★★★★★ It's the Far Side! What can I say?

The Complete Far Side, 1980–1994

Gary Larson

I got this collection eleven years ago (20-Oct-2011). Of course, I had seen most of the cartoons already. Some of the text material was interesting. I was surprised to learn that Gary Larson was sometimes difficult to work with -- he was a perfectionist, and would on occasion agonize forever about seemingly trivial details of his cartoons. They were not simply random thoughts dashed off in a moment as he pretends.

Now, of course, The Far Side is not to everyone's taste. In The Complete Bloom County: 1980 - 1989 Berkeley Breathed quotes a letter one of his newspaper distributors got, asking them to cancel Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and The Far Side. I immediately wanted to know what other comics this woman hated!

I am sorry to report, given the occasion of this very important publication, that many of the scenes depicted in this book are actually false.

-- Steve Martin, Foreword to The Complete Far Side, Volume 1, by Gary Larson

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★★★★☆ Matrimonial predators

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★★★★☆ Cliché, manipulative, but still surprisingly entertaining

Silent Scream Angela Marson I have noticed that many Goodreads reviewers are subtractors. What I mean by that is that they appear to evaluate books (or at least review them) by listing all the faults they can find, and then giving a low rating to those works that have lots of faults. In the alternative, adder, strategy, one looks for the good things in a book and gives a high score to a book that has lots of good stuff. I myself am mostly an adder (although I make no claim to absolute strategic purity). I mention this because Angela Marsons 's Silent Scream has serious faults. I'm going to mention a couple of them, but I nevertheless give it a four-star rating. First, you should know (this is not a fault, but just something you should know going in), that Silent Scream is emotionally heavy. It concerns institutionalized children (mostly girls) who are abused in almost every awful way you can imagine. What's more, protagonist Kim Stone is herself a survivor ...

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★★★★★ Tactical Assault Clown

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