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A review by toryhallelujah
One Red Paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved His Dream with the Help of a Simple Office Supply by Kyle Macdonald
1.0
The story itself is interesting, but could EASILY have been summarized into one long article. This is an INCREDIBLY poorly-written book that tries too hard to be funny and beats you over the head with every joke at least three times.
Case in point: he's driving a van across Canada. Someone asks him to deliver something for her. His response:
"'I don't know, it's not like I have hundreds of cubic feet of extra cargo room or anything...'
'Yeah right!' she said.
I laughed. There were actually many hundreds of extra cubic feet of cargo room left in the truck. That's why it was so funny. Extra cubic feet of cargo are like that."
See what I mean? Why did his editor not tell him to cut all that shit out? Oh, and several full pages in later chapters are taken up by comments on his blog, which I skipped entirely. Obviously, he couldn't come up with enough material of his own -- and even straight-up says something like "glad these comments are writing my book for me!"
Weird Canadian things I had to look up: carpet bowling (a sport), cube van (moving truck), toque (beanie), eave troughs (gutters). Again, why didn't his editor have him add in the non-Canadian term for an international audience?
Case in point: he's driving a van across Canada. Someone asks him to deliver something for her. His response:
"'I don't know, it's not like I have hundreds of cubic feet of extra cargo room or anything...'
'Yeah right!' she said.
I laughed. There were actually many hundreds of extra cubic feet of cargo room left in the truck. That's why it was so funny. Extra cubic feet of cargo are like that."
See what I mean? Why did his editor not tell him to cut all that shit out? Oh, and several full pages in later chapters are taken up by comments on his blog, which I skipped entirely. Obviously, he couldn't come up with enough material of his own -- and even straight-up says something like "glad these comments are writing my book for me!"
Weird Canadian things I had to look up: carpet bowling (a sport), cube van (moving truck), toque (beanie), eave troughs (gutters). Again, why didn't his editor have him add in the non-Canadian term for an international audience?