A book I selected at The Book Thing in Baltimore for the purposes of giving it away at the upcoming Kensington Day of the Book with my BCinDC pals.

I picked this up for inclusion in an upcoming book giveaway but thought it looked like a quick and entertaining read. It was. I always enjoy seeing stuff on dumb laws, so I found it interesting that someone would come to the US from the UK specifically to break a bunch of dumb laws. He made a valiant effort, although it is a good thing he only had to *hunt for* whales in Utah -- since he chose the Jordanelle Reservoir, which is a man-made lake to do it in, his chances of actually finding one were slimmer than ever. I enjoyed some of the people he met along the way and was amused at the successes and failures and how boring both could be. I was continually reminded how young he was, though, by the fact that he seemed to be constantly drunk. But I guess he needed something to keep him going on his weird quest.

The book reminded me a little bit of one of Tony Hawkes's books (mostly Round Ireland with a Fridge), but not quite as funny. I did enjoy getting to see some parts of the country I am familiar with through foreign eyes, though, and still cannot believe he spent 4 whole days in Tooele but considered Saltair to be the place to do his site-seeing in Salt Lake.

"A book is a mysterious object, I said, and once it floats out into the world, anything can happen. All kinds of mischief can be caused, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. For better or worse, it's completely out of your control." -- Paul Auster

This book was intended for one of the local book festivals, but then I noticed it was on a friend's wishlist. So it is now bound for exotic Kathmandu instead.

Thank you, 6 of 8, this arrived safely yesterday. What a pleasant surprise, I'm thrilled! It looks like a lot of fun, and it's always good to have a light book to intersperse with the heavier reading! I'll updated when I've read it, which will probably be soon!

Finished this book a few days ago; mixed thoughts on this one. It was a book I was really looking forward to reading, but I found it slower going than I thought. I'm not sure if it's because it wasn't that well written, or a case where not that much actually happens and it feels like the author is stretching things out to make it funnier/longer than it actually is. It did pick up in the middle, and sort of slowed at the end again. And there were bits that were really funny, like when their Cornish flag is mistaken for gang insignia. :)
Also, for some of the cracks Europeans make about their "superior/ancient culture" and comment on dumb stuff Americans do, this is the sort of antithesis to that, and really, these guys are pretty annoying and stupid a lot of the time, I'm amazed they don't get into more (real) trouble.
One thing I enjoyed a lot was all the facts included about random and odd places in the US, the sort of stuff that you might never hear about, especially from cities and towns that are not so famous and I will probably never visit. I found a lot of the historical details he includes fascinating. And I like small towns.
And Bateman is not a very nice person sometimes.

Reserved for the Wishlist Tag Game; can't remember at the moment who I tagged, must go look it up where I made a note of it.

Posted this out today for the wishlist tag game; I'd tagged with it about two months ago: it took me a while, but I finally finished it and now it's on its way. Happy travels, little book!

Arrived a couple of days ago - thank you lils74, and for the pretty card too!

2 Dumb Guys & 1 Pointless Road Trip...

The writing wasn't very funny and none of the laws were broken in a particularly creative way. It went on for too long and there was no overal arc to the story catching you by surprise like Danny Wallace's books sometimes do.

Not sure if the main characters came off as very likeable, but some of the locals were quite interesting. I didn't care for the casual animal cruelty and the roadkill game either, I can't imagine who would find that funny.

An interesting read that could have been better executed, but occasionally amusing.

Taking to the Filmhouse Cafe this evening if I get the chance to top up the shelf there!