Reviews and Comments

Den

den@wyrms.de

Joined 2 years, 6 months ago

I make websites and draw cartoons for my kids and my co-workers. I love #indieComics and obsessively collect #guidedByVoices related vinyl. I used to teach Latin in public schools. Still a union worker. #indieRock #webdev #cartoonist #indieweb #fedi22 I’m also on Mastodon and at denmchenry.com.

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Bob Odenkirk: Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama (Hardcover, 2022) 4 stars

Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Drama, Farce

4 stars

Farce is a little too strong. This is largely an enjoyable read, especially in the early going, and fans of Odenkirk's work in sketch comedy will especially enjoy the way he discusses things like the beginnings of his career, why he favors sketch over improv, and which of his funny friends wrote their favorite sketches. It's affably written and clearly in Odenkirk's voice, if you're familiar with him outside the world of Breaking Bad.

There are many subtle insults delivered as praise throughout (easily missed, and very midwestern), and though he seems to be trying very hard to appear gracious and to present himself as a lucky fool, he takes greater pains to remind you at every turn how much credit he deserves, how many doomed projects should have been made (and would have been amazing), and how many genuine failures were more a result of compromise or lack of …

Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five (EBook, 1968) 4 stars

A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to …

Unexpected, familiar, and humane

5 stars

It's a little embarrassing to confess that I'd never read Vonnegut. That's not true. I read Harrison Bergeron in some sort of enrichment reader in 6th grade. I thought that was pretty great, and the only story I remember fondly from that age outside of an Edgar Allen Poe collection that I probably read until the cover came off, and then read again. Somehow I always expected this book to be some kind of hippie acid trip because the people I knew growing up who read it had black light posters and blew smoke into their iguanas' faces to give them a contact high. I did not expect the book to be about WWII, to play with time the way it did, or to make me cry, not for anything in particular, but just a little catharsis for a moment after the book was finished. The book is lively and …