius of Colbert and his authors. It’s really funny stuff. This book is much more of the same, except that the current events from the show are replaced with a hodge podge of topics like the elderly, sports, homosexuality, the media, immigrants, and the entertainment industry. This approach seems like it would differentiate the book from the show, but really a lot of the material and style are the same (probably quite deliberately), and all too often the pages look like what you might find most nights if you could see Colbert’s teleprompter.
But that isn’t necessarily bad. It is really funny, and the book does occasionally break out and use the medium in creative ways, with graphs, charts, stickers (yes, stickers), and Colbert’s own little notes and counter-points written in the margins (notably in red ink, not unlike the words of Jesus in some editions of the New Testament, which goes hand-in-hand with the character’s God complex). Honestly, I laughed out loud a LOT while reading this thing, even if by the end the whole shtick was starting to wear thin.
Others doing the 52-in-52 thing this week:
- Jeremy reviews Folk of the Fringe by Orson Scott Card and Daisy Cutter The Last Train by Kazu Kibuishi
- Heliologue reviews The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil
Was this an audio book or did you read it? I was thinking about getting it for Todd.
This was a paper book. There is an audiobook, but I think it would lose a lot from not having the pictures, figures, sidebars, footnotes, etc.
Great photos! Ahhh…..Sulphur, did you drink the Sulphur water? I have to say Queenie is looking much younger than I remember.