Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters
With monthly web traffic in excess of 7.5million hits per month the Onion is one of the world’s leading satirical / alternative news publications. Due for release in February 2012, the Onion presents Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters – a collection of more than one hundred news stories that capture the heartbreak and hilarity of the human experience, with stories ranging from “Horrified Man Looks on Powerlessly As He Ruins Date” to “Girlfriend Changes Man Into Someone She’s Not Interested In”.
While I admit to previously having been aware of the Onion, up to now I have not been a regular reader. As a complete outsider then, Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters came to me as something of a pleasant surprise, both in terms of its quality of humour and in many respects, the deeper more subtle meanings woven into the news stories. One particularly standout story for me was “Best Man Has No Idea Of Why He Was Picked” – a report on how an office worker was picked as best man at the wedding of a colleague he hardly knows. Funny yes, shocking perhaps, but even more powerful for me was the underlying satire poking fun at the mundane and isolating nature of working life. Are we all really so shallow and so isolated from our fellow man or woman that this is what we have become? While there are doubtless those of you out there who would answer “no”, I for one certainly saw if not a small part of myself in this story, then a small part of the working world I inhabit. For me, this story really exemplifies the subtle nature of Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters which pushes it beyond the scope of other books of its ilk.
Of course this isn’t to say that Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters is without fault. While at times the satire can be very strong and very affecting, the quality is not consistent throughout. Given the theme of the book (i.e., relationships), the material can also at times feel rather repetitive. As with so many humour books such as this, Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters, is not a book to be read in a sitting or two – more it is a book to be dived into for a few pages, then returned to at a later point in time.
With an RRP in the UK of £8.99 Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters is probably placed just about right in terms of quality and quantity of content, or as I’d like to put it: “bang for your buck”. Ok, so given the nature of the book, perhaps “bang” is the wrong word, but I think you get my drift! While Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters is by no means the perfect humour book, I do consider it good value for money, and if nothing else, it will certainly prove a good conversation starter!
