Aussie Optimism Mark Of Popular New Book For Christmas
There’s a new book that’s bound to be a popular book for Christmas stockings this year. But there’s more to this book than meets the eye.
Funny English Errors and Insights: Illustrated is a popular new book of unconscious humour published by the National Library of Australia and compiled by Troy Simpson.
The book, which even before its official launch had attracted some 50,000 Facebook Fans, is a collection of 301 accidentally humorous uses and misuses of written English, including hilarious student bloopers, unfortunate media misprints, and funny signs and notices.
Funny English is part of a persistently bestselling genre. Over many decades, including in the Depression years of the 1920s and 1930s, “Blooper books” have sold literally millions of copies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, and have topped the bestseller lists, including the famous New York Times bestseller list.
But there is something very Australian about this new compilation by Troy Simpson. The book includes 30 photographs from the National Library’s pictures collections that cleverly convey the humour in some of the more subtle English errors.
And there are quotes in Funny English that refer to prominent Australians, such as Don Bradman, who, according to one newspaper report, looked nervous during the first few “minuets” of his innings; Kerry Packer, the newspaper “magnet” that attracted players from all over the world; and a former Chief Justice of New South Wales who, according to an unfortunate misprint, “adjourned the case for a wee”.
But the Aussieness in Funny English runs deeper than the Australian photographs and references to famous Australians. Simpson’s selection of bloopers sometimes has a levelling effect, so often a mark of Australian humour and Australian humour books. And there is also optimism, another trait of Australian humour, that pervades Funny English.
This optimism can be best seen in the book’s extracts from unconsciously funny student exam answers. Here, we are given access to some kind of alternative world — a deliberately rose-coloured world where “civil wars” are wars where each side is nice to each other; where armies do not “massacre” one another, but rather “manicure” them; and where there are no thieves, but only “people who borrow your things for too long.”
At Christmas, we can all sometimes do with a good dose of optimism and old-fashioned family-friendly humour.
Funny English Errors and Insights: Illustrated (ISBN 9780642277138) retails for $14.95 and is available from all good bookstores. As at 12 October 2010, Funny English was the top pre-order in humour at Borders and one of the distributor's top-10 bestsellers across all categories. Order your copy of Funny English from Borders here.