Hi Alina! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and review my work! I appreciate your candor, and some of your review gave me a good chuckle. I'm not entirely certain what literary merit one might look for in a book of puns, but I'm sure you're right that these books don't have any. I mean, Shakespeare they are not, am I right? Thankfully, I don't think the genre of pun collections is generally dissected and held up against high-brow (or even low-brow) literature. I mean, how pretentious would that be?
I really can't take all the credit/blame for the remaining 400+ jokes in the collection. Largely, my function was more editor and curator than "writer" in the strictest sense. The vast majority of the jokes were collected from a wide variety of public domain sources. I fine-tuned and adapted many of them to work a little better, and actually did write a handful myself. I'll be honest, though: Even I don't find all of them funny—but, then again, not all 50 jokes in The Last of Us were funny either (Ellie and Riley even said so). Mostly my goal was to remain consistent with the overall tone of the existing jokes as I expanded on the original content. Basic wordplay, nothing too raunchy but not sparkling clean either, and the more groan-worthy the better. In truth, your assessment makes me feel like I largely succeeded, especially in the last part.
Regarding formatting, that is something you and I can completely agree on. Were the books my own unique creation, I'd have probably gone with a nice Garamond, some pleasant-looking dividing lines between jokes, and certainly cream-colored paper instead of the blinding stark white. But, as I mentioned in the foreword, my first and foremost goal in creating these replicas was to remain accurate to the source material. I can say that the font, page color, layout, jokes-per-page, even margins... all are virtually identical to what is seen on-screen. But who knows, maybe Will Livingston started out as a cheap, self-pubbed author. I know I did, so I can't really blame the guy.
In any even, I really did appreciate reading your honest review. Critical reviews are always the most helpful when it comes to learning what to do/not to do in the future. Should I ever go on to write a joke book of my own where I have complete creative control, I will definitely keep your input in mind. All the best.
I really can't take all the credit/blame for the remaining 400+ jokes in the collection. Largely, my function was more editor and curator than "writer" in the strictest sense. The vast majority of the jokes were collected from a wide variety of public domain sources. I fine-tuned and adapted many of them to work a little better, and actually did write a handful myself. I'll be honest, though: Even I don't find all of them funny—but, then again, not all 50 jokes in The Last of Us were funny either (Ellie and Riley even said so). Mostly my goal was to remain consistent with the overall tone of the existing jokes as I expanded on the original content. Basic wordplay, nothing too raunchy but not sparkling clean either, and the more groan-worthy the better. In truth, your assessment makes me feel like I largely succeeded, especially in the last part.
Regarding formatting, that is something you and I can completely agree on. Were the books my own unique creation, I'd have probably gone with a nice Garamond, some pleasant-looking dividing lines between jokes, and certainly cream-colored paper instead of the blinding stark white. But, as I mentioned in the foreword, my first and foremost goal in creating these replicas was to remain accurate to the source material. I can say that the font, page color, layout, jokes-per-page, even margins... all are virtually identical to what is seen on-screen. But who knows, maybe Will Livingston started out as a cheap, self-pubbed author. I know I did, so I can't really blame the guy.
In any even, I really did appreciate reading your honest review. Critical reviews are always the most helpful when it comes to learning what to do/not to do in the future. Should I ever go on to write a joke book of my own where I have complete creative control, I will definitely keep your input in mind. All the best.