Reading matters

'The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary' by Ambrose Bierce

Humour - paperback; Penguin Classics; 336 pages; 2001. REVIEW COPY.

Remember my post about Blog a Penguin Classic? I was one of the lucky ones who registered with the site and a couple of weeks later received a free book on the condition I'd read and review it within six weeks.

With the six-week deadline fast approaching, I decided it was time I actually cracked open the book and took a proper look at it. The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, written by 19th century journalist Ambrose Bierce, is not something you would normally sit down and read cover to cover, unless, of course, you have a penchant for reading dictionaries in their entirety. As much as I love using dictionaries -- I couldn't do my day job or the majority of my blog posts without access to one -- I'm not so nerdy about words that I would take something like this to bed with me for a little light reading. That would feel too much like hard work, right?

However, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary is not your usual run-of-the-mill dictionary. It's a full-scale satire -- and despite being written more than 100 years ago it contains some very funny entries as Bierce makes light work of religion, marriage, politics and society. Here are some of my favourites:

'The Joy of Letting Women Down' by Natalie D'Arbeloff

Humour - hardcover; Robson Books; 160 pages; 2000. REVIEW COPY.

If you've ever wondered why stunningly ugly men, usually old and quite rich, end up with devastatingly gorgeous super models on their arms, then The Joy of Letting Women Down will reveal all. You see these stunningly ugly men might be rich and they might be old but they are pure specimens of the "Worshipped Male" and they know every trick in the book to attract - and keep - those devastatingly gorgeous super models we admire from afar.

And that's what this book does best: illuminate all the games Worshipped Males (read womanisers) play to seduce and trap members of the opposite sex, and, in doing so, exposes the (staggering) differences between the genders.

'Phaic Tan: Sunstroke on a Shoestring (Jetlag Travel Guide)' by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch

 
Humour - paperback; Hardie Grant Books; 252 pages; 2004

I don't normally review books by quoting great slabs of text or "lifting" the entire blurb, but with this laugh-out-loud spoof travel guide I couldn't resist, and so, I quote from the back cover:

"For too long now Phaic Tan has been closed off to the outside world, a country visited each year by just a handful of hardy travellers, aid agency workers and hostage negotiators. But now, thanks to this fully up-dated Jetlag guide, everything you need to know about planning a trip to Phaic Tan, birthplace of the trouser press and irritable bowel syndrome, is here."

Up until 5 August 2005, this book was unavailable outside of Australia, where I happened to pick this up last Christmas on the recommendation of some friends. The team behind this very funny book are well-known in Australian comedy circles, having written and directed many of their own television shows as well as a couple of feature length movies (The Castle and The Dish).

'Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry (Jetlag Travel Guide S.)' by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch

Humour - paperback; Hardie Grant Books; 176 pages; 2004

If you are like me and are somewhat addicted to travel guides, be they Lonely Planet, Rough Guides or something similar, you will greatly appreciate Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry.

Written by a team of Australian comedians — the same men behind the films The Dish and The Castle and the current-affairs mockumentary series Frontline — this is a spoof travel guide for a fictional nation located somewhere in the Baltic region of the former USSR.

'The Timewaster Letters' by Robin Cooper

Humour - paperback; Michael O'Mara Books; 192 pages; 2004

This is quite possibly the funniest book I have ever read. Basically it's a series of letters, written by the fictional Robin Cooper, asking obscure questions or making obscure requests which have been sent to obscure, often intriguingly named, organisations throughout Britain. The ensuing real life correspondence, which often gets more absurd with each passing letter, is published in its full, shameless and unabashed glory.

In his letters Cooper asks all kinds of whimsical, nonsensical and outlandish questions, which are hilarious in themselves. But the big laughs come when you read the often tactful, polite and inane ways with which they are answered.

This isn't my normal kind of read. The book doesn't tell a story as such. It's just a fascinating and very funny collection of letters that should only be read in the privacy of your own home: unless, of course, you don't mind hooting with laughter in public places.