Romeo and/or Juliet

by Ryan North

Story summary: Two households, both alike in dignity... an ancient grudge and parent's strife... a pair of star-cross'd lovers... a battle with giant robots...

Why You Will Like This Book:

• It's so funny.
• The clever Shakespeare references!
• The clever geek references!
• It's Romeo and Juliet as a choose-your-own-adventure. How much more awesome can you get?*

And Why You Might Not:

• Some Christians could be bothered by some of the dislike of marriage that appears. It's not all like this, but there's enough that it's not just a passing remark one can ignore easily.
• If your sense of humour isn't the sort of self-referential nerdiness often seen on the Internet and such places, you're likely not going to get much out of this. (On the other hand, if it's not your thing, maybe this would the perfect introduction to just how funny it can be!)

More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

by Jen Campbell

Why You Might Like This Book:

• Hilarious, sometimes even hysterical. Man, people are weird sometimes.
• Makes you feel very glad you read.

And Why You Might Not:

• It's a really slim book, and some of the entries are even duplicates from the first book.
• A bunch of the entries are dependent on you knowing a bit about literature (e.g. "Do you have The Girl With the Dragon and the Baboon?" is not going to be funny unless you know what the original book was called).

The Pirates! In an Adventure With the Romantics

by Gideon Defoe

Story summary: I got stuck on the story summary, mostly because of laziness. Plus the Goodreads summary is pretty good this time:
"Whilst visiting their bank manager on the shores of Lake Geneva, the pirates encounter the literary giants of their age: the swaggering Lord Byron, the oddly shifty Percy Shelley - and his beautiful fiancée, Mary. Together they embark upon an adventure that leads them into the bowels of Oxford and the forbidding heart of eastern Europe. Along the way the Pirate Captain must confront some important questions, namely: what is the secret behind his belly tattoo? Is 'Zombuloid, the corpse-beast' a better name for a monster than 'Gorgo: Half-man, half-seaweed'? And, most importantly, what happens when a pirate falls in love?" (from here)
See also The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists, The Pirates! In an Adventure With Whaling, The Pirates! In an Adventure With Communists, and The Pirates! In an Adventure With Napoleon.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• This book--so funny.
• Lord Byron--possibly a vampire! Mary Godwin--obsessed with monsters! Percy Shelly--grumpy and poetical! The Pirate Captain--like Zeus or the Pacific Ocean and not at all like luxuriantly bearded conch!
• The footnotes--so informative! and random! and funny!

And Why You Might Not:

• There are not really any good reasons--it's great! There's some slightly adult humour, I suppose, and some jokes might not be as funny if you haven't read the previous books. But basically, these books are hilarious.

Texts From Jane Eyre

by Mallory Ortberg

Why You Will Like This Book:

• If you've read your fair share of Classics and want to read someone parodying them, playing off them, and generally having a good time with them, all in witty text-speak, then this is the book for you.
• She has modern/internet humor down.

And Why You Might Not:

• What with it being not very long to begin with, and then on top of that written in texting style, well... it's funny and all, but very light. I almost didn't count it for my book count, until I realized I counted Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores, and they are of much the same ilk.

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores

by Jen Campbell

Thoughts: An absolutely hysterical, and kind of sad, compendium of quotes from real, live customers in real, live bookstores. Mostly taken from Jen Campbell's personal experience working in UK bookstores, but also from many examples sent in by other booksellers across North America.

You've got the simply funny, like the many items people somehow thought could be found in a bookstore, or the weird people looking for a portal to another dimension.

There's the actually kind of cool: "Customer: If I had a bookstore, I'd make the mystery section really hard to find." (pg. 20) It made want to design a really cool bookstore where every section was somehow themed.

There's the ones that make you despair of humanity's future, like the story of the person who had a tantrum over not being able to read Breaking Dawn (pg. 15), or the many examples of complete literary ignorance, or the mother who told her child, "I don't know why you read; it'll never get you anywhere" (pg. 54).

Some of it seemed so bad as to be actually unbelievable, but some I have experienced myself in my time in customer service, such as: "Customer: I read a book in the sixties. I don't remember the author, or the title. But it was green, and it made me laugh. Do you know which one I mean?" (pg. 57)

Summary: Short and sweet, and immensely entertaining.

Grade: 4 stars

What Would Machiavelli Do?

by Stanley Bing

Thoughts: I'm not quite sure of the point of this book. If it was to make fun of our celebrities, "ruling class", and own egos in an amusing way, then it succeeded, for the most part. If it were trying, as seemed to me, to bring Machiavelli's thoughts and ideas to a modern audience, then it definitely failed. The theme of this book was basically "be mean and do whatever you feel like doing, and you'll be successful". According to this book, what Machiavelli would do was "[B]e satisfied with nobody but himself" (pg. 45), "[D]o what he feels like doing" (pg. 64), "[R]espond poorly to criticism" (pg. 73), "[C]arry a grudge until the extinction of the cockroach" (pg. 74), and "[E]stablish and maintain a psychotic level of control" (pg. 123), among many others. Many of these are in direct contradiction to what Machiavelli actually wrote in The Prince, such as, "each of [these councillors] should know that, the more freely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred" (pg. 111). Elsewhere (I can't find at the specific spots) he talks about the times a prince should delegate, should forgive, and practically the whole book is about a prince can't just do what he feels like doing. Machiavelli is so much more practical and rational and amoral rather than immoral than the Machiavelli portrayed in this book. I think people get caught up in the "better to be feared than loved" thing, and forget all the rest.

To summarize, it was funny (although not that funny), but not at all what Machiavelli would do.

Grade: 2 stars

To Be Or Not To Be: A Choosable Path Adventure

by Ryan North, William Shakespeare, and YOU

Grade: 5 stars
Story summary: Hamlet. As a Choose Your Own Adventure story. Enough said.

Thoughts: I gave this 5 stars not because it was so terribly brilliant, or the best book I'd ever read, but because it is perfectly suited to me. This is pretty much the book I wish I had written. I mean, it's Hamlet as a Choose Your Own Adventure story. I've always loved Choose Your Own Adventure stories, and this one is hilarious and meta and so thick and full of good stuff--I completely love it. I don't want to spoil too much, but there is so much awesome in this that I think I'm fairly safe. So as some examples: there is the ending where you get to turn into a gamma-irradiated monster (pg. 274), or the one where you're suddenly in Macbeth (pg. 260), or super awesome ones like the one where you get 50 billion decapoints for doing such a great job (pg. 719). And there are tons of somewhat normal ones, where you settle down with Ophelia or do projects that are good for the economy or murder the whole town. There's also a way where you can follow the actual story of Hamlet, the choices marked with Yorick skulls.

(I always do the first run through one of these books trying to choose exactly as I would as myself in real life. Through this method I (as Ophelia) helped Hamlet put Claudius in prison by working through the legal system. I got 100 out of 100 LEGAL JUSTICE POINTS, but only 3 ADVENTURE POINTS, because it was sort of a boring ending. (pg. 160))

If I had to have any criticism, it would be that Ryan North didn't always seem to have the best understanding of some of the themes and happenings of Hamlet. As one example, he didn't seem to understand why Hamlet didn't want to kill his uncle while his uncle was praying. Which I actually find a rather fascinating insight on how far Hamlet has gone by that point. But since the whole book was rather silly and completely for fun, these little issues really didn't bother me.

Also, coming back to the awesomeness: every single ending is fabulously illustrated by a different artist (many of whom I recognize from webcomics and such on the internet (e.g. Ethan Nicolle from Axe Cop!!!)). Here are two sample illustrations for your viewing pleasure, but there are many more awesome ones.

P.S. This is just for me, or for people that have already read the whole book, but I wanted to make note of some of my favourite parts and endings so I could reference them later if I wanted to (and not have to search the whole darn book). This will be encoded in rot13 to prevent spoilers, but you can translate if you want.

V ernyyl guvax gung zl snibhevgr raqvat jnf ct. 356, jurer Ubengvb tbg gb unir uvf bja fznyy nqiragher. V'ir nyjnlf unq n fbsg fcbg sbe Ubengvb, rira gubhtu ur qvqa'g ernyyl qb zhpu va gur cynl. Naq V gubhtug gur jubyr "Lbh or TERNG" ynfg yvar jnf dhvgr fjrrg. Gur raq ba ct. 379 jnf nyfb npghnyyl engure vafcvevat va n fvzvyne jnl.
Naq gura gurer jrer gur qbjaevtug uvynevbhf raqvatf...  V guvax V jvyy svaq gur cvpgher bs Unzyrg ynlvat ba gur sybbe orvat "pnfhny" va sebag bs gur fgnoorq phegnva crecrghnyyl shaal. (Cvpgher ba ct. 607, sebz gur raqvat ba ct. 26.) Fvzvyneyl gur raqvat ba ct. 75 jvgu gur cvpgher ba ct. 163 (gubhtu sbe fbzr ernfba V svaq gur cvpgher ba ct. 607 fyvtugyl shaavre). Gur raqvat jurer lbh qrpvqr gb qvgpu ernyvfz nygbtrgure (sbetrg gur cntr..., cvpgher ba ct. 197), gur bar jurer lbh nf Bcuryvn trg n ernyyl zhfpyrl nez ("Naq va gur raq...vfa'g gung gur zbfg jr nyy pna ubcr sbe?") (ct. 624), naq gur bar jurer, ybat fgbel fubeg, vg gheaf bhg xvyyvat Cbybavhf, phggvat uvz hc, fghssvat uvz vagb ontf, naq chggvat gur ontf vagb fgrj oevrsyl bayl gb erzbir gurz vf vyyrtny? (ct. 541)
Gurer jrer whfg fb znal njrfbzr raqvatf... gur bar jurer vg gheaf bhg lbh'er va gur Tubfgohfgref zbivr abj (ct. 233), be gur bar jurer lbh ohvyq n znpuvar gb perngr n arj gvzryvar (ct. 229) naq unir gb qb pbzcyvpngrq zngu gb raq hc ba guvf arj gvzryvar (ct. 158) jurer lbh zrrg gur bgure irefvba bs lbhefrys (naq trg n ybat n yvggyr gbbb jryy...). V guvax glvat sbe svefg jvgu gur Ubengvb raqvat zvtug or gur bar gung fcrpvsvpnyyl gryyf lbh vg'f na njrfbzr raqvat: ba ct. 268, lbh, nf gur tubfg bs Unzyrg, wbva sbeprf jvgu lbhe qrnq sngure va n uhtr tubfg-ba-tubfg jner sbe gur fheiviny bs gur nsgreyvsr. Lbh ner yrnqvat gur nezvrf bs uhznavgl'f terngrfg tubfg vagb onggyr, naq znxr n fhcre qenzngvp cer-onggyr fcrrpu. "Yrg'f qb guvf, Unzyrg," Senaxyva Q. Ebbfriryg fnlf, pbpxvat uvf fubgtha. Guvf vf na njrfbzr raqvat.
Naq bs pbhefr, gurer jrer cyragl bs njrfbzr ovgf fcevaxyrq guebhtubhg gur obbx, orsber lbh rira tbg gb na raqvat. V ybirq Bcuryvn naq Unzyrg'f ybat "Jnlf gb Zheqre n Xvat" yvfg (ct. 538), naq gur jubyr "Pubbfr Lbhe Bja Nqiragher" fgbel jvguva guvf "Pubbfr Lbhe Bja Nqiragher" fgbel, naq nyy gur ersreraprf gb bgure  aba-rkvfgrag "Pubbfr Lbhe Bja Nqiragher" fgbevrf (yvxr gur njrfbzryl zrgn qvfphffvba jvgu gur nhgube ba ct. 10),  be gur yvggyr ovg ba ct. 337 gung vg gheaf bhg lbh pna'g trg gb guebhtu nal cngu (orpnhfr vg jnf vafregrq guebhtu gur gvzr-fcnpr pbagvahhz ol gur Bzrtn Cebgbpby...ybat fgbel). Naq gura gurer jnf gur ubarfg-gb-tbbqarff genvavat zbagntr! (ct. 508) V ybbbir genvavat zbagntrf!!!

Maaaaan, this P.S. went on for a long time... Sorry... this book makes me very enthusiastic, even when I'm just making notes for myself in code so noone can read them.

The Pirates! In an Adventure With Napoleon

by Gideon Defoe

Grade: 3 stars (or maybe 2 1/2 stars?)
Story summary: When the Pirate Captain loses his longed-for prize of Pirate of the Year, he is so devastated that he retires to an island to keep bees. An island which just so happens to be St. Helena, of Napoleon fame. The bee plans don't last long.
Sequel to The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Whaling, and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists.

Thoughts: I didn't find this quite as enjoyable as the previous instalments. Perhaps it was the circumstances I was reading this under (it was basically the only thing I could read during a rather bad period), or perhaps I've simply got used to the style and don't find it quite as funny anymore. There were still parts I found immensely funny: the fake index in the back, the dedication (the joke in which was built up over all four books), and any time bees were mentioned, for example.

There is now a fifth book in this series, which I'm still planning to read. I've read some reviews saying it was better than this one, plus I enjoyed this one enough as light reading and I'm assuming the next one will be the same.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists

by Gideon Defoe

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story summary: I try not to do this very often, but I'm going to refer you to the Goodreads summary, for the same reasons described in my review below.
Sequel to The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Whaling.

Thoughts: Basically see the reviews for the previous books. I don't have much to say about this one individually. Partly because it's very similar in entertainment value and general hilariousness to the two before it. But mostly because I started reading this during my great crash into sickness and laziness after my two month European trip, and then continued reading it during the eight-day-long (and very intense) wilderness hike I went on right afterwards. These two things are not really conducive towards remembering details or taking notes or general comprehension or any such helpful things.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Whaling

by Gideon Defoe

Grade: 4 1/2 stars
Story summary: Sometime after their adventure with scientists, the pirates are in need of a new ship. So they rashly buy one from Cutlass Liz and get into terrible debt as a result. Chaos and escapades ensue as they try out gambling at Las Vegas, performing shanties and monologues, and finally, whaling. (Also called, "The Pirates! In an Adventure With Ahab".)
See also the next book in the series, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists.

Thoughts: Awesome, tiny, utterly hilarious.

Evidence:
--It has a recommendation from Eric Idle (one of the Pythons) on the front. (Actually, it's a recommendation for the first book, not this book. But this one is pretty much as good.)

--It was written by  guy to impress a girl. What better reason to write  book? Apparently it didn't work. Silly girl.

--He includes lots of random footnotes. Awesome footnotes put any book high on my list.

--It is full of hilarious quotable passages. I had one picked out for evidence, but then I lost the paper that I wrote the page number on, and I'm too lazy to look through the book to find a good quote.

To sum up: very light and funny. Aptly named. If a book with an exclamation point and the word "adventure" in the title appeals to you, you'll probably like the book a lot. This book also includes pages listing non-existent sequel titles at the end (e.g. "The Pirates! In an Adventure With Public Sanitation" and "The Pirates! In an Adventure With Boggle"), and fake chapter titles making the book sound very exciting and adventure-y, even if it isn't (e.g. "Skull Hunt on Pygmy Island!" and "I Knifed My Way to a Diamond Pit!"--nothing whatsoever to do with the actual plot line).