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labunnywtf's review against another edition
2.0
False advertising.
While a handful of letters in here were truly delightful, the majority of them were written by people too in love with their own words.
Ugh.
While a handful of letters in here were truly delightful, the majority of them were written by people too in love with their own words.
Ugh.
tobyyy's review against another edition
4.0
I was honestly quite surprised to see the low overall rating of this book here on GR (currently it's averaging a 2.97/5 star rating). I looked at some of the reviews, and I guess I can understand why.
This book is a collection of letters from famous people - just as the title suggests. There is quite a variety here, including famous people such as Beethoven, Benjamin Franklin, Julia Child, Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx, Charles Dickens, etc. In order to understand the subtle humor in letters written pre-20th c., you do have to have a decent grasp of the English language and how the usage has shifted over the past 4 centuries. As someone who has read classics since I was 12 years old or so, and as someone who enjoys linguistics and history, this book was not difficult to understand at all. Some of the older letters were ones that I would not really be able to comprehend were I to have read them when I was excessively tired... however, they were still funny.
Also, honestly, this is the kind of book that makes me almost laugh out loud. Other humor books that I have read recently may make me smile but are generally suited to a more crass sense of humor than what I tend to enjoy. (Don't get me wrong, I can crack dirty jokes with the rest of them, but do I want to read a book full of sexual jokes? No thanks. Not my type.) I guess another way to put it would be that the humor in this book is calmer and... gentler? than I have seen in most other books. Yay for the vagaries of history.
Definitely do recommend. Funny Letters From Famous People is an excellent book to pick up, set down, pick up again due to the short nature of the letters/excerpts. Subtle humor, but not in a mawkish sense nor an overly crass manner. I may see about getting myself a hard copy at some point, which should speak for itself regarding how much I enjoyed this little collection.
This book is a collection of letters from famous people - just as the title suggests. There is quite a variety here, including famous people such as Beethoven, Benjamin Franklin, Julia Child, Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx, Charles Dickens, etc. In order to understand the subtle humor in letters written pre-20th c., you do have to have a decent grasp of the English language and how the usage has shifted over the past 4 centuries. As someone who has read classics since I was 12 years old or so, and as someone who enjoys linguistics and history, this book was not difficult to understand at all. Some of the older letters were ones that I would not really be able to comprehend were I to have read them when I was excessively tired... however, they were still funny.
Also, honestly, this is the kind of book that makes me almost laugh out loud. Other humor books that I have read recently may make me smile but are generally suited to a more crass sense of humor than what I tend to enjoy. (Don't get me wrong, I can crack dirty jokes with the rest of them, but do I want to read a book full of sexual jokes? No thanks. Not my type.) I guess another way to put it would be that the humor in this book is calmer and... gentler? than I have seen in most other books. Yay for the vagaries of history.
Definitely do recommend. Funny Letters From Famous People is an excellent book to pick up, set down, pick up again due to the short nature of the letters/excerpts. Subtle humor, but not in a mawkish sense nor an overly crass manner. I may see about getting myself a hard copy at some point, which should speak for itself regarding how much I enjoyed this little collection.
readingwithhippos's review against another edition
3.0
I found this book to be absolutely delightful. It was a great pick-up-put-down-pick-back-up kind of book. Hopping up in a few minutes to do laundry? Have a little time in your minivan while the kids finish up at practice? Find yourself in the waiting room at the dentist? Then you have time to read a few pages of this book and brighten your day simultaneously. Two birds!
Osgood collected a whole bunch of witty missives from a variety of people and—this is the best part—edited out most of the boring stuff, providing just the humorous gems for our enjoyment. Many of the excerpts are less than a page long, some only a few lines. He sets them up with background info when necessary, but mostly stays out of the way and lets the writers’ work shine. And adult ADD sufferers the world over said in unison, “Finally, a book that even we can read!”
In reading reviews of this book, it seemed the most common complaint was that it “wasn’t that funny.” I suspect the people who felt this way went in expecting to laugh out loud, possibly shoot milk out their noses. This isn’t that kind of book, and it’s not that kind of humor. If you want fart jokes and toilet humor, well, Mark Twain and JFK will probably feel like a letdown. Instead, I recommend you read this book expecting to occasionally smile or quietly chuckle. (I was going to say titter, because I think that’s the best description of what I did while reading it, but after making a big self-righteous stink about how I’m above juvenile humor, I thought it might smack of hypocrisy.)
Ultimately, this book made me nostalgic for a day when people actually took the time to write more than 140 characters meant for the eyes of only one person. Compared to the Twitter feeds of today’s celebrities, these off-the-cuff notes read like Shakespearean sonnets. The elaborate syntax! The flowery diction! Yes, it suffices to say that as a culture, we’re definitely getting stupider. Do your part to prevent intellectual erosion by reading this book today.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
Osgood collected a whole bunch of witty missives from a variety of people and—this is the best part—edited out most of the boring stuff, providing just the humorous gems for our enjoyment. Many of the excerpts are less than a page long, some only a few lines. He sets them up with background info when necessary, but mostly stays out of the way and lets the writers’ work shine. And adult ADD sufferers the world over said in unison, “Finally, a book that even we can read!”
In reading reviews of this book, it seemed the most common complaint was that it “wasn’t that funny.” I suspect the people who felt this way went in expecting to laugh out loud, possibly shoot milk out their noses. This isn’t that kind of book, and it’s not that kind of humor. If you want fart jokes and toilet humor, well, Mark Twain and JFK will probably feel like a letdown. Instead, I recommend you read this book expecting to occasionally smile or quietly chuckle. (I was going to say titter, because I think that’s the best description of what I did while reading it, but after making a big self-righteous stink about how I’m above juvenile humor, I thought it might smack of hypocrisy.)
Ultimately, this book made me nostalgic for a day when people actually took the time to write more than 140 characters meant for the eyes of only one person. Compared to the Twitter feeds of today’s celebrities, these off-the-cuff notes read like Shakespearean sonnets. The elaborate syntax! The flowery diction! Yes, it suffices to say that as a culture, we’re definitely getting stupider. Do your part to prevent intellectual erosion by reading this book today.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
jennseeg's review
2.0
I was hoping that as the titled indicated, there would be funny letters. Not so. It would be more appropriately titled, "Funny Excerpts...."
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