Just read: Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse. And Other Lessons from Modern Life by David Mitchell.
Ever since I started watching Would I lie to you David Mitchell has become one of my favourite comedians. He is relatably awkward (relatable to me, that is) and his jokes are just so profound and smart that I almost pee myself when he brings them on!
So you can imagine how excited I was when I found his new book lying underneath the christmas tree last year! The blur:
«Why is every film and TV programme a sequel or a remake?
Why are people so f***ing hung up about swearing?
Why do the asterisks in that sentence make it ok?
Why do so many people want to stop other people doing things, and how can they be stopped from stopping them?These and many other questions trouble David Mitchell. Join him on a tour of the absurdities of modern life – from Ryanair to Richard III, Downton Abbey to phone etiquette, UKIP to hotdogs made of cats. Funny, provocative and shot through with refreshing amounts of common sense, Thinking About It Inly Makes It Worse celebrates and commiserates on the state of things in our not entirely glorious modern world.»
What I loved about the book was that David Mitchell really comments on a big number of topics that I either find myself thinking about in everyday life or that have been bothering me for quite some time on a more serious level. Like Harry Potter (which is something I‘m never not thinking of!); David Mitchell is not a huge fan himself, and although that is a hard thing to forgive, what he writes about the Harry Potter fans is so, so true:
Something (very unrelated to Harry Potter) that I have been hellbent on defending ever since I saw a documentary about it on New Zealand television, is pole dancing. I can‘t even remember what the documentary said that was so enlightning, but I would have taken up pole dancing right there and then – had it not been for the fact that I was only fifteen and no one would let me. Quite to my delight David Mitchell has an opinion about pole dancing as well, but it‘s not the one I originally held. He describes a course offer at Cambridge University that wants to teach young women the art of pole dancing. I thought that sounded pretty cool, until I read the following paragraph:
Yaaayy, feminism! Whoohooo! I like this example because it underlines what he‘s trying to show the reader throughout the entire book – that everything has multiple sides to it and we shouldn‘t agree with something all too easily. At least, that‘s what I figured upon finishing it.
I must say I thought the book would be way funnier, and was then surprised to see that David Mitchell is just too smart. He comments a lot on politics and historical events which are a bit hard to understand or relate to if you‘re not from the UK. Because the books consists almost entirely of columns he‘s written for The Observer many of the topics and jokes would have to be put in context.
But having said that, the writing is incredible, and I did laugh a lot; it‘s nowhere near boring! You also don‘t have to read the whole thing in one go, the chapters are so short you can read one while having a dump! (way to praise a book, I know!) I loved it and before I let you go, here‘s one last quote:
(this is the picture he‘s commenting on, and showing you this saves me a whole paragraph of typing)
xxx
Down the Rocky Road 