Life's Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore (Paperback)

by Ian Urbina (Author)
Key Phrases: cell phone talkers, New York, Weapons of the Weak, Rage Against the Machine (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

“A gold mine of ideas . . . to help us wage personal and quiet vengeance against those who annoy us.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel For some of us, it’s the automated voice that answers the phone when we’d rather talk to a real person. For others, it’s the fact that Starbucks insists on calling its smallest-sized coffee “tall.” Each of us finds some aspect of everyday life to be particularly maddening, and we often long to lash out at these stubborn irritants of modern life.
In Life’s Little Annoyances, Ian Urbina chronicles the lengths to which some people will go when they have endured their pet peeves long enough and are not going to take it anymore. It is a compen-dium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying.
A celebration of the endless variety of passive-aggressive behavior, Life’s Little Annoyances revels in the tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cell-phone talkers, spammers, and others against whom we feel powerless—until now.

About the Author

Ian Urbina is a reporter for The New York Times and has degrees in
history from Georgetown and the University of Chicago. His writings, which range from domestic and foreign policy to commentary on everyday life, have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and Harper’s. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, son, stepdaughter, and a nuisance of a dog.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Times Books (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805083030
• ISBN-13: 978-0805083033
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #811,020 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cute book, nice for light reading, October 2, 2007

By	" Anti Microchip " "Jesus Christ can ... (Desolation America) - See all my reviews

This book simply put is about people who just plainly get fed up with the non-sense most of us ignore. It is full of short stories in just about every catagory of annoyance you can imagine. Read the short story of the woman who was appauled at dog owners who wouldn't pick up after their dogs in the neighorhood park; she decided to put little flags in every pile of poo, and the local park ended up looking like a monument to the fourth of July. Meet the man who got so tired of pushy salesman that he kept his old expired credit card, told the pushy salesman to go away three times, and finally pretended to be interested in buying thousands of dollars worth of mechandise only to give him an expired credit card. In the end he walked out of the store hours later without purchasing a single item. These are only two of the stories, and probably the two least entertaining stories in the entire book. My wife has an affinity for picking up little books such as these. I consider such an item mandatory bathroom reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not much New Here, October 7, 2008

By	Earl A. Myers, Jr. - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The ideas presented are not particularly novel or practical. They provide only slight amusement, and for real gotcha moments, they are pale and relatively insignificant. Not one of the passive-agressive paybacks could be recalled by this reader after having read all the stories. My question from the front cover review by USA Today, what did it find that was so "screamingly funny"?