Customer Reviews

Happy Accidents: 12 Offbeat Essays Exploring the Irony in the Ordinary

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I just read Books Stink, an essay by David Boyne on his website ICBWB.com, and almost feel compelled to buy a Kindle just so I can download Happy Accidents to read more of his pithy observations on life, which is really saying something because I LOVE books (You need to read his eassy...). I love how they smell, how they look (especially in a library with lots of shelves loaded with books, no extraneous decorations or statuettes necessary), and how just the presence of books make me feel (we could analyze that one). But David's thought provoking sarcasm and alternative view points make me question this love affair with books. He's right - books kill trees, and I happen to like trees and think we raze too many of them....a moral dilemma. I'm not a big fan of electronic gadgets and the technology revolution, but in the name of sustainability and breaking the monopoly of corporate giants (my healthy disrespect for big dogs and excessive mainstream authority), I just might buy a Kindle to keep reading. :)
-- Kathleen T.

For those of you who miss the 'Farside' comic strips a new venue for such humor has arrived. This ebook is filled with twist, turns, and off the cliff humor to get you chuckling once again at our day to day lives in the fish bowl. As we swim through the sea of humanity sometimes we just have to stop and wade around to see what kind of fish comes by to get our attention. This writer got mine after reading his website and perusing his archives. Very humorous and if you can't laugh after reading the first two stories you are not human but a cyborg without a funny bone. Think Data from Star Trek. I'm going to follow up with other writings from this author and post my comments. Just like a good joke these stories will become timeless.

David Boyne showed up as a "suggestion" by my Kindle, I assume, because of my collection of books authored by humorous, witty, and intelligent writers. Taking advantage of my Prime membership, I borrowed Happy Accidents and rolled the dice. Not only did I relate to many of Boyne's experiences and observations, but I also found myself laughing out loud and highlighting passages. Give this book back at the end of the borrowing period? No way. This book needed to be owned. So I purchased it...along with Three Pound Universe and X Marks the Spot. I suspect this is only the beginning. I thank my Kindle for suggesting David Boyne to me. One could say it was a happy accident.

To the honestly imperfect, David Boyne:
I don't even know where to start, I just finished reading Happy Accidents and as I sit with a renewed sense of lucent appreciation for this moment I'm in, I can't get the imagine out of my head of you peeing. Peeing outside, peeing inside with your girlfriend's kid, peeing hands-free as your ex aims for you. May sound odd (well actually no, it shouldn't sound weird, you wrote it) but I'm a bit envious of such joyous memories of urinating. Being a female, peeing outside is a bitch. I drunkenly peed outside once my sophomore year of high school and fell over, ended up with a mean case of poison ivy on my vagina. My mom called me "itchy and scratchy" for almost two years post aforementioned poison puss situation. I deeply enjoyed your book. And I plan on reading more. I feel like I need an update on your dog, how's that majestic beast doing? Oh and please, keep writing. With all the BS in the world, your hilariously relatable truths of life are refreshing.
-Dana

I love a good laugh when I read and I have read some books I considered down right hilarious: Sweet Potato Queens, Me Talk Pretty Someday and The Planets, but this book just didn't tickle my funny bone at all. I was bored half way through it and I felt obligated to finish it since it was my first Kindle download. I finished it over a week ago and I can't remember anything about it, what I consider empty calorie reading, nothing really resonated with me. I preferred, "Life is a Verb," as a book that taught me some valuable life lessons and short stories that were memorable and stuck with me. I just didn't get this book and it felt like it was a contrived private story about him and his son, to which I was an outsider looking through a window at their world, it just didn't connect with me. Sorry.

Reading David Boyne's essays is like meandering through a pleasant day and then suddenly deciding to pay very close attention. Everyday occurrences become sweet, often very funny, and more meaningful the closer you look. Whether he's writing with tenderness about raising a child or hilariously describing how and why we dance and sing, you'll want to keep following Boyne through the happy accidents of his days.

David.

I read your book "Happy Accidents" today in less than an hour. Not entirely sure if it's because it was absurdly well written or if it's because it was only 100 pages (on the kindle).

It was "recommended" through my Amazon account because I have read and purchased books by David Sedaris and Augusten Buroughs. I thoroughly enjoyed the context of the book and it made me absolutely laugh out loud. I also enjoyed it because it made me stop and smile. And stare off into space and imagine things I normally wouldn't.

Your book lifted my spirit and warmed my soul page after page. I cannot wait to be engulfed in your other works of art.

As an inspiring writer, I would like to thank you for your genius of a brain. :)

Thank you.

It's obvious that San Diego writer David Boyne has been in some kind of accident, clonked over the head with a dose of hard reality and is now living in the streets of Astoria-or maybe a semi-nice walk-up in Queens-as the muse of Russell David Harper and Chip Kidd. To be clear: Boyne has hit the mark with Happy Accidents. In this first of a four book collection of essays covering objective-sometimes delicate-subjects, such as step-parenting and America's obsession with consumerism (see what I mean about the Russ Harper part?) Boyne takes the reader to that scary, gorgeous, hopeful/less place called What The Hell Were You Thinking? It's where he lives. From the sincere writing and down-to-earth tone it's clear he's been a resident for some time and knows his way around without a map, thank you. (Actually, Google maps shows this area to be somewhere in the vicinity of Flushing and Sinji's Yoga Studio in West Hollywood.)
In a similar narrative voice as Bob Powers who waved goodbye to American manners in Happy Cruelty Day and the harmonious blend of Tom Robbins in Wild Ducks Flying Backward, Boyne takes the reader through his no holds barred style of nothing is obvious-but everything is there. In the essay Hurry Up and Wait, Boyne opens by asking a set of seemingly unrelated questions : Why we suffer, why we tell stories, why we wait- then lays bare all the examples of what the reader will experience should they choose to come along for this imaginative ride (as if we have a choice after such titles like Black Teeth and Bubonic Plague.)


--Traci Foust, Author of Nowhere Near Normal a memoir of OCD

I borrowed this book through amazon prime. So glad I didn't pay for it. The author was compared to David Sedaris who is a favorite author of mine. I didn't see any resemblance. I couldn't even bare to finish this book I was so bored by it. I didn't laugh once and I read more than half the book. I don't get it...