I got this book a week ago at the Friends of the Library book sale. Again, I am not excited about the stack of books piled on my chair side book accumulation point, so I picked a couple of short books to read as I glacially move through those books I am compelled to read (or eventually throw back into the stacks). This promised to be a quick read, and it was.
It really is nothing more than a set of Web site listicles in print; one could easily imagine this as a blog posted over the course of time with a lively comment section, but looking on the Internet does not show anything blog about it. Blogs are so 2006 (but this book is from 2009, so coming out of the blog era). It features sections on Arts & Literature, Sports & Leisure, History & Politics, Entertainment, and Science & Nature (which makes it one Geography chapter short of a lawsuit from the Trivial Pursuit people). Some of the individual face-offs include the 80s vs the 90s, summer games vs winter games, Gandhi vs Mother Theresa, Smurfs vs Care Bears, and so on. Each has a set of snarky bullet points for each side, sometimes obvious in its preference, and it has some pages where it just lists challenges for discussion. This would probably be a good book for reading aloud during road trips–and back in the day, that was the sort of thing my beautiful wife and I did. But now everyone has headphones on and a personal device leaving the driver to listen to lectures and audiobooks unless driving on the narrow roads in Arkansas.
Some of the challenges have aged poorly and might seem in poor taste, but then again in 2009 contenders like Amy Winehouse and Eddie Van Halen were alive then. And the author doesn’t inject politics too much, although the contenders for Worst President are Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush (boy, do we have some new entrants for you). Does Donald Trump make an appearance? Oh, boy, mister, you bet he does: but as it is before his political career as the devil, it’s in the category of Balding vs Extreme Anti-Balding Measures.
Still, a quick and amusing read and perhaps worthwhile for a road trip if you can get your family from under the hood.
