Fail Nation: A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails – An Absurd Comedy Collection from Failblog and Cheezburger

by Failblog.org Community

From the underbelly of the nuts behind hit websites failblog.org and icanhascheezburger.com comes FAIL Nation , your silent guide and handler to the not-even-close-to-perfect nation of FAIL, chock-full of irrelevant tips and useless suggestions about why to shop, who to eat, and when to see. So fasten your exit and check for the nearest seatbelt—your FAIL plane departs now.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Comedy

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2009

Reviews

[Danielius Goriunovas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Top tier 2008-ish humour.

- Print quality is great (9/10)
- Designs are eh
- Funny fail photos are okayish (and they were great back then, now it's just gotten old...)
- Photo captions are cringeish.

This book was great for its time. Now it's just old.

(It may be good for nostalgia reasons.)

[Shannon Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sure, this was entertaining. These pictures are mostly funny examples of failure, or in many cases, how messed up things can look when stripped of their context. Either way, this was quick and amusing.

My issue with books like this is the fleeting nature of their humor. If you've taken the 15 minutes to read this book once, then there's really no point in keeping it. and unfortunately for me, or in this case, for this book, I prefer my books to have a certain longevity. I prefer my books to contain the kinds of stories that are intricate and detailed, that I want to read over and over again. I prefer my books to be ACTUAL books, not just funny collections of images (because unlike gorgeous landscapes, and some other nature coffee table books I have, these images are only amusing a limited amount of times, and I don't have a desire to loo0k at them over and over again).

Nonetheless, I feel like these kinds of books have their place in the world. They're the kind you read, laugh at, then pass on to a friend to do the same, until they've circulated and spread laughs to hundreds of people. So now that I've gotten my amusement out of this book, I plan to do exactly that, and send it to the next person.

[Holden Attradies · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was pretty darn disappointed in this. There didn't seem to be too much to the book and it felt like what was there was a little representative. Things were just not as funny as I had hoped for and a lot of the pictures seemed to only be "fails" because their context wasn't shown.

[MKF · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat funny the first time you read and after that not funny at all.

[Steve Dustcircle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty classic. Some photos are just low-hanging fruit: foreign typos, and clever angles, but most of these are classic. Some people just simply can't spell or use words or situations right.

[Remo · Rating 2 out of 5]

El libro del blog Fail nation. Básicamente son unas cien fotos de carteles colocados con muy poca reflexión previa (sirva de ejemplo el de la portada ENTRANCE ONLY: DO NOT ENTER). Alguna sonrisilla cae por lo naïf de la gente a veces, pero poco más. No es un libro malo, es solo levemente irrelevante.

[Maddy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was between 3 and 4 stars for me. I thought it was going to be a lot more funny. There were a few times that I laughed so hard I cried but there were other points where I was found something awkward or just plain rude. I found Cake Wrecks to be much more hilarious.

[Evie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The spirit of photo blogs just don't translate well into books.

[Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fairly standard blog spin off book with some random pictures submitted from the internet, some more “real” than others; ostensibly recording various incidences of gross incompetence, naive gaffs, accidental blunders, and other weird things somebody took a picture of once. There is no back story to any of the images collected, and a few seem suspiciously contrived; some are not even "fails," but simply bad luck or just random weirdness. However, setting the book up as a pseudo-travel book, complete with scrawled notes from other readers, was an inspired move, particularly the maps. Good for some laugh when your network is down.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The "Fail Nation" actually has many similarities to picture books. What makes this book different is because it gains life from a blog. "Fail Nation" features many stupid, silly, ignorant, unnecessary yet unintentionally mistakes on signboards, public announcements (or other sources) from almost all over the globe; as photographed by many people (contributors to the blog). This book was interesting to me because I used to take pictures of the same "theme" and posted them into my Facebook account.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that will have you giggling or laughing to your heart's content as you look through pictures presented within the pages. This is mankind's best of the best spelling mistakes, errors and twisted thinking put into a humorous touristic guide to Fail Nation.

The book is easy to read while including some tips and/or tidbits that will help to tie everything together in one book that flows well. And since so many categories are covered there is guaranteed to be something for everyone.

~A Funny Book~

[Paul Bassinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another bite-sized tome from the world the Internet has given us, this laugh-a-minute image collection parades on display the ineptitude of individuals who only had ONE JOB...and failed miserably! Yet another soundbite of a book leaves us wondering when this genre will grow into something more substantial, or, far more unlikely, fade away completely because of the loss of the novelty factor! A very enjoyable read, nonetheless, and a comforting reminder that, no matter *how* bad you are at your job, at least you're not one of these people.

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is from the folks at Failblog. But it has an interesting layout: it is organized as a tourist guide to the Fail Nation. The photos are funny, but funnier are some of the comments the authors add to the photos. If you have seen the blog, then you will enjoy the book. If not, then you owe it to yourself to go see the blog after reading the book. It is a very quick read. I had a couple of good laughs.

[HeavyReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, a celebration of the poorly worded and mislabeled, was loaned to me. I'm please about that fact because I read this book quickly and probably wouldn't refer to it again. But I did enjoy it.

My favorites: "Dong" Insurance; "Cool American" flavored Doritos; a Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen sign reading "jalapenis chicken;" and "diesel fried chicken" proclaimed from the outside wall of a truck stop.

Yes, these were funny. Thank you Failblog for collecting the photos in one place.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A funny book of pictures full of failures, masquerading as a "travel book". However, it doesn't take too much examination to realize that some of those pictures are unfairly labeled as human "failures", due to either being the result of natural disasters or of creative photography on the part of the picture taker. Not as good or as fun as their "Fail Harder" book by the same people.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An awful, shocking, fun read. (=

[Alisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another "We have way too much time on our hands at work" book.. it was fun

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

We are still eating kids for free!

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's scary that people are this dumb

[Michael Lee Howard -Mayhew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is basically a book version of FAILBLOG... it was a fast read read in about an hour or so ... great waste of time but that is about it

[Robert Samec]

Got this for Christmas

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty hilarious book XD

[Michael Hermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rank this book right up there with the People of Wal-Mart books. Fun fast paced read that should put a smile on your face.

[Emily Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this for my husband and ended up reading it on the train ride home :)
exactly what you would expect, something nice and light

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of mildly amusing errors people have made on signs, worldwide. The most creativity was in the captions to the pictures.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great laughs in this book. But not for your small children.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It made me laugh, not as much as the website, but it is portable and I don't have to worry about a WiFi signal. Plus I can share it easily. I like the set-up like a travel book, its a cute idea to make a gift-book more fun.

[Scott Ollar · Rating 2 out of 5]

At least it only took 5 minutes

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super fast read and very funny!