This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks us to list some favo(u)rite book blogs.
Well, there's always the link-up at the L&SR site...
And these from the blog roll...
(This one's not been active lately. I begin to worry.) https://barbtaub.com/
...and others; five ought to do for a start, especially with the link-up above. (See the comments. Some regular posters at Long & Short Reviews backed away from this prompt because who wants to read us sitting around introducing each other to each other. The idea was to expand the circle but I can see why some people just commented that they didn't want to bother.)
This being April Fool's Day, however, here are ten Bogus Reviews of Books the April Fool Will Never Find in the Store or Library...
1. Pitt, H, M.D. Your Amazing Armpits. Bladensburg, Maryland: Axillary Auxiliary, 2010.
Discusses the importance of sweat as a means of communication and the damage done to entire societies when they have discovered aluminum-based antiperspirant deodorant. Includes an illustrated section on armpit hair braiding traditions.
2. Toze, I.C., Mystery of the Stolen Shoes. Grosset & Dunlap, 1987.
In this lost volume of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, Nancy, Bess, and Georgie find all of their shoes stolen and have to run out to the mall barefoot. Of course Nancy finds the criminal, who turns beet-red, then white, in the face when he sees that she's seen him blissfully sniffing a shoe, and then obligingly faints dead away. Meanwhile, our sleuthy team finally learn something about judging people by first impressions as they are suspected of having robbed one of the shops last week, when they were at school and couldn't possibly have done it. (In this volume we see, for the first time, evidence that the three school friends ever actually attend classes.)
3. Looney, U.R., M.S.W. How to Improve Your Mental Health. Tarcher, 2021.
An experienced counsellor discusses proven techniques to reduce depression in the post-COVID world, such as "Stop talking and thinking about your own feelings all the time," "Take a walk outdoors in the sunshine," and "If you drink alcohol, stop."
4. Moneyhun, I.O. How to Get Rich. Amazon, 2026.
Literally 159 of the 160 pages in this book are irrelevant blather that appears to have been copied from other books, one line from each book. Not only do sentences not follow logically from one another; they shift, within paragraphs, among different languages. There is a clear intention of filling up Amazon's minimum word and page count while not copying enough from any one book to be sued. However, on page 160 the author finally reveals a secret no other author on this topic has yet told you. "I don't know how to get rich! No other writer knows, either! If writers knew how to get rich, we wouldn't be writers!" This is well worth the price of the book ($99.95, paperback).
5. Rimer, A.B. Pi-Ology. Vogsphere Cosmic Press, 2026.
A collection of poems all written in lines of 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, and 9 syllables, in that order, such as:
"Anything
You
Do, and repeat,
Is
Heard as a pattern,
Including poems found in this book."
6. Jennings, P.N.M. Odes to My Darling Doggie's Adorable Internal Parasites. Cambridge: Counterculture Press, 1978.
Reprinted due to demand from the ever-expanding circles of Douglas Adams fans, these poems may or may not have been what Adams mentioned in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but they certainly are bad. The poetess apparently never suspected that if she had stopped thinking of clever ways to describe animals that are not usually celebrated in verse, and taken her darling doggie to the vet, he might have survived longer.
7. Shoi, D.F. Vegan Chinese Cooking and Why Americans Are Doing It All Wrong. Hong Kong: Global Communications Inc., 2015.
Argues that soy sauce, and each other ingredient in a harmonious Buddhist vegan stir-fry, should be soaked in vinegar in a pyramid-shaped container in the roof of a pagoda for all 99 days of a southern Chinese summer. As a result the stir-fry can easily be consumed by people who have no teeth. The author blames Americans for the failure of his medical practice and his restaurant.
8. Dummkopf, I.B.E. What's Wrong with Women Today and Why Marriages Fall Apart. Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University Press, 2026.
A challenging read due to the author's nonstandard syntax, this book contains an hour-by-hour explanation of what the author blamed his wife for doing during the nine days he was married. The publication of this book was subsidized by the author's grieving parents following his suicide, for which they blame his ex-wife.
9. Ronzoni, G. Noodle: The Pastafarian Revelations of Leroy Studebaker. Tarcher, 2026.
According to his disciples, Leroy Studebaker found himself locked out of his home one night and, having drunk heavily earlier in the evening, sat down on his doorstep and narrated a vision of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Its message began with a list of female bar patrons at whom his staring had been winked, "but when thou eyeballest Rinda Tabermaker, thou eyeballest not well for her ways are the ways of death."
10. Zucker, I.M.A. The Benefits of Windows 365. Concept Publications, 2026,
"Blank books just don't sell like they used to," the publishers observed upon going bankrupt. This last book instantly became a collectors' item.
I enjoyed this Priscilla! 🙂🙂
ReplyDeleteThank you for introducing me to https://irresponsiblereader.com/ and "Noodle: The Pastafarian Revelations of Leroy Studebaker."
ReplyDeleteAnd, if you want another almost unreadable book, I'd like to recommend "It's A Dog's Life" by J.H. Wharton.