Sunday, June 22, 2014

You Can Date When You're Forty

My first exposure to Dave Barry was my father reading me his columns out of the paper.  The style of humor in the columns would have us both in hysterics and I have been a fan ever since.  My dad had a couple Dave Barry books, which I devoured as I aged and I loved his year in review columns.  His just shy of absurdist sense of humor tickles my funny bone in just the right places.  When I saw he was doing a book reading and signing where I live, I jumped at the chance to see him.

At the reading he did some stand up comedy (some particularly biting bits about Miami) as well as reading from his book.  Afterwards at the signing, he showed himself to be a very nice man, not at all brusque like some authors are at signings, he seemed like he genuinely wanted to be there and talk with his fans, young and old.


The book contains a collection of stories that had me laughing all the way through.  While the title and subtitle imply that it is about parenting, there are a lot of other topics contained within the book  Some examples include Israel, Bieber, and air travel.  The format is just a collection of longer than normal Dave Barry articles which have a vague thematic direction towards parenting.  The book is not that long but it is chocked full of laughs.  This would be a great choice to pull down on your eReader of choice to read on vacation.

The part that I will probably remember the most about this book is that I was reading the chapter about Israel at the same time that one of my friends was visiting Israel and Dave Barry and my friend did a lot of the same things (his version of events was funnier than hers).

Overall, I would give this book a 90%.