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Title: Cynic's Dictionary by Aubrey Dillon-Malone ISBN: 0-8092-2546-8 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Definitions for the cynical at heart
Comment: Does anyone take EVERYTHING at face value? Certainly many of the great wits of history didn't. And their words on everything (religion, sex, history, literature) are compiled neatly by subject, for reference by the incurably cynical (or people with GREAT senses of humor).
Editor Aubrey Dillon-Malone compiles quotes from everyone from Oscar Wilde to George Bernard Shaw, Ian Fleming to Zsa Zsa Gabor. The country is "a kind of rural grave." Democracy is "a system in which you say what you like and do what you're told." A gourmet is "a glutton with brains." And so on, and so forth, from "ability" to "zoo."
Dillon-Malone does a pretty fair job of collecting other people's cynical quotes and organizing them into the "Cynic's Dictionary." This thick little book is a bit like Ambrose Bierce's classic "Devil's Dictionary," only less biting. Plenty of famous wits like George Bernard Shaw (who pops up frequently), Oscar Wilde (ditto), and Shakespeare, and Dillon-Malone knows just where to put them.
Some of the quotes, however, aren't as cynical or witty as Dillon-Malone would clearly like them to be. And at times it feels like he is stretching his material thin. He cobbles together quotes from just about everywhere; for example, Calvin Klein's line on makeup ("what it takes to look natural") is not witty, merely dumb. But he isn't snobby about garnering his nuggets of wit.
"The Cynic's Dictionary" is an amusing light read with an acidic edge. Just don't expect anything that hasn't been said before, and was funniest the first time.
Rating: 4
Summary: Close - but no cigar
Comment: This is a very enjoyable (witty and fun) collection and in a way I agree with all of the reviewers: It's good but could be better. (Bayan's book is better) And in that way, it can be annoying at times. Some of his "definitions" are absolutely hilarious but others are somewhat lame.
It's one of those books that you tend to wish you had written (compiled) yourself and done a better job of searching and editing. But still, I get a kick out of it and am glad I have it for "reference". Cynics and curmudgeons who still have a few discretionary dollars to spend might want to add this volume to their "I know what's REALLY going on/underneath the spin" collection. NOTE TO WRITERS: this book will challenge you to come up with your own, better (obviously) definitions...
Rating: 2
Summary: Not bad, but there's a better one out there
Comment: This "Cynnic's Dictionary" is pretty good, but it's not a patch another book which shares its' same name, "The Cynic's Dictionary" by Rick Bayan (Quill, 1994), which is nothing less than brilliant.
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Title: The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs (Facts on File Writer's Library) by Martin H. Manser, Rosalind Fergusson ISBN: 0816046085 Publisher: Facts on File Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: All American Carioke by David Schiller ISBN: 0761130683 Publisher: Workman Publishing Pub. Date: 01 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, Roy Morris Jr. ISBN: 0195126270 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Old Dogs Remembered by Bud Johns, Eugene O'Neill, James Thurber, E.B. White, Molly Ivins, Tom Steinstra, John Updike, Stanley Bing, Albert Payson Terhune, Raymond Carver ISBN: 0912184124 Publisher: Synergistic Publications Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Facts on File Dictionary of Cliches (Facts on File Library of Language and Literature) by Christine Ammer ISBN: 0816043574 Publisher: Facts on File Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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