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913 ratings, 3.66 average rating, 129 reviews
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published
January 1st 2001
by Berkley
binding
Paperback, 336 pages
isbn
0425178102
(isbn13: 9780425178102)
description
Dave Barry, the only newsman to win a Pulitzer for exemplary use of words like booger, will please humor and crime-fiction fans alike with this...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1041)
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
everybody who doesn't mind a bit of swearing and likes a good laugh
This is one of my two favorite books. It was HILLARIOUS! I really can't say what my favorite part is. It could be either time when Matt attempts to shoot Jenny with a water gun. Or maybe it's the incident with Arthur Herk and the toad who has hallucinigenic poisin. Or perhaps the traffic jam caused by goats. Anyways, this book puts the characters in the most ridiculus situations, and it turns out funny. This book has made me laugh like no other book I have read. I most definitly would reccomend ...more
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Read in December, 2006
When I first saw this book, I thought what you're all thinking - Dave Barry wrote a book? A real book? This cannot be!
And yet it can. And it is. And it's awesome.
One of the major themes in Barry's newspaper column is that South Florida is insane. Things happen in Florida that could never happen anywhere else. Hell, Fark.com has a special tag for stories from Florida, such as:
"Congresswoman accuses filmmaker of taking her support of Castro assassination out of context. "
&q...more
And yet it can. And it is. And it's awesome.
One of the major themes in Barry's newspaper column is that South Florida is insane. Things happen in Florida that could never happen anywhere else. Hell, Fark.com has a special tag for stories from Florida, such as:
"Congresswoman accuses filmmaker of taking her support of Castro assassination out of context. "
&q...more
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Two world-weary Jersey hit men, a freakishly strong homeless guy, a skeezy embezzler and his hot rich wife, an escaped python loose in a Miami airport, a suitcase with a ticking time bomb, a really stupid dog, a pair of Russian arms dealers who operate a seedy dive bar as a cover for their real business, a giant toad who squirts hallucinogenic toxins at predators, and a teenage boy trying really, really hard to impress a cute girl by sneaking around her backyard at night with a squirt gun that l...more
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eighteen majillion stars. this man knows how to tell a story. negative. make that several dozen stories all tied together and NOT annoyingly cliche like "crash" or "babel", but actually hysterical, in the kind of way that makes you want to laugh and be afraid for humanity at the same time.
it's actually a thriller (no kidding.) and i promise, you won't be able to put it down.
it's actually a thriller (no kidding.) and i promise, you won't be able to put it down.
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I read this book from cover-to-cover on a two-hour plane ride. Each chapter was full of hilarious twists and turns, which would cause me to burst out laughing. I felt bad because I kept waking the sleeping, snoring fat man next to me. Serves him right for getting in the way of a good book and me.
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Not exactly deep reading, but chock full 'o absurdist fun
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Read in July, 2008
recommends it for:
funny crime fiction fans
Big Trouble is a funny crime novel.
I didn’t find it hilarious but it was a fun novel with slapstick-like situations. I would consider it a crime novel but it isn’t hard-boiled or anything like that. I guess it’s sort of like a light Elmore Leonard or a fast-paced Carl Hiaasen novel.
What I learned from this book (as well as books by Tom Dorsey, Elmore Leonard, and Carl Hiaasen) is that Florida is INSANE. It gives me the urge to go there just to experience it but it also strikes f...more
I didn’t find it hilarious but it was a fun novel with slapstick-like situations. I would consider it a crime novel but it isn’t hard-boiled or anything like that. I guess it’s sort of like a light Elmore Leonard or a fast-paced Carl Hiaasen novel.
What I learned from this book (as well as books by Tom Dorsey, Elmore Leonard, and Carl Hiaasen) is that Florida is INSANE. It gives me the urge to go there just to experience it but it also strikes f...more
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"Big Trouble" is Dave Barry's attempt at an actual novel which features a homeless man named Puggy who sleeps in a tree, his two Russian arms-dealing employers, bikers who hassle him regularly, an embezzler who is not only the target of hitmen but also owns the tree Puggy sleeps in, the embezzler's wife who hates her husband and her daughter who also hates him, a teenage boy who is hunting the daughter as part of a game of "Killer" at his school, the boy's father who is in lo...more
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I used to like Dave Barry's columns, so I picked this book up to see if his writing would translate to fiction. It does, sort of, in the sense that he still makes wisecracks in his writing. Over the course of a whole novel, though, the wisecracks get really tortured and old. This novel is Carl Hiassen-lite, in that it involves wildly divergent characters whose paths should never cross, so of course their paths cross; some type of colorful criminal element; a journalist/former journalist who inve...more
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The movie ruined this book. Dave Barry's portrait of modern suburban life is absolutely wonderful. Great character development, great plot, wonderful attention to detail.
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I recall this being pretty funny at the time. I tried rereading it though, and it ended up kind of boring once you already knew where it was going.
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Read in July, 2001
recommends it for:
no one
I expected a lot from this book--Barry's first novel--but it wasn't much. It's not at all like his other, humorous books. Skip it.
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Read in January, 1999
recommends it for:
lazy people who want a laugh
Hilarious. (And the movie was much less so, as often happens.)
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Read in July, 2008
I checked this book out from the library after I saw it in the large print section. I got it for my husband as a joke, but Barry's warning about bad words put off my husband, so I read it. The first 140 pages or so went by pretty quickly, but then it started to drag a bit. It's funny and his comments on everyday life are right on and funny. There was a part about a mother degrading herself to save her daughter that I thought didn't fit with what that character had done up until then. Otherwise, ...more
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Read in January, 2001
Probably one of the funniest books I've ever read! I read the book without knowing what to expect as I had never read anything else from the author. I had been given the book from a friend and boy am I glad she passed it along!
As soon as I heard that they were making a movie, I already knew that it would never live up to the book. The funniest parts were in the descriptions and it's so hard to portray that outside of a book. I actually almost walked out of the theater when I saw it, it w...more
As soon as I heard that they were making a movie, I already knew that it would never live up to the book. The funniest parts were in the descriptions and it's so hard to portray that outside of a book. I actually almost walked out of the theater when I saw it, it w...more
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You can guess a lot about this book from the author. It was FUNNY! But very Dave-Barryish, so don't read it unless you're familiar with and fond of his style and vocabulary. This book, like several others on my list, was later made into a bad movie. Smart comedy doesn't translate well into film, somehow. The screenplays always focus on the dumbest parts of the humor and leave out the wit. Maybe the character's inner dialogue is the part that gets the best laughs in the book, and isn't included i...more
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
Anyone and everyone
First off, I want to specify that if I could give this four and a half stars, I would. Good, funny book that keeps you glued throughout. I think it took me a whole two days to read. Its a book that is a comfortable fall-back book on rainy days when you don't have another book already on your plate. The ending was slightly weak, causing it to fall short of the fifth star, but don't let that stop you from laughing at this mess of people surviving in Miami.
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What a riot! Dave Berry is hilarious and I thought this book was great. The whole book you jump around to the different characters and how they connect through VERY odd circumstances. Says a lot about how much people come into to contact and are connected to each other but never even notice it, even in the most extreme of situations. The movie is really well made and pretty much corresponds directly with the book, its just as fun, check it out too.
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