Book Review | Parsnips, Buttered: How to baffle, bamboozle and boycott your way through modern life – Joe Lycett

Title: Parsnips, Buttered: How to baffle, bamboozle and boycott your way through modern life
Author: Joe Lycett
Publication date: 24th October 2017
My rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads rating: 4.17
Pages: 304
Genre: Non Fiction, Comedy

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I personally purchased a copy of this book. All views are my own and are not influenced in any way.

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Synopses:

Dear Reader,

Life is hard. We are a bombarded generation: Facebook, billboards, Twitter, Instagram, taxes, newspapers, watches monitoring our sleep, apps that read our pulse, terrorism. There’s such an onslaught to the senses these days it’s a marvel any of us manage to get out of bed. I love bed.

While we are overwhelmed and confused by the miasmic cloud of information, there are those that seek to take advantage: there are parking fines, hate Tweets, Nigerian email scams and Christmas newsletters from old school friends about their ugly kids. And just as we’re getting round to doing something about it, we’re distracted again.

I, Joe Lycett, comedian, wordsmith, and professional complainer, am here to help. During my short life of doing largely nothing I’ve discovered solutions to many of life’s problems, which I impart to you, dear Reader. Containing a centurion of complaint letters to unsuspecting celebrities, companies and anyone brave enough to clog up my phone, as well as illustrations, one-liners , jokes and life hacks, this little gem offers you a collection of tips and advice* for all manner of modern woe. By the time you have finished reading this book you will have learned how to:

– Reverse a parking fine 
– Manipulate the tabloid press 
– Navigate social media 
– Respond to hate mail 
– Out-weird internet trolls 
– Contest a so-called ripe avocado 
– Send the perfect Christmas newsletter 
– Defeat ISIS 
– Take down multi-national companies 
AND MUCH, MUCH MORE! 

Joe Lycett x

* If you are looking for guidance with taxes, quitting smoking, moving house, love, divorce, education, healthcare or anything actually important may I recommend speaking to friends or family members and not consulting a book by a comedian who eats halloumi at least twice a day. 

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Overall opinion of the book:

I absolutely LOVED this book, Joe Lycett never fails to make me laugh. I listened to the audiobook, which Joe narrated himself. He does an outstanding job and if you’re deciding whether to read or listen to the book, I’d definitely recommend listening to it!

If you’re not familiar with Joe Lycett, he’s a British Comedian and renowned internet troll. His comedy mainly focuses around trolling people via Social Media, email and just generally being an irritating human being. His humour is brilliant and he’s my favourite comedian at the moment, there’s not really any other comedian I’ve seen do anything similar. You may have seen Joe on 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, The Big Fat Quiz of Everything and Live At The Apollo. He also has a new show on Channel 4 called, Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back, where he helps people that have been scammed or ripped off by companies – it’s great! If you’ve not seen any of his live stand up before, I’d encourage you to watch some on YouTube, you’ll be cry laughing by the end of it!

Parsnips, Buttered focuses on a variety of different topics, such as sexuality, LGBT rights, terrorism, parking fines, scammers, winding up local councils and Grindr. Each chapter begins with a short few lined joke, some of which are corny but in the best way. Joe’s comedic timing is second to none and I love his ability to deliver the jokes so well in the audiobook. His often sarcastic voice fits the tone of the book perfectly and it’s perfect for the connect he does.

Although this is a book deep rooted in comedy, Joe discusses some heavy and controversial topics. He doesn’t shy away from calling others out for their questionable stances on things. There are definitely overtones of political beliefs in some of the chapters, which I think is so important. It’s great that he’s so open about his own sexuality and what he stands for. Often people in the limelight will shy away from this and centre their humour around something else, but Joe tackles this head on.

Parsnips, Buttered could easily have been twice the length and I wouldn’t have got bored. The only tiny niggle I had with it was that some of the jokes he makes in the book I’ve heard him say before. Bearing in mind that this book was written in 2016 and I only discovered his work in 2018 this is understandable. I think I’ve watched every sketch of his that I could have, so naturally there would have been crossovers in the jokes he uses. That’s not anything against the book however, I can listen to his sketches and jokes multiple times and still find them hilarious.

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Final Thoughts:

I would 100% recommend this book, especially the audiobook. If you love sarcastic humour based on trolling and real life scenarios, this is the book for you. The comedic timing is perfect I have have no doubt that this will make you laugh out loud on many occasions. I’ll give you a quick tip though, you may get some funny looks on public transport like I did. This was one of the funnies books I’ve read in a long time and I cannot recommend it enough!

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If you’d like to purchase this book, you can do so here:

Amazon

Audible

Book Depository

Waterstones

WHSmith

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Credit to:

Book cover and synopses