Started: August 23, 2022
Finished: August 24, 2022
(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.)
My History With This Book
As regular readers of this blog know, I've been living in Vietnam for the past several years now. And these books have been extremely popular in Vietnam.
I suspect their popular everywhere. (Right? I don't know, leave a comment and let me know about how often you see these books around where you live.)
But in Vietnam, they've been everywhere.
It's probably more noticeable in Vietnam, because whenever you walk into a bookshop, the supply of English books is limited to only a few shelves. And Diary of a Wimpy Kid is always among the limited selection.
The very visual nature of this book makes it tempting for Vietnamese students of English, who think that it will be an easy read. (Although the amount of slang and colloquial expressions in this book make it a lot harder than it looks for English language learners.) So I frequently see my Vietnamese students and colleagues attempting to read this book.
But this book has also been translated into Vietnamese, and it has proven to be extremely popular in Vietnam in translation. (I think 5 years ago in Vietnam, it was especially popular. I remember a period when all of my students seemed to be carrying around the Vietnamese translation of this book.)
And since I've noticed that this book was so popular in Vietnam anyway, I've occasionally recommended it to my students for extensive reading or extensive listening practice. Especially since a free copy of this book was put on English Language Learning : Listen & Read (see HERE). I put this book on my list of extensive reading recommendations, and my list of extensive listening recommendations.
To quote myself from my extensive listening recommendation:
...and there were a lot of sections like this.
Another audio book from http://esl-bits.net/ Diary of a Wimpy Kid. http://esl-bits.net/ESL.English.Learning.Audiobooks/Wimpy.Kid/indice.html This is another children's book. This one is pitched at slightly older kids (10-11). The vocabulary is slightly more advanced, and it also contains more slang terms and idioms. But on the plus side, each individual chapter is very short, so it's very easy to do this in short listening sessions. And in my experience, this book has been popular with students in Vietnam.
And yet, I had never actually read the book myself. Until now...
Why I Read This Book
As I've been mentioning in the Weekly Reading Vlogs, my schedule at work has recently changed so that I now have an early morning class, and an afternoon class, and an extended lunch break in the afternoon. I usually relax at lunch and get a few pages of reading done, but then one day I forgot my book. (I had taken it out of my work bag to read some of it at dinner, and then forgotten to put it back in my bag.)
Fortunately, my school has a library, so it was easy to pick up a new book.
However, I already have 9 books on my currently reading list that I'm not doing very well on (HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE). And I had told myself I was absolutely not allowed to pick up any new books until I finished what was already on my plate. But what was I going to do? Make it through lunch without a book to read?
So, I compromised and decided to find the lightest, shortest, easiest to read book possible.
And Diary of a Wimpy Kid seemed to fit the bill perfectly.
And Diary of a Wimpy Kid seemed to fit the bill perfectly.
The Reading Experience / Evaluation
I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did.
I mean, sure, I knew it would be humorous. But it is also a kids' book. And kids are usually pretty soft targets when it comes to humor. So I figured the book would be mildly interesting, but not much more.
But, to my pleasant surprise, I got quite a few chuckles out of this book. It's really funny.
After reading this book, I went over to the Wikipedia page, and it turns out this book grew out of a webcomic, and that originally the book was supposed to be pitched at an adult audience. But the publishers convinced the author to target the children's market instead. (see HERE)
So that probably explains why this book can tickle the adult funny bone just as much as it can a child's.
There's no real plot to this book--it's just a series of episodes and events. (I suspect this is also a legacy of the book having started life as a webcomic.) There are occasionally call backs to events that happened earlier in the book, but for the most part it's just a bunch of random things that happened to the main character over the course of a school year.
In my opinion, the book is at its funniest when its simply functioning as a commentary on the kind of stuff that every middle school kid experiences. The part about the difference between dad and mom's discipline style, for example, was one of many sections that got a chuckle out of me because of how relatable it was:
(Oh man, my parents were totally like that! Anyone else can relate?)
There were some other sections, however, which weren't so realistic. For example, the whole section about the haunted house episode (you can read it here) struck me as pretty far fetched. I understand the humor was supposed to derive from the main character screwing things up so badly, but I couldn't imagine a real kid actually doing this, and it struck me as a bit too desperate to set up a get a laugh. And there are a few sections like that throughout the book.
So some really funny sections, and some not so funny sections, but on the whole I found myself laughing and enjoying this book more often than not.
Other Odds and Ends
* I debated whether or not to count his as a graphic novel, or as a proper book.
The distinction, as far as this blog is concerned, is that graphic novels get a video review, but no written review.
This book has so many cartoons throughout that it's almost really more of a comic than a proper book. And yet, there is some text. Maybe just enough text to count this as a book with cartoons instead of a cartoon book?
My school library has this book classified in the general fiction section, and not the graphic novel section. In the end, I let that tip the balance. I'm counting this as a book. (But... I'll also put it in my graphic novel index.)
* As you probably already know, there's a whole series of these books out now (see list on Wikipedia). My school library has several of them. I may check out a few more books from this series eventually. But I don't want to ruin it by doing it all at once. (Sometimes the humor of a particular author or cartoonist can get spoiled if you indulge too much too quickly). Maybe I'll give it a few weeks before checking out the next one.
As I mentioned above, sometimes it can be really funny and relatable, and sometimes it loses its touch by getting a bit too far-fetched. But it's really funny more often than not. Let's go with 8 out of 10 stars. (Look, it's not great literature. But you have to judge these things against what they set out to do. This book set out to be a funny comic. It was pretty funny. 8 stars it is.)
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