Happy Cruelty Day!: Daily Celebrations of Quiet Desperation

by Bob Powers

Book Overview

For everyone looking to find a little extra magic in a life with little to celebrate, Happy Cruelty Day is here. Beginning on January 1, this book features 365 new holidays, each accompanied by a strange, dark and humorous short story explaining the day you woke up in and how to celebrate it. These 365 daily doses of delight, perversion, and nonsense include "Hire Someone Attractive To Pretend To Love You Day," "Hang on to Your Wide-Eyed...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312359527
• ISBN13: 9780312359522
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Laugh, wince, repeat

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.

Happy Read a Review of Happy Cruelty Day Day!

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.

My bathroom has never been filled with so much laughter!

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.

Like nothing you've ever read

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".

Like nothing I have ever read before

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.