It took me way too long to read this book.
I read it on my kindle, because I use my kindle when I’m doing cardio (elliptical, stationary bike, whatever) if I’m not catching up on TV (OMG I WATCH SO MANY ‘CRIMINAL MINDS’ RERUNS). And I brought it with me on vacation. And it STILL took me forever.
The thing about Ellen Degeneres’s The Funny Thing Is… is that it wasn’t very funny.
Don’t get me wrong, it had some chuckle worthy moments, and I like Ellen a lot (and my sister is obsessed with Ellen, so I’d be afraid not to like her). I could even hear her voice reading most of the book, but I just didn’t think it was THAT funny.
Maybe I need to see her face, because so much of comedy isn’t spoken, but this book wouldn’t be as funny as I hoped. There were some chuckle moments. The weekend brunch part? The talking butterfly daydream? hahahaha. But a lot of the book just…fell flat.
What I do like about Ellen, that often goes unmentioned but that I do like, and continues here in The Funny Thing Is… is that she can be funny without being mean. Don’t misunderstand me, I find that being mean can be very funny. Take for example, Tosh.0. I know that’s not a book, but it’s the best example I have of what I’m talking about. Tosh.0 can be hysterically funny, but it is incredibly mean spirited. Mean comedy gets tired after awhile. It’s incredibly repetitive, but also (in my opinion) the laziest form of comedy, and it shows if you watch it enough. It’s easy to make fun of people. If making fun of people was all there is to comedy, we could all do comedy. I’ve never seen Daniel Tosh live, so I can’t speak to his standup, but his TV show is definitely that.
Ellen doesn’t just make fun of people endlessly, she makes real life funny. It’s true. Why in hell can I not open a pair of scissors without a pair of scissors but can pop open a lightbulb no problem? These are the sorts of real life, every day mundane things that Ellen can highlight and make hysterical and does a fantastic job with. She’s to be admired in this way, because finding the funny in routine things is much harder than making fun of people, at least in my opinion.
But overall, it was only an okay read. It was chuckle worthy, but not laugh out loud hilarious.
The funniest books I’ve ever read are by Dave Barry. They’re called Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs and Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States. Those books had me hysterically laughing…even in public. Consequently, I compare all “funny” books to them. If I’m not laughing in a public place and unable to stop myself, the book may be amusing but it wasn’t funny.
So I guess that’s where I’m at with The Funny Thing Is…. It was amusing but it wasn’t LOL-worthy. Ellen is a great entertainer and I wouldn’t mind reading her other books, but if given the opportunity, I’d rather see her live/watch her show.
words in scarlet ink 