The Humour Club discussion

For August/September, our group read will be the winner of our May Elevator Pitch Goodreads author poll:


co-written by our own Jilly Gagnon.

I just ordered my copy. Looking forward to reading it, Jilly!

Joel wrote: "I just ordered my copy. Looking forward to reading it, Jilly!"

Meet you by the water cooler. You gotta hear the latest about Phil in marketing.

I've been reading mine for a couple of weeks now. I can't seem to make it to an ending yet. Wonder if that is symbolic of my life somehow.

Melki wrote: "Joel wrote: "I just ordered my copy. Looking forward to reading it, Jilly!"

Meet you by the water cooler. You gotta hear the latest about Phil in marketing."

You notice how there always seems to be a Phil in marketing?

My copy just arrived. I don't know if I'll be able to hold out 'til August. Will power, Joel...Will power...

Joel wrote: "My copy just arrived. I don't know if I'll be able to hold out 'til August. Will power, Joel...Will power..."

Aw, go ahead and start it. We don't mind.

Once again, while I usually don't try to talk people into joining a group read, I do encourage folks to participate in this one. Reasons should be obvious.

It being very nearly August - on the cusp, as it were - who's in on this unique group read?

Me, me, me!

Well, one of me, anyway.

I broke the rules on this one and have already been reading it. Which I think is fine, really. I'm sure I'll still be reading in August, September and October. Which is NOT saying anything bad about the book -- I'm loving it. I think it is saying something about me having a tendency to make bad decisions. And only those of you who read the book will know what I mean.

I've read page 1 of my copy. If I want to continue reading it in sequence I'll turn to page 2. To cut to the chase, I can turn to the last page where the detective will be telling the whole office how he figured out who dunnit.

I'm curious - who's reading this like a choose your own, vs. just plowing straight through?

When I read this one last year, I "played" with the book, following each scenario through to the end. I plan to have another go-round soon.

Since Jilly is a group member, I was thinking we should take this opportunity to ask her some questions. I'm wondering if she has a favorite adventure from the book?

I've been on vacation, so I just got my copy yesterday. I am all for supporting the authors here on Humour Club. However, I suspect this may not be the book for me. The swearing and wallowing in misery is not my kind of book. I've done 3 choices and wonder if it's worth me trying other endings. I tend to strictly adhere to the "rules" of the choose-your-own books, but does anyone suggest, if I read straight through?

I'm reading it straight through, but only because I confuse easily.

The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books were just a little after my time, so I enjoyed flipping back and forth in this one.

My husband said he would read it, if I left it in the bathroom. Which brings me to the the question that Humour Club members may be able to answer: Why do men need to read in the bathroom?

It's one of the few occasions when we get a chance to multi-task without being criticised.

And move our lips.

Apologies for barging in but has anyone read yesterday's article in the Daily Mail by their TV critic, Chistopher Stevens, lamenting the dearth of good situation comedy these days after the demise of those well known classics like 'Dad's Army', 'Are you Being Served', 'After Henry' etc, etc. He makes the point that the people who run the BBC don't know what makes ordinary people laugh, because most of them are Oxbridge graduates who have existed all their lives in a snob's paradise. All they seem to be interested in are trying out re-makes.
Regards Mike Wilton (michaelwilton.co.uk)

Not read the Daily Mail today (I tried to avoid it at all costs), but I think that's a bit of a sweeping statement from Christopher Stevens. True, the recent remakes of "Are you Being Served?" and "Porridge" were bloody awful, but we seem to have shifted away from sitcoms. There is good humour on the box, but it tends to be in stand-up, improv or quiz shows (like QI). It seems that sitcoms are fading away, like the Two Ronnies style variety shows.

It's a common theme with the Daily Mail - bash the establishment and complain that nothing is as good as it used to be. It's the sort of sentiment that appeals to its readership.

Will wrote: "Not read the Daily Mail today (I tried to avoid it at all costs), but I think that's a bit of a sweeping statement from Christopher Stevens. True, the recent remakes of "Are you Being Served?" and ..."

You may well be right there Will, but we still enjoy the old comedy slots - long may they continue.

On Last Tango in Halifax the older man tried to hide the fact that the woman he was marrying read the Daily Mail. When his daughter found how she couldn't believe he was going to marry her anyway. I have to assume the Daily Mail is equivalent to Fox News here. I can't be friends with people who believe what they hear on Fox News.

I love all the British comedies and detective shows. I only see what is on Netflix, so I don't know what is current. British shows seem more sophisticated than most American ones. In the US all media is targeting the 85% of the population with the IQs of morons. (sad but true) We do have a few gems though.

When we think of the classic sitcoms, we tend to put on rose coloured glasses and remember the good ones - Porridge, Fawlty Towers, Open all Hours, Blackadder. We usually don't recall the ones that made us cringe - Terry and June, Love Thy Neighbour, Mind your Language.

It's probably no different from now. We have some good comedy which will stand the test of time and some dross which we won't remember for any of the right reasons.

I don't subscribe to the "golden age" theory. Things only seem to be fantastic in the good old days because we usually only remember the good bits.

I love IT Crowd. That is a classic. I just watched Cuckoo, and it is fun. Happyish is one of my favorites. (You can't top an underwear shit stain that is the image of Jesus.) I like Ricky Gervais and his team (Merchant and the Idiot). The list goes on and on.

There seems to be a small pool of actors and they appear in many shows. I like that.

When you speak of the old days I think of The Young Ones and Benny Hill. Benny Hill was disgusting! Many years ago I had Fawlty Towers parties. As a group we would binge watch it on VHS. Hilarious show.

No one does detective fiction like the Brits. That could be because detectives were hatched in Britain as it was the first country to have a police force and then detectives. I even re-watch a lot of those shows.

Getting back to Choosing Your Own Misery, I was at first put off by second person, given that I had no empathy for the main character, who is me, apparently :-). But I dove in, and while I enjoyed the general comic writing, I suspect that interactive is not for me. I miss character arc and intricate plot. Some other notes: I have it on Kindle, so I can't just read through, I have to pick choices. There were some loops, so I got to experience both choices in those cases. And I went back a few times to explore other paths, and I'm glad I did; there were some very surprising outcomes (home surgery, anyone?) a few branches down the road. I reached several endings (i.e. "THE END"). Once, when I tried to go back from there, I got a stern warning not to try to explore all of the miseries, that I would be unable to deal with all the unhappiness! It was humorous and irreverent, and had some interesting characters. Glad I dove in, for my first interactive fiction.

I still haven't tackled this, but you're making me want to! I've never done a "choose your own" either--definitely after my time.

An update, my husband is a big fan of The Onion and has been reading this, as stated above, in the bathroom. I thought it appropriate to give him a UPS bookmark I had, which I thought went well with the office theme.

I read Choose Your Own Misery last year and found it to be an interesting presentation, a real labyrinth, with a lot of humorous truisms in it.

Saw you guys were reading this, so thought I'd join in. Interactive sounds fun. I'm a big comedy fan and, bizarrely, am also prone to reading books about horrible offices (used to work in a pretty terrible one...)! So, the author of Choose Your Own Misery is definitely catering to my specific tastes!! Looking forward to seeing what everyone else thinks of it by the end of the month. I also just finished a re-read of another office-based comedy. If anyone wants to try both, here's the cover...

(Just beware: this one's dark with swearing and a bit of sex, but very very funny as well!)