Seriously Humorless Book Review

Philosophical book review misses the humor

The latest libertarian examiner to review my book is Charlotte Libertarian Philosophy Examiner Matthew Reece. He awarded me three out of a possible five stars for my efforts.

I thank him for the review and for the stars.

But note Mr. Reece's title again: "Libertarian Philosophy Examiner," meaning that his review came at the book from a serious philosophical mindset.

One result was that he did an excellent job of capsulizing the subject matter of the various articles while offering his earnestly analytical critiques of each.

For example: "The next article purports to explain libertarianism to the uninitiated, but really only succeeds at explaining what libertarianism is not. A philosophical approach to libertarianism must be found elsewhere, and Mr. Reed even admits as much, begging the question of why it is included in the book.

Actually all of the articles included in the book were written under my rubric of "fun&freedom" in which freedom is the message but fun is the method.

In every case Mr. Reece accurately read, and responsibly criticized, the libertarian message but seems to have had little truck, or yuck, with the humor:

"Mr. Reed explores some hypothetical future news stories which have yet to happen. While the stories are plausible, they lower the credibility level of the book and feel out of place."

"Next up is a humorous piece with a multitude of pork references concerning multiple manners of government interference in the affairs of peaceful people. While a good read, it feels out of step with much of the rest of the book."

"Mr. Reed's self-deprecating sense of humor in some places can become tiresome."

The whole idea of these articles was to escape the solemn, academic, pedantic presentation of libertarian ideas and reach out to people-on-the-street with a libertarianism festively festooned in the wrapping paper of humor, but Mr. Reece never commented on any of that.

Of course, maybe my attempts at humor just weren't very funny to a philosophical examiner like Matthew Reece.

So be aware, Readers-To-Be, that this book is listed on Lulu.com under the HUMOR category. And as I reported recently, we hit No. 2 for a spell on their Top 100 books in that category.