Sunday, April 13, 2014

I Was Told There'd Be Cake


Week of 4/2/14
**Do you like what you’re reading? Why or why not?

Pages Read: 1-53    (Short Stories: "The Pony Problem" "Christmas In July" "The Ursula Cookie")

I Was Told There'd Be Cake is the third essay book I've read this year. One of these books was a scifi theme, and the other was comedy. It's easy to tell what genre I like better when you look at the genre of I Was Told There'd Be Cake. Drumroll...It's a comedy. Of course. The essay book i read before this one was Me Talk Pretty One Day, and I found it incredibly enjoyable and funny. Because of this, I was expecting a lot from this book as well, since it had an attention grabbing title and someone had told me that it was a really good book. So, to move on with it, here's my current situation with I Was Told There'd Be Cake. 

When you have an older sibling (like I do), you get very used to hearing people say stuff about your older-whatever and then compare you to them. And as random as that might sound, it actually has to do with what I want to say about this book. As I mentioned before, I read an essay book before this that I enjoyed so much that I fully expected the same from this book. Of course, I didn't want the writing to be the same or the stories to be shockingly similar (as that would suggest something of this writer), but I wanted it to be as funny. Now that I think back to it, this may have been wrong for me to do, since it sort of kind of not counts as judging a book by its cover. Anyway, I don't mean to sound like some horribly mean critic, but I think I rose my expectations to high for this book. Again, I don't mean to sound as mean...as that sounded.  But that's honestly how I feel.

So, why do I feel like my expectations were to high? Well, frankly, I don't find this book very enjoyable. I mean, it is enjoyable, but not as much as I hoped it would be. Some parts of this book are really very funny, but those parts haven't been very common throughout what I've read so far. Another thing was that some of the essays would drag on and become less interesting as they didn't have many parts that I found funny. And then that ties into the fact that sometimes, things that were meant to be funny didn't really make me laugh or smile or anything. But, that's just my opinion on some of those jokes. Yet another thing is the very common talk about the author's religion (or just religion as a child). Throughout a lot of the essays I've read in the book so far, her religion was talked about a lot. I didn't really mind at first, since at first, she brought up her religion for the purpose of making the part of the essay funny. But then later on, a whole essay was about her religion and Christianity, and it wasn't talked about for the purpose of making her audience laugh. After a while, it got a bit repetitive and even made it drag on a bit.

Pretty much, I'm enjoying this book, but equally, I'm not. Fifty-fifty, really. Don't get me wrong, some parts of her essays are actually really funny. And some parts are equally, not as funny. Then again, it's really only the beginning of the book. I have much to look forward to.

**Sorry this is so late! I wrote it and somehow forget to actually publish it. HERE IT IS ANYWAY!

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