3 out of 4 stars
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Review: Baby Boomer Humor by S.G. Soto
If you have a busy routine and want to read some light hearted humor at regular intervals, this book is perfect for you. Baby Boomer Humor by S.G. Soto is a collection of jokes and quotes similar to the ones that you would expect from social media shares or WhatsApp forwards. In the prologue, the author states that there was a time when jokes were always taken lightly and were never taken personally. Through this book, the author has tried to provide a glimpse at the humor which was taken for granted in the 90’s.
The jokes are of varying lengths (from a line to about 2-3 pages) and are sorted by category, with a chapter dedicated to each category. The book includes hundreds of jokes and while some are typical, like those on wives, husbands, blondes and Asians, some were original and impressive. However, if you’re someone who can get offended easily or hate stereotypes, this book is definitely not for you. I liked how this warning was included in the prologue, so I knew exactly what to expect from the book.
While most jokes made me chuckle, I found two of them very memorable. My favorite part of the book was the ‘Bill of no rights’ which includes ‘Articles’ such as “Article III - You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all of your relatives independently wealthy.” While each item on this list seemed obvious, it referred to the general attitude of people or some widely known instances. It was realistic yet funny, and I found myself agreeing with each point, while laughing.
Another memorable part of the book was the recipe for a fruitcake, wherein ‘test/sample/drink wine’ was after every step. The final step asked the reader to throw the bowl out of the window because "who likes fruitcake anyway?" I loved the ending. Further, I found this ‘recipe’ enjoyable to read because I hadn’t come across something like this in the past.
I have a few concerns with the book. Firstly, there were a few jokes that I had heard numerous times in the past, which now seemed very redundant. Having read many new jokes in the first few pages of the book, I had very high expectations from the rest of the book and was disappointed when I came across these redundant ones.
Secondly, this book definitely needs another round of editing and formatting. There were many formatting issues such as new chapters beginning without a page break or heading, entire chapters being written in capital letters and text (specially text in images) being very small to read and blurry when zoomed. The editing issues I noticed include the use of ‘is’ instead of ‘as’, ‘not’ instead of ‘now’ and ‘cry’ instead of ‘try’.
I would rate the book 3 out of 4 stars . Most jokes were unique and actually made me laugh. If not for the editing and formatting errors, it would have been a perfect, light-hearted book. Since there are a few sexual references in the book, I would recommend it to adults who enjoy reading jokes and are not easily offended.
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Baby Boomer Humor
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