This is the third book in a series, Pap and Pup Peters. Pap and Pup are brothers and tort lawyers looking for class action suits to line their pockets. The situational humor that drives the plot and the courtroom antics are amusing. However the author has to make one-line jokes about people’s names, companies and places that really get in the way of enjoyment. The one-liners were amusing at first, but by page two they just started to get annoying.
There is a good story in there, but they missed it by a bit.
February 1, 2024
Send In The Tort Lawyer$-A Legal Farce by T C Morrison
December 9, 2023
Les vacances du petit Nicolas by Jean-Jacques Sempé and René Goscinny
Nicolas, a young child and first-person narrator, goes on a couple of vacations, one with his family and another to a summer camp. The book is funny and light with a great interplay between the different characters, I enjoy the interaction between his parents. On these vacations Nicolas meets new friends and annoys new adults with his inimitable style.
Each chapter stands on its own pretty well and build into the stories.
A fun and light read, the drawings are nice and a good addition.
October 20, 2023
Dad Jokes by Slade Wentworth
What’s to say? It’s a collection of dad jokes, some of them will actually make you laugh. It’s worth a quick read. Go to the library and read it while you’re in the checkout line.
September 1, 2023
Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
This is a science fiction-mystery-noir-humor story with a hard-boiled detective, I think I missed a category.
The setting is poorly defined and that is part of the reader’s exploration. Conrad Metcalf is a detective, a private inquisitor in a world where (not-private) inquisitors spy on people doling out or removing credits. Drugs are commonplace and. tailored, people use them to create moods, to forget, to enhance experiences, it seems endless and very personalized.
Society has created intelligent animals, educated babies and a few gadgets. These are revealed slowly through the book.
At the beginning, the book felt like a detective noir story, it read like a Raymond Chandler story. Conrad is approached by a man panicked, being framed for a murder and no means of payment and low on credits. During the investigation, he encounters kangaroo muscle, holographic houses and a few others.
The extensive use of drugs made me feel like the whole book is a drug-induced illusion. The author reinforces this by making use of bizarre idioms and metaphors that get increasingly peculiar as the book goes on.
The title is a reference to a gun that plays music whenever it is drawn, something to do with advertising.
The book started off amusing and new but started to get old toward the end. It ended just in time.
April 24, 2023
Tundra: 100% Naturally Flavored Comics by Chad Carpenter
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/P/1578333709.01._SX540_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
These cartoons are typical of Chad’s later works. They aren’t as funny as early cartoons, but still decent and improve toward the end of the books. I don’t care for his style of having every fourth page printed sideways, it’s just awkward to read and adds nothing.
February 11, 2023
Tundra: Tooth Chattering Fun by Chad Carpenter
The book is fun, but I don’t think his recent work is as good as his early work. It’s still worth reading.
December 26, 2022
May 12, 2022
The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted by Harry Harrison
This is on of the later books but set early in his career. The story opens with James DiGriz, prisoner, being shipped to some planet to face charges of bank robbing, after lamenting his misfortune he escapes from the pot into the fire.
James finds himself on a military planet and promptly gets drafted. He learns a nemesis of his, formerly Captain Garth, is now General Zennor, planning an invasion of an unknown planet and is enlisted by the League Navy to identify that planet – if he can’t kill General Zennor first.
The target planet turns out to be a utopian planet with no government and practicing a philosophy of Individual Mutualism, which seems to be a rather libertarian approach to life. There is no army, no police and no problems. On such a world, how do you defeat a heavily-armed invasion force?
As usual, he goes from one problem to another finding the most unusual solutions to problems in amusing ways and finds a most unusual solution to outwitting an invading army.
February 25, 2019
Hawkeye, Vol 1: My Life as My Weapon by Matt Fraction
This was recommended by a friend and I was glad for the suggestion. The book consists of two short stories in the graphic novel. This is a collection of the first issues of Hawkeye comic books.
There are two protagonists in one persona, Hawkeye. The two are Clint Barton and Kate Bishop. The backstory is that Clint was one of the Avengers, with no special ability but an extraordinary talent with the bow. When he was presumed killed, Captain America passed the bow on to Kate, who possessed similar skills. The story works on the relationship between these to versions of Hawkman.
I found the characters and the stories are interesting. The artists, David Aja and Javier Pulido do a good job. I like the composition, both the scenes and the page layout. They make good use of color to delimit segments of different sequences within the story. Although I felt the pacing was too fast, a common issue with graphic novels in general.
The story is both exciting and funny. They way the two characters interact can draw you in and make you believe and like both characters. It is well worth a good read.
August 2, 2018
French for Cats by Henry Beard
This book takes the form of a normal phrasebook as intended for cats. Or at least what humans would expect a cat to say in various situations. It is a light and quick read and the French itself is accurte and useful, but knowing some French is useful, as a few of the “translations” are jokes in themselves.
Mon dieu! Un petit livre pour des chats! Maintenant il peut miauler en deux langues! Aucune paix pour l’homme.