Friends like these

It’s one of those books that I would have not read if it wasn’t given to me for free. The review cheerfully promises that it will be the funniest book I read this year. This makes me even more suspicious. How do they know what I do and don’t find amusing? And who uses words like “funniest” so easily? As if they have read all the books that have come out and know exactly what’s going to happen in those that are yet to be released. After all, it promises the funniest book of the year. Unless it was published at 11:59:59 on 31 December, surely there were some more after it. Mind you, it’s not this year too. Michael Jackson was still alive.

I have to admit Mr. Wallace did not make me laugh, although he tried to do so very eagerly. Maybe this was precisely the reason he failed. I did smirk or smile a couple of times though.

However, the idea of the book is very fresh and close to anybody’s heart who is soon to be 30 (being 28 myself) and have undertaken too much responsibility and forgotten what it is to be foolishly young and carefree.

Danny Wallace has started an adventure of revisiting all of his old and somewhat forgotten friendships. He insists on calling it “updating my address book”. He goes a great length and spends a lot of time (and money too) to find each and one of these 12 contacts in his little black book (well, not counting MJ obviously). I don’t know if he has inspired me to go searching my old friends as well. I doubt it. Most of my “friends” from school… It is best if I don’t see them again as I wasn’t very fond of them to begin with (and I think the feeling was very much mutual). There are some faces I would like to see again and find out what has become of them, but I strongly believe that if those connections were lost due to various reasons, be it our age, jobs, marriages, children, it is best to leave most of them (maybe even all) as they are. I don’t really need another name in my contact list, who I speak to only on New Year’s or birthdays, maybe even more seldom.

However, I still found the book quite entertaining.