47. The Paperback Conspiracy by various National Lampoon writers

Well from the best book of the year to the worst (also possibly on the all-time worst list as well).  This was a gift from a friend who can't help buying stuff at this cool comic store.  I didn't get what it was until I started reading it.  It's basically a collection of National Lampoon articles from I guess the magazine.  It's a bummer because my aunt's long-time boyfriend when I was an adolescent and in college who was a very cool funny guy was a writer for the National Lampoon I guess around the time this book was published (1974) though maybe quite a lot later.  He doesn't have anything in this one in any case, but if what is written here is indicative of the Lampoon that he was writing or then I have to notch down my respect.

There are a few very mildly funny pieces (or parts of pieces) but mostly this is deeply unfunny.  I recognize that humour is hard, probably the hardest kind of writing to craft.  So I like to give some leeway.  The problem here is not only is not funny, but much of it is mean-spirited with sprinkles of misogyny and centrist-establishment mocking of radical politics.  It just all feels easy and lazy and smug, the humour of the privileged.  There is one writer who had some cleverness in his turn of phrase and ideas, Henry Beard, but the rest was an absolute chore to get through and I almost gave up several times.  I have been reading it for a few months and only finished the last few stories today.  Hey, it gets me closer to 50 books.