1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good idea, bad result, February 25, 2009
This review is from: Bertha Venation: And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People (Hardcover)
This was a waste of money. I love the idea of listing hillarious names, but this just didn't work as a book.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great gift for anyone who finds humor in real life!, September 30, 2008
This review is from: Bertha Venation: And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People (Hardcover)
As a professional librarian, I collected funny names of authors and books for 35 years, mainly for the amusement of my colleagues and myself. But reading Larry Ashmead's Bertha Venation (and Russell Ash's and Brian Lake's Bizarre Books) inspired me to publish my collection. The result is
The Inscribed List: or, Why Librarians Are Crazy: Hilarious Real Names of Real People from Library Catalogs.
Ashmead's work is witty and charming, but Ash and Lake remain the undisputed champions of digging up literary howlers. Like trained pigs with noses for exquisite truffles, they find and publish the wildest names and titles.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lazy, dull, and not very funny., March 24, 2008
This review is from: Bertha Venation: And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People (Hardcover)
I hope that Larry Ashmead put more effort into his job as an editor than he bothered to put into this disappointing book.
Here is page 2, almost in its entirety:
"here's a recent list of babies born in Upstate New York.
Caiden Lee
Tyler Ryan
carly Morgan
Jeremiah James Jr.
Sarafia Frances
Brianna Darcie
Hayles Tasha
Sabryn Maura
Bethanyann Busta
Kai Nolan
Autumn Elizabeth
Ashlwyn Zoe
Trinity Jade
Bette Harrison, who keeps an eye on new arrivals at O' Grady Hospital in Atlanta, spotted Vaseline Glass."
If you find that kind of thing riveting, then you might enjoy this book. Incredibly, Ashmead stoops to the same device again on page 9, which consists solely of two lists of names, gleaned from birth announcements in Upstate New York. As Ashmead lists them without comment, we are left to wonder what he considers odd about the names "Kobe, Kody Ryan, Nayraha Dmarye, Tajae Nylei, Nyeerah Oqay-lyn, or Jayden Xavier". In a multi-cultural society, surely names are no longer considered funny just because they deviate from the list favored by white Anglo-Saxons.
Tip: The phone directory is a treasure trove of names, and it's free.
At times, reading this book gives you that sense of being trapped on a transcontinental flight next to that guy who trots out one lethally boring anecdote after another. This is a man who devotes a page and a half to the fact that his employee badge misspelled his name at one of his jobs. Fear not, it was corrected when he moved to his next job. Here's the thing: on what planet does he think anyone could possibly care enough about this to make it necessary for him to include photos of the two ID's in question?
Ashmead's laziness doesn't stop at reproducing lists of names gleaned from birth announcements. Fully six pages of a chapter devoted to pets' names are a verbatim reproduction of a (not particularly interesting) newspaper article about Queen Victoria and her dogs. Then there are the interminably meandering, pointless anecdotes from, or about, various acquaintances of his. Introductions like this one are typical: "Mary Tobin Adams Hedges was a dear friend in the late 1960s and '70s when I owned a beach house in Sagaponack, a small town in the Hamptons."
There is one moderately amusing chapter in the book, that on celebrity baby names. Though it contains nothing more than what would be returned by an internet search on the term 'weird celebrity baby names', it is pretty funny. Unfortunately, none of the other chapters come close.
Given the preponderance of material copied verbatim from other sources, and dull anecdotes from or about the authors' friends and acquaintances, it is hard to believe that the author did much research for this book. His laziness shows on almost every page of this disappointing effort.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
