Customer Reviews

The Book of Ratings: Opinions, Grades, and Assessments of Everything Worth Thinking About

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This was my Valentine's Day gift. My girlfriend tells me that I'm so opinionated about stuff that I could have written this book. She may be right. I think I can remember yelling "but Twinkies [are gross]!" while reading the book. Maybe I just thought it very loud. I've never been to the website that this guy rates stuff for, but Sjoberg rates everything under the sun (from the Seven Dwarfs, to food made by Hostess, to national sports, to....well, anything and everything). It's very interesting.

The structure of the book is in two to three page segments, each one covering a topic. Sjoberg picks several aspects of the topic, give a brief rating of each, and then a letter grade (an example of this would be the Seven Dwarfs as a topic, and then each dwarf gets a short paragraph and the letter grade). The book is consistently amusing with some very funny one-liners tacked in there.

I liked this book, it reminded me of high school where we would make all sorts of lists and put them in order of best to worst. This is a better written extension of that.

I bought this book after my best friend and I nearly got kicked out of a bookstore because we were laughing so hard. Lore uses words like "bask", and adds suffixes like "-ish" and "-ness" whenever he wants. It's great! It's how my friends and I talk! It annoys people who don't get it! The only thing that would make it better is if it came packaged with a Pez dispenser featuring Lore. Now that would make it an A+. Due to its current lack of accompanying somewhat-strawberry flavored sugar bricks, I must give it an A. But a big A. A huge, towering A.

Okay, maybe not the end, but let me tell you something. Here it is: If you have never read this book or gone to Brunching.com, you are seriously missing out. Of course some people might not like this book. Y'know like the ones who can't read and have trouble with the big words but if someone read it to them, then yes, a drink to nose connection would probably be made if they were drinking something. Which we will assume they were.

Lore does use quite a bit of vocabulary and pop-culture references in his ratings but even if some of them go over your head you're bound to get most. There's even a rating for "References from the last rating" where he rates some of the more obscure or over the headish references he made in the previous rating.

Bottom line: Buy this book. Immediately. That means now. Go. Now.

(If you want to see if the book is for you go to Brunching.com and check out the ratings. It probably is.)

Ok, I admit that I'm a fan of the website, but this book has new material and I also laughed even harder at the stuff I've already read off the site. I think it's because sometimes we skim websites and miss inside jokes. But a book you pay attention to every word and Lore puts off-beat references that have you laughing out loud (if you can catch them). It's wonderful to have it all bound in a book - I have already given away a copy to a friend who liked it too.

I'm always grateful for the chance to use a Random Obscure Word Not Normally Used in Everyday Conversation. Like "paroxysm" and "stentorian." That said, "The Book of Ratings" literally sent me into paroxysms of stentorian laughter. It should really come with a warning label--"Do Not Read While Drinking Milk or In a Public Place Unless You Want People to Stare Curiously At You." My favorite rating is in the Wizard of Oz Characters section--the Wicked Witch of the West: "If water were the one thing that could kill me, I certainly wouldn't go leaving big buckets of it around my evil castle. ... And yet the WWW seemed so surprised. 'Oh, gosh, I'm dying here. I don't suppose there's any way I could have forseen this? No, because I'm dumb.'"

Humor [and]Laughter is the best medicine, according to Reader's Digest - and who am I to argue with the Gods of bland, abridged, vaguely religious psudeo-news clips? Lore dishes out the laughter in steaming shovelfuls, thus keeping us really healthy, or else making everyone else in the same room somewhat uncomfortable over our intermittent cackling. Either way, it's a good result...The overall rating may actually take a bit of a nose dive because of the almost excessive randomness of some of the quizzes included, but it's offset by a Xena:Warrior Princess reference in the "Greek Gods" rating. So it's a wash...There are pictures! They're cool!

If you are the right age and were subject to the right cultural influences growing up, this book will have you laughing out loud on every page. Even if you didn't, there is something here for everybody. Buy this book. The ratio of laughs to cost is very high!

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys irreverent intelligent discourse. Lore is a master wordsmith. Many of his references are obliquely directed at Gen Xers, but his satirical wit certainly has mass appeal. Never before has the mundane been so riotously funny.

I only hope more books are to follow.

First, the good news. You can mosey on over to Sjoberg's web site and get a pretty good idea of whether The Book of Ratings is a pretty good fit for you. If the web site occasionally sends you into uncontrollable laughter, trying to keep from laughing out loud at work where you could potentially get into trouble, then by all means this is definitely the book you've been waiting for. He has distilled years' worth of material into a "best-of" compilation worthy of a fine place on your night table, coffee table, or the back of your toilet. Sjoberg skewers practically every element of pop culture, leaving the reader occasionally breathless and wanting more. This, coupled with quizzes and cartoons from the web site, make for a thoroughly entertaining read.

Now, the bad news. If you have more than a passing acquaintance with the web site, much of the book isn't going to provide much in the way of surprise. For long-time fans, the twenty or so new categories is still worth the investment, and for newcomers it's a bargain.

brunching.com is one of the best sites ever, and now they have their own book! I got it the first day it came out, and it's really funny and witty and great. go buy it! it will make you roll around on the floor from uncontrollable laughter !