Curses! Broiled Again! [Paperback]

Jan Harold Brunvand (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 1990

From the master folklorist and sly wit, Jan Brunvand, comes a collection of all-new urban legends.

Did your cousin's wife's dentist's daughter go to the tanning parlor once too often and had her insides cooked? Has your husband's brother's nephew teacher try to make a dead rabbit look alive? If so, you've heard—or you yourself may have told—two of the seventy-plus legends in this collection.

Urban legends are "those bizarre but believable stories about batter-fried rats, spiders in hairdos, Cabbage Patch dolls that get funerals, and the like that pass by word of mouth as being the gospel truth." But of course, though often told as having happened to a FOAF (friend of a friend), they aren't true. Included in this collection are legends about sex, horror, cars, business, and academia. Among them are "The Bible Student's Exam," "The Pregnant Shoplifter," "The Ice Cream Cone Caper," "Don't Mess with Texas," and "Mrs. Fields' Cookie Recipe."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Syndicated columnist Brunvand here presents a collection of columns about legends that haunt the public consciousness but have little or no basis in fact, including tales of poisonous snakes in amusement parks, airline pilots locked out of their flight cabins and AIDS Mary, who intentionally spreads disease. PW found that "much of the material is ho-hum and all too familiar." Illustrated.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Jan Harold Brunvand lives in Salt Lake City, where he is professor emeritus at the University of Utah. He is the author of numerous books, including The Vanishing Hitchhiker; The Choking Doberman; The Baby Train; Too Good to Be True; and Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (August 17, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393307115
• ISBN-13: 978-0393307115
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,544,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book debunking popular urban legends, May 26, 1999

By 

Jan Bednarczuk (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Curses! Broiled Again! (Paperback)

It appears that many of those who have reviewed this book misunderstood its purpose. It is not a "scary story" book; rather, it is a compilation of common urban legends and myths, complete with debunkings.

I thought this book was vastly interesting and entertaining. If you're interested in whether some of the stories you've heard are true or not, or in how urban legends get altered as time goes on, you should definitely give it a read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a fun book to read, August 7, 2003

By 

Joe Sherry (Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Curses! Broiled Again! (Paperback)

Everyone has heard at least one of the legends presented in this book. While I hadn't heard of many of them, there were a couple that were familiar to me. The legend that was the most familiar to me was the one that states that if you are in college and your roommate commits suicide you will get an automatic 4.0 Grade Point Average for the year. There were others that I heard as jokes, and some that were presented as real.

Jan Brunvand is a columnist who specializes in urban legends. He has put together a collection of legends in this book and he has organized them into several subject headings: Horrors, Automobile Legends, Animal Legends, Other Legends of Accidents and Mishaps, Sex and Scandal Legends, Business/Professional/and Government Legends, and Academic Legends. By far, my favorite section of the book was the one with the academic legends. I don't know if it was because I am still close enough in age to the college years that I still appreciate some of the legends and myths, but I found those to be the most entertaining.

The format of each essay is that Brunvand identifies the legend, tells the main story of the legend, and then tries to trace the origins of the legend. Sometimes we find out that there is a true life story behind the legend, and it just got twisted in the retelling, and other times we simply learn that nothing like that ever happened, even though it feels like it could have. Naturally, some legends are more interesting than others. As a whole, this was a very interesting book and it exposed me to some urban legends that I'm sure to recognize when I hear them. This book is worth reading.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More classic Urban Legends from the master!, December 11, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Curses! Broiled Again! (Paperback)

More of the real Hall of Famers: The Mrs. Fields Cookie Recipe, The Unstealable Car, AIDS Mary, etc. Excellent (as usual) in its explanation of variants, history(ies), adaptation to/from literature