David R ThorneReseñas

Residing in USA, David Thorne is the Australian author behind the notorious Missing Missy and despite a scathing review of Look Evelyn Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them in 2020, I still owned two more of the author's books. At the time I expressed my irritation at the fat phobic content and uncertainty around whether Thorne uses creative licence in a self deprecating manner in an ironic attempt to further his unlikable persona in the pursuit of entertainment; or if he's just a dick.

Four years have passed and many books have been read since then and I believe enough time has elapsed for me to tackle the next one on the pile. Did it make me chuckle or frown? Short answer, both!

The author does write humourous dialogue, and I enjoyed this excerpt from an exchange with partner Holly:
"No, you're supposed to say something nice back."
"Your hair looks nice today."
"Thanks. I used your conditioner in the little red tube."
"That's foot cream." Page 20
The title story about rearing a baby squirrel was my favourite from the collection and it was very cute. But then the author churns out a comment like this one that left a sour taste in my mouth for a few pages:

"We did visit my sister a few weeks later but there were no secret passageways in her house and neither Seb or I gave a fuck about her origami owls or potplant hangers. Any halfwit with a roll of string and a few sticks can set up an Etsy shop." Page 39

There's no context about Thorne's sister and she isn't referred to often. That particular comment came off the back of a reunion with his estranged father who had a secret passageway in his house, but without context or knowing anything about the author's sister, it's hard to interpret that comment as anything other than rude. Who writes like that publicly about their sibling anyway?

If he's joking, then it's not a joke I can join in on. I found it rude and insulting and it made me wonder if this guy means every word he writes or if he's just an arsehole. I'm starting to lean towards the latter, but you be the judge:

"I fully support discrimination against fat people but if one sat next to me on a plane I wouldn't move, ask them to move, or talk to them. I'd just be quietly annoyed the whole flight and try to breath through my mouth." Page 52

Seriously? Is this guy the real deal? Published in 2015, thankfully That's Not How You Wash A Squirrel contains fewer fat phobic references, but the fat shaming was still there. At one point he refers to a 'crazed looking flabby woman in her thirties named Rian', but it's not just fat people and fat women who irk our author:

"Penguin represent my first book but my marketing person there is a small angry Asian woman who yells a lot so I have her number blocked." Page 147

Wow, blocking the Marketing Rep from Penguin on your phone when you depend on their representation, hilarious! Hopefully you could hear the drip of my sarcasm there. It's just not funny.

The occasional fat phobic content was off putting and while I enjoyed a somewhat amusing story about hunting for the first time in the USA, I can't tell if the content has been inspired or lifted from the author's lived experience or whether it's all fiction. Is this self deprecating humour written by a humble guy unafraid of being judged harshly? Or is he just a run of the mill arsehole, wandering aimlessly around a camp site so that he doesn't have to help his mates pack up? He sounds like a tool, but that's also what used to make his writing funny.

There's a fine line and I'm never sure how close to it we are, but it feels like we're getting further away from the author's core talent for entertaining the reader. In a different example, Thorne shares a section detailing the passing of a friend after a dramatic car accident that was incredibly moving, yet I'm not sure if he's 'taking the piss'* or not.

I decided years ago not to purchase any more of David Thorne's new work, but I still have Walk It Off, Princess on my TBR pile. I can hear some of you thinking 'don't read it if you don't like his work' but have you ever decided not to read a book you purchased? Published in 2018 three years after this title, I'm hoping the downward trend on insulting people continues and the sense of humour so prevalent in his earlier work resurfaces in fine form. There's hope yet!

I think in real life I would hate his guts (well if he talked the same as in his book) but thankfully that is not the case so I can enjoy my guilty pleasure of a man with a clever way with words and who enjoys fucking with people's mind.

I've been enjoying David Thorne's sense of humour and reading his books for years now. See my reviews of his previous books below:

- The Internet Is A Playground - 5 stars
- I'll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs - 5 stars
- Wrap It In a Bit of Cheese Like You're Tricking the Dog - 3 stars

And I have two more on my shelves waiting to be read:
- That's Not How You Wash a Squirrel
- Walk It Off, Princess

I love his quirky sense of humour, his office antics and run-ins with family members, neighbours and anyone else unlucky enough to come across his path.

Look Evelyn, Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them is another collection of stories and anecdotes, many of which relate to his childhood. It was published back in 2014 (I know, I'm a little behind, but they're expensive to purchase from the USA so I save them for birthdays and Xmas) and GoodReads has plenty of existing reviews from readers shocked at how dramatic Thorne's childhood upbringing was.

Now, I don't for a minute believe any of his stories are actually true. I think he's like most comedians, comedy is his job and these email chains, graphic design stories and office antics have been created for the reader's - and presumably the author's - enjoyment.

However, what I didn't appreciate was the sheer number of references to overweight women in this collection. After finishing this book, I went back to check I wasn't over-reacting and made the following notations:

Fat, page 17
Normal weight, page 20
Heifer, page 26
Heifer and reference to Weight Watchers, page 37
An entire story around a large girl and her weight, fat references pages 48-50
Large woman, page 76
Chubby girl, page 101
Huge heifer, page 104
Chubby girl, page 118 and 119
Large woman, page 136
Fat wives, page 165
Fat multiple times, page 174
Fat wife, page 179

Without the ability to ask the author, I'm not sure if Thorne is using creative licence in an attempt to further his unlikable persona in the pursuit of entertaining the reader. If so, then it falls flat. If not, then it's just irritating and bordering on offensive.

With Thorne's humorous and clever story-telling abilities, I assumed he was above petty fat shaming like this and it just didn't sit well with me. Some of the content was very funny and quite enjoyable but these reappearing references dampened my enjoyment.

This was a disappointing read and I hope his next collection is a return to his earlier form.

I could only read a little. It was terrible. Juvenile and hardly funny.

*WARNING* All of the snarky remarks and slightly grayish humor should be taken with a grain of salt (or sugar if you prefer). They are intended to be made in good humor in light of the title and any offense caused to readers was unintended…unless you laughed, then THAT was intentional.*

Perhaps you’ve been to this author’s website before and witnessed his work first hand…than again, perhaps not. Hey, I don’t know what you do all day? To gain a little insight on him, in his own words (from the ARC back cover bio)…”..he reads too much, generally exceeds others’ tolerances, and listens to Linkin Park. He stays up too late, drinks too much coffee, smokes too much, hates getting up in the morning, and has offspring who thinks he doesn’t know what he has been up to when he deletes his Internet history.”

Yeah…that sounds about right…or at least it does once you’ve read his work. This is not a book to be taken seriously (hence the Humor genre in which it resides) but it is a book to be taken one sip at a time much like a dose of ill tasting medicine…you know it’s good for you, but it doesn’t change the fact that it can taste like the drippings from an oil pan. There are many topics covered within ranging from the benign to the OMG-you-did-not-just-write-about-that.


“Bill’s Guide to Everything on the Internet” is a condensed version of our multitude of social, search and shopping outlets with a penchant for the KISS method (stands for “Keep It Simple…Sally – well, in polite circles it is…) of description. Are they accurate? Some are (surprisingly) but mostly it’s just for kicks…or is it? (dun dun dunnnnn) Jetting forward some dozen pages we unearth “Ten Jobs I Would Rather Have Than Mine” that reveals the particular wonders of one day becoming a Fortune Cookie Writer (if you get a message from the future about a robot invasion in your next one…you know he met this aspiration) as well as a Forest Fire Lookout (though I’d be scared if he achieved this one…O-O), and everything in between (well not everything because then it would be called “A Million Jobs I’d Rather Have….”). Perhaps my favorite “conversation” in the collection is actually the first one you encounter about an overdue balance, an inability (or blatant refusal) to pay, and a drawing of a spider. LOL…I’m chuckling as I recall it right now…and getting strange looks from a passerby. *ahem*

Overall, a fun and funny filled read that I understood about 50% of the time…sorry, not everyone’s humor level revolves around a conversation about what type of monkey would be most useful. Yeahhhh. Scariest part? The introduction lists that the email conversations included…are all…verbatim. Might make you a little more wary the next time you send something out into the virtual black hole we call the Web. Recommended for older teens through adult readers. There is some questionable humor and offensive language, so it’s best to keep this one away from the kiddos. Just tell them the spider on the front will come to life if they touch it….

Though touted as laugh-out-loud funny, this book is not. Yes, it does have some humorous essays, but much of it is not. More of it is sad and even pathetic. There is nothing funny about killing animals, and to try to insert some after-the-fact humor into the situation is wrong. And I would like to ask how, in a book described as “humor” by so many people, what was humorous about a girl dying in a car accident? This grouping of essays should have been split into two different collections; maybe then, one could have been funny. This version gets two generous stars from me for the sketchy humor it does have. I wish the other parts had been omitted.

Funny. But only if you have an open mind and realize the author is that jerk sending the annoying messages that set up others for ridicule and failure just for our laughs.

Some of it was hilarious! (Mostly the emails)
Some of it meh,
Some of it was lame, and all the ones about cats pissed me off. Thorne may say that he doesn't hate cats, but he sure writes like it.

I've been enjoying David Thorne's wacky sense of humour for years now, so I was really excited to receive an autographed copy of Wrap It In a Bit of Cheese Like You're Tricking the Dog for Christmas last year.

Containing more essays than emails, the laughs continued, just not at the same rate of knots (i.e. on every page). The work conversations are hilarious and there was another logo design that had me chuckling and remembering the logo shenanigans in his previous books.

Readers looking for a little more depth in the writing will enjoy this offering, however in terms of laughs, it didn't make me want to read out every exchange, as I wanted to do when reading The Internet Is A Playground (5 stars) and I'll Go Home Then; It's Warm and Has Chairs (5 stars).

This collection of essays and emails is highly recommended for readers familiar with David Thorne's work, but if you're wanting to dip your toe into his wildly entertaining world, you should begin with The Internet Is A Playground. I remain a dedicated fan though and will continue to read whatever he puts out. Unless it's a book full of his cat panels, lol!

I'm a huge fan of David Thorne's caustic humour and writing style and his work always (without fail) makes me laugh out loud. His first book The Internet is a Playground was a 5 star read for me in 2013, and this one, I'll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs - The Unpublished Emails is just as funny.

There's plenty of email trails to delve into, photoshopped pictures to enjoy and a treasure trove of stories, anecdotes and letters to laugh about. Again, I couldn't help myself and had to read one of the stories out loud, and keep wanting to use some of his best one liners in conversation.

David Thorne's sense of humour is full of satire and wit, and he captures the office work environment so well it makes me chuckle just thinking about it. His comments about the team building weekend are still making me laugh and his diagrams really bring his scenarios to life in a way you can't possibly imagine until you see his work.

If you've never read any of his stuff before, you can read some it for free on his website, or grab any one of his books. You won't be sorry, instead you'll be laughing and looking for someone to share it with post-haste.

I've already been recommending this one to friends and family, and that says it all really.

Pretty funny, but it is not the kind of book you read cover to cover. it is more interesting if you just grab it, read a story and move on to come back later or even in a few days. Otherwise, you can easily get fed up of the whole pointless story telling. Still can't believe how some people will continu to replie to such email.... it's amazing.

Thorne mostly spends his time researching unicorns, sending emails and being a hilarious asshole. His emails threads, like Missing Missy, have become viral and he has some new material in this book. Not going to lie, a majority of the book is from his website, only a few new articles. I got the ebook rather than the paperback.

If you don't know him by now, check him out. This guy is hilarious. I was reading this on the train home and I couldn't help snickering, and then people stared at me. But it was worth it, he's seriously funny. No oxymorons intended.

Unusual book, very unusual. Funny at times, but I found it got a bit samey after awhile and the humour stopped working for me.

My reaction to this book may be clouded by the fact that the author and I hail from the same city but I thoughts parts of it touched the boundaries of comic genius and there were many laugh out loud moments to be found.

Thorne has self-published this book and it sadly shows, with a number of typos appearing throughout. He also pads out the book somewhat (to which he admits). And if I were his nemesis Simon or his cousin Chris I would be considering suing for defamation. I'm not though, so I just laughed along and began looking forward to his next work.

I'll go home then is not an apt title by any means for any kind of book. Trust David Thorne to come up with it. It's not as good as Thorne's first book, The Internet's a playground. He knows this book is inferior, a fact that I grasped within the first few pages. Although the quite long foreword was good, it showed a different kind of humor, more slapstick.

The book's main jokes are double meaning. That's fine if the idea by itself is funny. Maybe this book is not for me but I did enjoy the Internet's a playground... what has changed? Well I think that David Thorne's simply happier and more mellow. He is relatively newly married and like the proverbial stand up comic, he is no longer bitter and his new-ish material lacks vim.

Did I go into this book with impossible to fulfill expectations? No. But I started reading with a wide grin that faded and would not reappear. Some of the entries are from his website. I didn't laugh then and I didn't laugh much thereafter at the old and new material. The fact that I couldn't understand the myriad references proves nothing as the few that I understood didn't improve the jokes and I also didn't feel rewarded a la Captain America in the Avengers.

Let me be clear, The Internet Is A Playground by David Thorne is the funniest book I've read in years, and I'm giving it 5 stars!

I first came across the legendary Australian author David Thorne when someone sent me his very funny email sequence Missing Missy and I became an instant fan.

His sense of humour is laugh out loud funny and really makes you want to share it with someone, which is hard when you're reading it at 1.00am in the morning and everyone else is asleep.

And yes, I laughed out loud on the tram reading it, but I didn't care; I just made sure I held up the book so that other passengers could see what I was reading and choose to make a note of the title if they wanted to. (Bookish courtesy).

The Internet Is A Playground by David Thorne is a brilliant gift idea for any occasion and a fantastic book to pick up when you need a good laugh. In fact, I even read some out to my physio at the end of a hard day of making small talk with her patients and she enjoyed it too!

Get it, read it, share it and enjoy it, you'll be smiling and laughing all the way through. I didn't want it to end and I'll be on the lookout for anything else from David Thorne.

*WARNING* All of the snarky remarks and slightly grayish humor should be taken with a grain of salt (or sugar if you prefer). They are intended to be made in good humor in light of the title and any offense caused to readers was unintended…unless you laughed, then THAT was intentional.*

Perhaps you’ve been to this author’s website before and witnessed his work first hand…than again, perhaps not. Hey, I don’t know what you do all day? To gain a little insight on him, in his own words (from the ARC back cover bio)…”..he reads too much, generally exceeds others’ tolerances, and listens to Linkin Park. He stays up too late, drinks too much coffee, smokes too much, hates getting up in the morning, and has offspring who thinks he doesn’t know what he has been up to when he deletes his Internet history.”

Yeah…that sounds about right…or at least it does once you’ve read his work. This is not a book to be taken seriously (hence the Humor genre in which it resides) but it is a book to be taken one sip at a time much like a dose of ill tasting medicine…you know it’s good for you, but it doesn’t change the fact that it can taste like the drippings from an oil pan. There are many topics covered within ranging from the benign to the OMG-you-did-not-just-write-about-that.

“Bill’s Guide to Everything on the Internet” is a condensed version of our multitude of social, search and shopping outlets with a penchant for the KISS method (stands for “Keep It Simple…Sally – well, in polite circles it is…) of description. Are they accurate? Some are (surprisingly) but mostly it’s just for kicks…or is it? (dun dun dunnnnn) Jetting forward some dozen pages we unearth “Ten Jobs I Would Rather Have Than Mine” that reveals the particular wonders of one day becoming a Fortune Cookie Writer (if you get a message from the future about a robot invasion in your next one…you know he met this aspiration) as well as a Forest Fire Lookout (though I’d be scared if he achieved this one…O-O), and everything in between (well not everything because then it would be called “A Million Jobs I’d Rather Have….”). Perhaps my favorite “conversation” in the collection is actually the first one you encounter about an overdue balance, an inability (or blatant refusal) to pay, and a drawing of a spider. LOL…I’m chuckling as I recall it right now…and getting strange looks from a passerby. *ahem*

Overall, a fun and funny filled read that I understood about 50% of the time…sorry, not everyone’s humor level revolves around a conversation about what type of monkey would be most useful. Yeahhhh. Scariest part? The introduction lists that the email conversations included…are all…verbatim. Might make you a little more wary the next time you send something out into the virtual black hole we call the Web. Recommended for older teens through adult readers. There is some questionable humor and offensive language, so it’s best to keep this one away from the kiddos. Just tell them the spider on the front will come to life if they touch it….

This was very funny for the first 100 or so pages. Then it just got old.
The author comes across as being very full of himself and kind of an ass. He seems to only find humor in tearing down other people, that's just not funny for very long.

I suppose this is what Whistler's "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies" looks like in the 21st century. Brilliant and unforgiving satire.

We've all seen it in our email, forwarded to us by a friend or co-worker. The email string is about a man who is trying to pay for a chiropractor's bill with a drawing of a spider. Then there's the Missing Missy lost cat poster. I'm always wary of the “this really happened” tag that comes along with these sorts of emails.

But these, my friends, are real. And so is David Thorne, the perpetrator. Thorne is a native of Australia with a wicked sense of humor, which you can bear witness to via his blog, 27b/6.

The Internet is a Playground is a hysterical collection of actual emails conversations between Thorne and some poor sap (his co-workers must hate getting emails from him), complaints he gets from blog visitors and other hilarious things that will make your sides ache.

From the very first moment I picked up this book and started reading it, I was laughing. Out loud, and uncontrollably. I read it to Hubby on the car ride home the day it came in the mail, and he was laughing so hard, we almost got into an accident. Later that night, I read Hubby the email string between Thorne and his kid’s teacher. I was laughing so hard I was crying and I couldn’t get the words out. And it was that obnoxious sort of laugh that makes you talk like you’ve just sucked down a bunch of helium balloons.

I need to meet this guy. For real. I think he’s my new hero.

When I finished the book, I had to share it with someone, and since I'm not the kind of person to go up to a random stranger and hand over a book, I gave it to my mom to read when while we waited in the airport on the way to San Fran.

She started laughing as soon as she opened it, quickly becoming my entertainment for our five-hour layover. I watched as her face contorted, eyes squinted, and then the held back laughter exploded. Seeing her react that way only sent me into fits of laughter as I remembered a string of emails from the book.

Of course, we were getting weird looks as passengers scooted to the farthest reaches of the terminal, but that only made the whole thing funnier. And you know what? I was totally okay with it.

This book instantly became one of my favorites with its laugh-out-loud-okay-to-pee-yourself humor. Read it.

READ it.

READ IT!!!

Seriously, though. Just read it. You won't be sorry.

Somehow, in the hundreds of thousands of hours I've spent mindlessly procrastinating on the internet, I never came across 27bslash6. When I read the synopsis for The Internet is a Playground, the antics of David Thorne were totally new to me and I was intrigued. Paying a doctor with a drawing of a spider? It seemed just the right level of random and slightly insane that my sense of humor seems to gravitate towards.

In his emails, Thorne manages to walk the obnoxious without ever having to resort to rudeness. It's hard to believe these people continue to reply to him. The book is full of articles and emails from his website, but the best are the emails with pictures, either along the same lines as the spider or where people ask him to create something for them but give him way too much room to interpret their directions. Another favorite is a email conversation between Thorne and a hate mailer beginning with "I have read your website and it is obviously that your a foggot."

Those who believe that adults should act as such and take life seriously will find Thorne and The Internet is a Playground offensive. Most, I think, will wish they'd found him and his website sooner. Seriously funny on a hard to describe level, you'll either "get" David Thorne and his book - or you just won't. In my case, The Internet is a Playground caused out of control laughter and caused people to look at me funny.

This book brings up the old question of Why Not Just Read It on the Internets?

What a great question, you jerk.

The success of David Thorne’s web site, www.27bslash6.com, got him a book deal. A complete book deal with pages, inks, cover, and so on. But part of the site’s success is that, working in graphic design, the web site is nicely formatted for computer viewing. Really it’s like reading an e-book where the intended format was a tiny screen. So why would one then take that e-book format and timewarp it into an analog book?

Well, because I don’t have the damn internet at home. Hence the above “jerk” comment.

The book is at its best in the email strings between David and his coworkers, local Blockbuster, and his son’s teacher. Like a sort of email Jerky Boy, he strings them along and the joke becomes the fact that someone would continue to correspond as long as they do. How much does someone have to tell you about the motion picture Water World before you, as a Blockbuster employee, feel that you’ve done your due diligence and let the dude rot in bad credit land? Apparently about one shitload.

The other postings vary. Some pretty great. Some great. Some pretty. Some none of those things.

You can probably just read it for free. Hell, you’re reading this on the internet right now, right? Try out this article: http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html and see if you like it.