The Devious Book for Cats: A Parody
Fluffy & Bonkers (with Joe Garden, Janet Ginsberg, Chris Pauls, Anita Serwacki, and Scott Sherman)
Villard
Fiction, Humor
****+
DESCRIPTION: In modern times, it's all too easy to lose touch with one's own inner catness. We take our meals and our people for granted. We fail to appreciate the many moods of a nap. We hardly even stare anymore. When's the last time we played a proper game of shelf swat, anyway? Fluffy and Bonkers offer a guidebook for reclaiming our birthright, the profoundly simple joys of being Nature's perfect creation: a cat.
REVIEW: This parody succeeds by never overstaying its welcome, offering many short articles instead of a few long, drawn-out ones. From the horror stories of the Suck Monster and the Crazy Cat Lady to the rules of Shelf Swat, from basic gift giving to the history of the felinism movement, "Fluffy" and "Bonkers" tell all. The authors, known collectively as "Action 5," are professional comedy writers, contributing to The Onion (among other things); the professionalism shows, as they manage to find plenty of humorous topics and delivery methods. (I've read more than enough half-baked attempts that keep harping on the same not-funny premise to appreciate that.) They also strike a nice balance on the tone, acknowledging the independent feline nature without belittling pet owners or indoor cat-keeping. A fun, lighthearted book that any cat-lover should be able to appreciate.
You might also enjoy:
Why Cats Paint (Heather Busch and Burton Silver, Fiction - A straight-faced parody of modern art profiling feline artists)
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (T. S. Eliot, Poetry - The whimsical verses that inspired the musical "Cats")
Cats, Cats, Cats: A Collection of Great Cat Cartoons (S. Gross, editor, Comics - Cartoons about cats)
CATMOPOLITAN (Ilene Hochberg, Fiction - A feline parody of modern glamour magazines)
Good Owners, Great Cats (Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson, Nonfiction - How to live with a companion cat)
The Cat Made Me Buy It! books (Alice L. Muncaster and Ellen Yanow, Nonfiction - Cats in advertizing art)
The Cat Who Couldn't See in the Dark (Howard Padwee, D.V.M. and Valerie Moolman, Nonfiction - A veterinarian recalls feline patients and their owners)
The Enchanted Cat (John Richard Stephens, Nonfiction - Prose and poetry celebrating cats in literature)
The Cat Manual (Michael Ray Taylor, Fiction - A rare translation of the secret manual all cats receive on entering adulthood)
Return to Top of Page - Return to Book Review List
Return to Brightdreamer Books Home
Brightdreamer Books is created and maintained by TBW, a.k.a. "Brightdreamer."
E-mail: tbweber AT comcast DOT net. (Remove spaces, replace AT with "@" and DOT with "." - please put "Brightdreamer Books" in the subject line, or your e-mail may be deleted as
spam! Thank you!