1 Did you hear the one about....?
No doubt about it,this is a great joke book.I have about 25 similar collection of jokes and this is as good as any of them .Why do I say this? Well, first of all, this book has over 300 pages and each page has an average of at least 20 jokes;therefore we get at least 6000 jokes.Sure, some are so old they have wiskers,others are reworked chestnuts;but, by and large the vast majority were new to me.I've read a lot of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain,so most of those from them were familiar,and even though forgotten,were enjoyable to read again.Then there were a lot of jokes from writers,politicans,humorists,and so forth who were new to me and I really enjoyed them.
One thing quite different with this book is that having been published by Penguin,it has many British jokes.
Another thing I liked was that the jokes are short,many are really one-liners.
One of my favorite kinds of jokes is the "insult joke", of which I have been making a collection.Even here ,there were a few new to me;an example of a common one is:
He's not playing with a full deck.
This book gives me a few new ones--
His aerial doesn't pick up all the channels.
He's all booster and no payload.
He's a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
He doesn't have all his dogs on the same leash.
He's all foam and no beer.
I'm afraid her receiver's off the hook.
He's got an IQ that's about room temperature.
Now here's a good one to use when someone is going on about how important somebody is."They say at the office he does the
work of two men:Laurel and Hardy."
That's just a sample of what you get.
I agree with the reviwer ahead of me when he disagreed with those who rated this book as not very good.This book has jokes from some of the best of the 20th Century,what are they looking for?
I suggest they read the Foreward where the will see;
"As part of our continuing commitment to quality,if you are in any way dissatisfied with your purchase of "The Penguin Dictionary of Jokes" please remember that our customer care department is there to help.They will remind you that not everyone has a fully developed sense of humour and therefore the fault may lie with you rather than with the book."
A great joke book;and I hope you enjoy it as much as I dd.
2 so unfair.
Those other reviews are obviously from people with no sense of comedy at all. Everyone knows that jokes are only funny if they are told well, which is why the other reviewer only get the ones they have heard before from well known comedians. I think the one about the joke in the forest is sublime. A talented comedian can make anything funny, and this book is a really useful tool for preparing a speech, as long as you have enough imagination to think of a good context and time it well.
3 Penguin Dictionary of...
At my place of business (a public library), where I call home for 40 hours every week, we just got in a new book. It's the type of book that makes people think that once read and selections memorized, they will instantly gain friends, be the center of attention at any party, and generally woo the opposite sex with their recently aquired witty candor while effortlessly sipping on a dry martini.
In reality though it's much more likely they'll just be that much more annoying than they ever were. They may in fact, after reading this book, feel so inclined to add you to their email list to randomly send you what they feel to be the most humourous morsels ever created. These future spammers need systematically drug out in the streets, hogtied, and made to watch their favorite book burned in a huge funeral pyre. OK. Maybe not. But still...
The book in question is the Penguin Dictionary of Jokes. The back of the book sports a one liner that just about sums up most of the inside: "If you tell a joke in a forest, but nobody laughs, is it a joke?"
Wow. I just about fell out of my seat on that one, didn't you?
To further illustrate the reason you'll only hear most of these jokes following bad after-dinner speeches I've selected a handful of winners to give you a sampling.
I have this terrible fear of heights. Whenever I fly, I ask the pilot to stay on the runway as long as possible.
Is my brother greedy? I tell you, if he was Chinese, he'd use three chopsticks!
Could you cut the pizza into just three pieces?
Why's that?
I could never eat six!
To save money our local hospital now gets its patients to make their own beds. When you check in, they give you a toolbox and some wood.
He came in like a lion and went out like a lamp.
Which end of the train should I get off? It doesn't matter, it stops at both ends!
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Diploma.
Diploma who?
Diploma is here to fix the sink.
4 Vintage
This book disproves the adage that the old ones are always the best. I imagine that this might be useful for trite after dinner speakers, insomniacs, or anyone looking to write sitcoms that don't even make it to pilot.
The funniest lines are those from celebrated comedians, and you will have heard them all before. The other so-called jokes would make your grandfather cringe.
Truly awful.
