Review: Mildly Amusing but Way Overpriced
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 18, 2014
Having suffered through a number of truly wretched joke books on Amazon, I was expecting the worst from a joke book written by someone who calls himself the "Humor King."  To my surprise, "Top 70 Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes" is funnier than a number of joke books I've read here. Unfortunately, the biggest joke may be on readers who pay $2.99 for this very slight humor collection.The book's title is accurate in one respect: it contains 70 narrative jokes (most one-paragraph) on various topics such as the workplace, school, and, of course, love. Of these jokes, I found about one-quarter to be at least mildly amusing. However, the title is not accurate in another respect: none of the jokes, many of which have been around for a long, long time, are what I would consider "laugh out loud" funny.The book's humor level isn't helped by some rather stilted language, as some of the sentences are phrased so oddly that, instead of reacting to the punch line, I was trying to figure out what the author meant when he wrote the joke in the first place. Nor is the book's humor helped by a two-page faux-scholarly introduction about why laughter is such a great form of stress relief or by topic introductions that contain such gems as "School is a nice place to develop a person's sense of humor at a young age." I do have to give the book credit for avoiding toilet humor and cruel racist, sexist, or similar types of humor. And, for those who are concerned about such things, although a few jokes are mildly risqué, the book as a whole is no worse than PG rated.I received this book for free as a promotion, and, as a free book, I would rate it at three stars. However, the promotion is over, and the Humor King has now hit readers with a 71st joke. Anyone wanting this book as of the date of this review has to pay  an exorbitant price of $2.99 to get a book generously billed at 28 pages that contains a fair amount of padding. That's simply not funny, especially when you consider how many good full length humor books are available on Amazon for $2.99 or less. I respect the right of any author to get compensated for his efforts, but I simply can't recommend  paying a (Humor) King's ransom for a book of awkwardly written jokes, only about 20-25 of which are actually funny.