Fig. 2 - Stephen Colbert

I've been asked by a certain someone (not Bill Cosby) to review Stephen Colbert's book "I Am America (And So Can You)". Since I'm used to doing most of Cam's work for him to begin with I agreed, in spite of the fact that I haven't done a book review since I was seven, and mostly so I could make fun of Cam in the process.
Onward.
Part of the reason Cam asked me to write this is because he has yet to finish it even though he bought it weeks (months?) ago when it first came out, and Cam is not by nature a slow-as-hell reader, so I guess that should tell you something right off the "bat." On a side note, stealing jokes is both easy and fun! But back to the review. If you've ever watched more than 20 minutes of the Colbert Report you know pretty much what to expect from this book, but without actually seeing Stephen rant and rave about immigrants and homosexuals it's really not the same. Sure there are some bits that only work in a print medium, but these are basically just the same gag as "The Word" (although oddly, the sidebar messages and other such additives almost always seem to come from Stephen himself rather than an undermining text presence as on the show.) The worst parts, though, just as on the Colbert Report, are the sections where other people talk. You'd think after pages and pages of Colbertian monologue you'd welcome an interruption even if it was by some made up "Common man" or another but no, they almost always fall flat. The book does have some good points though, don't get me wrong. When it's funny it's very funny, and when it's not funny it's painless enough. I mean, you don't really expect to be laughing constantly the entire time, it's hundreds of pages long. Now that I think about I'll bet the main problem I had with it was that I tried to read most of it continuously. Five or six chapters at a time. This is the equivalent of sitting down and watching four or five episodes of the Colbert Report in a row. I've never tried this but I imagine the effect would be similar. You become too used to his style and it stops being funny.
I didn't actually buy the book, Cam did, so I don't know how much it cost but I would be willing to pay somewhere in the neighbourhood of twenty dollars just for the sake of the "Abstinence Bases" and that's only half a page. Anyway, in conclusion blah blah blah etc. etc. Read the post again for a summary of what I said.