The Darwin Awards 4

Intelligent Design

By: Wendy Northcutt, Christopher M. Kelly

Narrated by: Julie Schaller, Patrick Lawlor

The Darwin Awards 4 commemorates those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it, showing us just how uncommon common sense can be!

Meet the absentminded terrorist who opens a mail bomb returned to him for insufficient postage. Marvel at the thief who steals electrical wires before shutting off the current. Gape at the would-be pilot who flies his lawn chair suspended from helium balloons into air-traffic lanes. These tales of trial and awe-inspiring error illustrate the ongoing saga of survival of the fittest in all its selective glory!

The author has been profiled by USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Daily News, Boston Herald, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, and CNN.com.

©2006 Wendy Northcutt (P)2006 Listen and Live Audio

Not Quite Funny As Previous 3

As with my review of "The Darwin Awards III," I am still finding this series--based on the premise that other people's stupidity is funny--to be quite entertaining. Having said that, I must add that it feels like this is not as funny as the previous installments. I am beginning to find some of the narrative voices a bit tiring. Especially grating are some of the narrations which contain accents meant to portray a given ethnic group. While accents of ethnic groups used in a joke do not necessarily convey bigotry or prejudice, some of the accents used seemed to suggest that the narrator deemed people of that ethnic group to be inferior. This trend of accented narrations almost leans toward suggesting that the stupidity being described is a RESULT OF THAT PERSON'S ETHNICITY, rather than just incidental to the story. Even if one is not particularly sensitive to the possibility of undertones of bigotry--The accents were poorly-executed, in most circumstances. As such, they detracted from the humor, and were sometimes downright annoying!
Still, in all, it was a fun listen.

Don't know what I expected but this wasn't it.

I used to leaf through the books and enjoyed them quite a bit but this was just a letdown. The narration is like a lead weight that drags on and on, even when the material is somewhat comical. Just get the paper copy of you love the series, and only if you REALLY love the series.