Joanne Kimes

Christmas Sucks by Joanne Kimes
"Sucks" series

Quick humorous read with tips and tricks for surviving the holiday season: shopping, choosing the perfect gift, meals, office parties, in-laws, houseguests, weight gain, etc. This is not an anti-Christmas book. Just the opposite. It is more like having a conversation with a friend about the frustrations of the season and how we've forgotten the true meaning behind it all.

A little snippet in regard to watching reruns of 'Little House on the Prairie' in December: Back in those hard days...gifts actually meant something. There were no reindeer Chia pets to buy for every Tom, Dick, or Jebediah that crossed your path. Instead, Half-Pint sold her hair to buy Ma some fabric. Pa tended a neighbor's fields to get Manly some tobacco. Sure, they had stupid names, but they had generous hearts, and that's what Christmas was really about.… (more)

Reads like a stand-up comedy routine or a series of blog rants. Written as though meant to be read aloud, or as though she 'wrote' it by dictation and transcription. The tenor of the humor grows tiresome quickly and many of the jokes are throwaway references to current popular culture that are unlikely to hold up well. Then there are the many intentional puns. The best parts are text-box quotations by named but otherwise unidentified persons about their own holiday unpleasantries. Some self-help-y suggestions, but nothing of which nobody is not already aware, and many URLs that, like the humor, are probably going to age poorly.

By far, however, the greatest sin of this book is the truly appalling editing. She acknowledged her "talented editor, Meredith O'Hayre," but MS Word's spell- and grammar-checkers are as deserving as Ms. O'Hayre: which is to say, not very much, actually: "your your", " x and y just doesn't mix", "after the German's adopted". Apostrophe usage seems random. Exclamation points are very common indeed. I wish I were better able to stop reading bad books.… (more)