Happy Cruelty Day!: Daily Celebrations of Quiet Desperation

Bob Powers has the amazing ability to to make each of these often painful vignettes brilliantly funny. If you like a little ground glass in your humor to help it go down easier (and who doesn't?), there is no better place to go than "Happy Cruelty Day." Powers' website is great, but somehow these come across even more vividly on paper. [And remember - buy a book, save a... pixel. Or something.] And you should buy two copies, because as soon as you start reading, I guarantee that you'll immediately think of that weird friend of yours who absolutely HAS to have this. It's that kind of book.

Reading this provocative, meticulously-crafted book takes the same daring as watching a horror movie alone. You'll tell yourself it's just a book, but within a few pages, you'll be looking cautiously over your shoulder to see if your conscience has stepped out of your body and is taunting you from the chair by your bed. This kind of insight to the human condition doesn't usually arrive in such an hilarious package. Be enlightened, be very very enlightened.

Historically, my trips to the bathroom are morose affairs filled with pain and struggle. However, thanks to 'Happy Cruelty Day', my desperate grunting is now frequently interrupted by hearty laughter. This book is as funny as it is dark and absurd, and with 365 entries, I'm guaranteed at least a week of terrifically funny reading if I read one entry per bathroom visit. Thank you for your time.

It cannot be overstated how talented Bob Powers is, nor how completely screwed up his brain must be. His writing evokes a world of brutal sadness and fleeting beauty. That may not sound incredibly funny, but trust me it is. Buy this book and revel in the feeling that you're the only person in the world who "really gets it".

And probably like nothing I'll ever read again. This is a truly original and laugh-out-loud-even-when-you're-in-public-and-might-feel-embarrassed-by-your-laughter funny collection of humor. I can definitely imagine this book polarizing readers. For people who are turned off by dark subject matter, this book will leave them paralyzed with shock. But for the rest of us, who appreciate humor mined from dark places (George Saunders, The Office, Mr. Show, Kids in the Hall, Donald Barthelme, David Sedaris), this book is practically a revelation. As you make your way through it and read entries like "Fourteen Ways to Tell A Cajun Chef to F*** Himself Day" you will be amazed at Powers' seemingly limitless imagination for his subject matter. Can't recommend it enough.