Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Fun Family
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/benjamin-frisch * https://comicsgrinder.com/2016/07/13/review-the-fun-family-by-benjamin-frisch/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2016119043
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016119043
HEADING: Frisch, Benjamin (Cartoonist)
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035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca10570704
040 __ |a UOr |b eng |e rda |c UOr
100 1_ |a Frisch, Benjamin |c (Cartoonist)
370 __ |a Williamsburg (Va.) |e Williamsburg (Va.) |f Savannah (Ga.) |f Washington (D.C.) |f Chicago (Ill.) |f Austin (Tex.) |f Angoulême (France) |2 naf
372 __ |a Art |a Cartooning |a Graphic novels |a Comic books, strips, etc. |2 lcsh
373 __ |a Savannah College of Art and Design |a National Public Radio (U.S.) |2 naf
374 __ |a Cartoonists |a Book designers |2 lcsh
375 __ |a male
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Fun family, 2016: |b title page (Benjamin Frisch) back flap (Benjamin Frisch is a cartoonist and storyteller from Williamsburg, Virginia; he has an MFA in Sequential Art from the Savannah College of Art and Design; his work has appeared on the political satire site Wonkette, National Public Radio, and in the Graphic canon comics anthologies; Family fun is his first book.)
670 __ |a benjaminfrisch.me, via WWW, 29 August 2016 : |b (Benjamin Frisch was born in Williamsburg, Virginia and has lived in Savannah, Georgia; Washington D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Austin, Texas; and Angoulême, France; freelance designer and illustrator, writer, cartoonist, and artist.)
PERSONAL
Born in Williamsburg, VA.
EDUCATION:Savannah College of Art and Design, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, cartoonist, illustrator, graphic designer, and artist.
AWARDS:Artist residency, La Maison des Auteurs, Angoulême, France; Best Emerging Graphic Novelist, Austin Chronicle.
WRITINGS
Contributor of illustrations and cartoons to the Wonkette and National Public Radio Web sites. Contributor to comics to anthologies, including Graphic Canon.
SIDELIGHTS
Benjamin Frisch is a writer, cartoonist, illustrator, graphic designer, and artist originally from Williamsburg, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree from Savannah College of Art and Design. Frisch’s illustrations and cartoons have appeared on the Wonkette and National Public Radio Web sites, and he has contributed comics to anthologies, including Graphic Canon. Frisch was named the Best Emerging Graphic Novelist by the Austin Chronicle.
In 2016, Frisch released his first graphic novel, The Fun Family. In an interview with Jed W. Keith, contributor to the Freak Sugar Web site, he described the book’s plot, stating: “The Fun Family is a dark comedy about a perfect newspaper-cartoon family. Robert Fun, the father, is a newspaper cartoonist beloved for his cute comic strip ‘The Fun Family,’ drawn from his real family life. But real life is not a newspaper comic strip, and when things start to fall apart for the family each member looks for a new way to narrate their lives and cope with a strange and changing world. It’s a story about family, nostalgia, and the nature of work.” Frisch also told Keith: “I hope people come away from The Fun Family with a strong emotional reaction. I used to do a lot of work that was academically interesting, but emotionally dead, and I realized that I ultimately wanted to affect people, and ideally change the way people see the world in some small way. People seem to have strong opinions about the book, which is good, and intentional, so I’m pretty happy with that.”
In the book, Robert’s family begins to fall apart when he learns that his mother has died. Soon, Robert and his wife begin fighting regularly, and their older son, Robby, gets involved. Meanwhile, Robert tends to his collection of memorabilia, which he keeps hidden from the rest of the family. Robert and his wife decide to seek help with their relationship and begin going to family counseling. They also enlist a self-help guru in an attempt to save their family. In one counseling session, Robby reveals a secret about Robert that has a big impact on the family dynamic.
Reviewing The Fun Family in Booklist, Jesse Karp suggested: “Frisch takes our joyful expectations of sunny, jolly comic imagery and relentlessly tortures us with them in a harrowing
tale of surreal family dysfunction.” A Publishers Weekly critic described the juxtaposition of happy drawings and disturbing events as “a conceit that wears a bit thin.” However, the critic concluded: “The story spins out in a satisfying fashion.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 15, 2016, Jesse Karp, review of The Fun Family, p. 43.
Publishers Weekly, May 16, 2016, review of The Fun Family, p. 40.
ONLINE
Book Goggles, http://mybookgoggles.blogspot.com/ (April 28, 2016), review of The Fun Family.
Comics Grinder, https://comicsgrinder.com/ (July 13, 2016), review of The Fun Family.
Freak Sugar, http://www.freaksugar.com/ (July 12, 2016), Jed W. Keith, author interview.
Top Shelf Comix, http://www.topshelfcomix.com/ (February 14, 2017), author profile.
Benjamin Frisch is a cartoonist and storyteller from Williamsburg, Virginia. He has an MFA in Sequential Art from Savannah College of Art and Design, and participated in the international artist residency program La Maison Des Auteurs in Angoulême, France.
His work has appeared on the political satire site Wonkette, National Public Radio, and in the Graphic Canon comics anthologies; the Austin Chronicle has declared him the Best Emerging Graphic Novelist.
The Fun Family is his first book.
QUOTED: "The Fun Family is a dark comedy about a perfect newspaper-cartoon family. Robert Fun, the father, is a newspaper cartoonist beloved for his cute comic strip “The Fun Family,” drawn from his real family life. But real life is not a newspaper comic strip, and when things start to fall apart for the family each member looks for a new way to narrate their lives and cope with a strange and changing world. It’s a story about family, nostalgia, and the nature of work."
"I hope people come away from The Fun Family with a strong emotional reaction. I used to do a lot of work that was academically interesting, but emotionally dead, and I realized that I ultimately wanted to affect people, and ideally change the way people see the world in some small way. People seem to have strong opinions about the book, which is good, and intentional, so I’m pretty happy with that."
BENJAMIN FRISCH BRINGS PARODY & SATIRE WITH THE FUN FAMILY
Jed W. Keith Jul 12, 2016 Comic Books
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It would be easy to call Benjamin Frisch’s The Fun Family, on sale now from Top Shelf Comix, a take-down of the classic comic The Family Circus, with its art reminiscent of the long-running saccharine strip. However, upon closer reading, it’s abundantly clear that, while parody is on Frisch’s mind, the writer and artist has an eye at looking at the darker side of Americana and all that comes with it, warts and all.
Mr. Frisch spoke with me recently about the genesis of The Fun Family, his influences, and how political satire has shaped him as a storyteller.
FreakSugar: For folks who might be considering picking up the book, how would you describe The Fun Family?
Benjamin Frisch: The Fun Family is a dark comedy about a perfect newspaper-cartoon family. Robert Fun, the father, is a newspaper cartoonist beloved for his cute comic strip “The Fun Family,” drawn from his real family life. But real life is not a newspaper comic strip, and when things start to fall apart for the family each member looks for a new way to narrate their lives and cope with a strange and changing world. It’s a story about family, nostalgia, and the nature of work, among other things.
THE FUN FAMILY cover
THE FUN FAMILY cover
FS: Your background is in cartooning. While graphic novels are a huge leap from that medium, there’s a big enough a difference in what you can do in storytelling to allow you to stretch your legs a bit differently. What was the appeal for you to put your toes in the graphic novel waters?
BF: I tend to think of my background as visual storytelling, rather than something as specific as strips. I learned to draw by drawing short comics, but long-form work was always what drew me to the medium. I grew up on comic strips and while I remain a big fan of individual Calvin and Hobbes strips, it was always the multi-strip “arcs” that I loved the most. My personal taste also leans towards self-contained stories, so for me, even something like Ayn Rand’s Adventures, which was serialized in a strip-like way for Wonkette is more like a novella than a collection of individual strips.
Short comics are the best way to learn the medium and it’s what I focused on as a student. It’s much easier to learn from drawing and screwing up a lot of short things than ruining one long disaster. A lot of young artists have that massive project they’ve been dreaming up since they were young, but it rarely gets accomplished because long-form works take a certain amount of confidence and discipline that takes time to develop.
From THE FUN FAMILY
From THE FUN FAMILY
FS: The book has a very unique look and feel that marries wonderfully with the words. What made you decide on how you wanted The Fun Family to look?
BF: Thanks, I’m very proud of the look of the book. I had experimented with drawing comics in all different styles: cubism, medieval manuscripts, Greek pottery, kid’s drawings, etc. for a long time and so I was comfortable swapping styles per project. When I decided to do a story about a cutesy newspaper comic strip family, it seemed natural to draw it in a style inspired by that source material. One of the most exciting things about comics and animation is the ability to marry style and story in ways that resonate through the whole narrative. In comics, the art is the story, and so I knew I wanted to create ironic tension between the cutesy style and the more mature story. Not every story could use the same type of approach as The Fun Family, but for the right story, adopting an artificial style can be a really useful and fun storytelling device.
From THE FUN FAMILY
From THE FUN FAMILY
FS: Following up on that, I love the riff on The Family Circus which, frankly, always gave me a sugar coma whenever I read it. Was that nod intentional?
BF: Yes, absolutely. The Family Circus has some amazing unexplored premises like the “not-me” gremlins and the religious aspects of strip which suggest a kind of magical-realist world to me. My favorite unexplored premise serves as the basis for the story: that the father of the family in the comic strip is drawing the comic strip that you’re reading. Once I committed to the premise, the rest sort of blossomed around it, and it became its own story with its own aims. I don’t really mean it as a take-down of The Family Circus, many of those already exist, but it is a parody in a sense. I don’t usually use that word since “parody” often conjures the type of joke I’ve tried to avoid in the story, stuff that’s really gritty or raunchy, but it’s absolutely a parody in the technical sense since it uses The Family Circus as a jumping-off point.
From THE FUN FAMILY
From THE FUN FAMILY
FS: What cartoons or comic strips, good or bad, do you feel have influenced your work?
BF: I grew up on Calvin and Hobbes and later discovered The Sandman in middle school, which was the series that made me want to draw comics. Like many I went through a manga phase, which probably arrested my artistic development for a time, but in the end it positively influenced my approach to style and the pacing of my stories. I later discovered independent and European comics, and they’ve all had an influence on me. Some of my favorite cartoonists and animators off the top of my head are Paul Grimault, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, David B., Nicolas de Crécy, Dave Mckean, FSc, David Mazzucchelli, Moebius, Jeff Smith, and Hayao Miyazaki. I was also lucky enough to school with some incredibly talented cartoonists who are doing amazing work right now, especially Coleman Engle and Becky Dreistadt, who’ve had a huge effect on my artistic development.
FS: You’ve contributed to Wonkette and NPR, delving into political satire. What appeals to you about political satire and how has it shaped who you are as a storyteller?’
BF: I follow politics probably too closely, so it appeals to my interests and it’s a pretty natural mode for me to work in. My favorites are probably the BBC series The Thick of It, and the movie Network.
I do think political satire is in a strange, difficult place right now. Satire relies on exaggeration, and conservative politics is so self-parodying that when exaggerated it becomes so completely absurd it becomes divorced from reality. The other option is to just re-represent politics as it exists, which risks becoming the thing it wants to critique. When a reading of Donald Trump’s tweets works as a regular comedy segment (as on the great podcast Trumpcast) it sort of negates the traditional function of satire. There are still plenty of things to satirize, of course, but politics seems especially difficult to do well at the moment.
From THE FUN FAMILY
From THE FUN FAMILY
FS: What’s your process like when you sit down to work on a project like this? Is there a particular headspace you need to be in?
BF: A project like The Fun Family is a huge all-encompassing thing for me. It’s not so much about headspace, rather, I just need to have confidence in the story and know that it works on some level, from beginning to end before I really commit. Once I do have that confidence, I can just do it, which is the easy part. I work very systematically, which just takes time and dedication to execute. I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, of course, but doing it one day at a time keeps it manageable. The ideas I’ve been working on since finishing The Fun Family haven’t reached that level yet, which can be frustrating, but it’s sort of just how it goes for me.
FS: Do you have any other projects coming down the pike?
BF: It’s nowhere near the scale of The Fun Family, but I have a short, straightforward adaptation of Oedipus Tyrannus in the upcoming Graphic Canon of Crime anthology from Seven Stories Press that I’m really proud of. I tried adapting an overly ambitious meta-version of Oedipus into a full-length graphic novel for a long time, before The Fun Family, and no publisher was ever interested in it, so this feels like a nice little return to that story.
FS: What do you want to be central takeaway for readers after reading The Fun Family?
BF: I don’t want to be specific because I like to let people have their own interpretations of the story, but I hope people come away from The Fun Family with a strong emotional reaction. I used to do a lot of work that was academically interesting, but emotionally dead, and I realized that I ultimately wanted to affect people, and ideally change the way people see the world in some small way. People seem to have strong opinions about the book, which is good, and intentional, so I’m pretty happy with that.
QUOTED: "Frisch takes our joyful expectations of sunny, jolly comic imagery and relentlessly tortures us with them in a harrowing
tale of surreal family dysfunction."
The Fun Family
Jesse Karp
Booklist.
113.2 (Sept. 15, 2016): p43.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The Fun Family. By Benjamin Frisch. Illus. by the author. 2016.240p. Top Shelf, paper, $24.99 (9781603093446). 741.5.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In his first graphic novel, Frisch takes our joyful expectations of sunny, jolly comic imagery and relentlessly tortures us with them in a harrowing
tale of surreal family dysfunction. Robert Fun illustrates a syndicated strip that captures the humor of his own family life for public consumption.
But when his mother passes away and his oldest son, Robby, is browbeaten into revealing his father's deepest secret during therapy, the family is
blown to smithereens, and readers are plunged into a bright, fuzzy nightmare, in which children suffer the impossible cruelty of obliviously selfobsessed
parents, and even the angel of a beloved, departed grandmother can lead a child toward apparent ruin. Thrusting characters so clearly
inspired by Bill Keane's Family Circus into one of Charles Burns' feverish landscapes of psychological trauma, Frisch wields the medium and our
collective associations with it like a weapon. By creating a world of cherub-faced people with bold, happy features living in an idealized,
primary-colored Middle America, he arranges it so that even in the throes of his characters' deepest misery, an oppressive, inescapable gaiety
always bears down. And just when you think you can simply march off into the nightmare, his challenging ending forces you to confront your
notion of what happiness is, how we claim it, and whether one kind is more valid than another. --Jesse Karp
2/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486343164435 2/3
YA: With a fractured view of family and a child protagonist forced to take on more responsibility than he can possibly handle, Fun Family will
speak eloquently to older teens ready to grapple with some difficult emotions. JK.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Karp, Jesse. "The Fun Family." Booklist, 15 Sept. 2016, p. 43. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464980889&it=r&asid=ed373b0f5e99437636d4ac1010e247c7. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A464980889
---
QUOTED: "a conceit that wears a bit thin." "the story spins out
in a satisfying fashion."
2/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486343164435 3/3
The Fun Family
Publishers Weekly.
263.20 (May 16, 2016): p40.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Fun Family
Benjamin Frisch. IDW/Top Shelf, $24.99 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-60309-344-6
Drawing equal parts inspiration from Bill Keane's saccharine daily Family Circus strip and Alison Bechdel's groundbreaking autobiographical
work, Frisch's debut graphic novel is a surreal exploration of the fractured suburban family, worthy of a Sam Mendes directorial turn. Things start
out idyllic enough, inside a round panel with a single caption, a la the Family Circus, but when a phone call reveals the death of a beloved
grandmother, everything the Fun family believes in gets questioned. Dad Robert Fun is a cartoonist, drawing cartoons that look as plastic as the
memorabilia collection he keeps in his crawl space; son Robby must navigate marital squabbles, family counseling, and a self-help guru as the
family fractures. Frisch's cutesy art is purposely played against the angsty goings-on, a conceit that wears a bit thin. However, the story spins out
in a satisfying fashion, revealing that nothing is ever quite as fun as it seems. June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Fun Family." Publishers Weekly, 16 May 2016, p. 40. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453506788&it=r&asid=033cbdbc5e8e02e54994cd630d24e860. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A453506788
QUOTED: "This is a well-constructed graphic novel. No real argument there. And the humor may hold up for some folks. As for me, if feels like Frisch is hammering away at something that is not exactly all that subversive as that is clearly his goal."
“The Fun Family” is the debut graphic novel by Benjamin Frisch. It is a satire of wholesome family comic strips with a decided focus on Bil Keane’s “Family Circus.” I think Frisch is a decent cartoonist but this work does not make me want to poke fun at family-oriented comic strips that are supposedly shallow and trite. No, instead, it makes me want to defend all comic strips, especially the masterful work of Bil Keane! That said, I do appreciate what Frisch is after here. He has set up an ongoing gag where he has the anti-Family Circus family crumble before our eyes. Meet the Fun family, they are not what they seem.
Frisch goes about his task with a good deal of precision. We are swept right into the family dynamics as each member recites what they are thankful for before dinner. We observe a hearty and classic nuclear family, all Ozzie and Harriet pleasantries intact. And then little junior picks up the phone and is given the news, via an automated message from the hospital, that grandma has passed away. This event triggers a downward spiral that just keeps going downward. This hits Robert Fun, the patriarch, especially hard. How can he continue to draw his world-famous circle-shaped newspaper comic strip celebrating the wholesome American family?
Everyone in this comic within a comic is drawn in the old-fashioned spit polish style of a family comic strip except all vibrancy has been replaced with a certain strangeness. The artwork is keyed down, all the characters either look lifeless or ugly compared to the original Family Circus characters. You think that family fun is the norm? Frisch tells you to think again. It’s an undeniably intriguing concept for a graphic novel. The narrative weaves its way through showing up how families are not perfect and how quack counseling can make matters worse. We also have an interesting mirroring of events going on as little Robby follows in his dad’s footsteps and creates his own successful family comic strip.
This is a well-constructed graphic novel. No real argument there. And the humor may hold up for some folks. As for me, if feels like Frisch is hammering away at something that is not exactly all that subversive as that is clearly his goal. The Simpsons series, reveling in family dysfunction, has been on TV for nearly 30 years. It is common to ridicule a tepid and disingenuous slogan like, “family values.” So, I can’t back down on feeling compelled to support Bil Keane’s life work, now continued by his son, Jeff Keane. What’s next? Are we going to bash Hank Ketcham and Charles M. Schulz? Surely, I ask this with tongue in cheek. It’s not that I can’t take a joke and I do believe that Frisch is capable of telling a joke.
Great satire is great satire. You just know when it comes together. All you need to do is read Mad magazine and read how it has cleverly satirized family comic strips over the years. In the case of “The Fun Family,” the point is made about family dysfunction in a didactic fashion that may prove to be too much of a good thing. That said, you may be alright with the tone to this book. I definitely look forward to more of Frisch’s work. How about a satire on this satire? Now, that could prove to be very interesting and Frisch could prove to be just the right cartoonist to take that on.
“The Fun Family” is a 240-page full-color softcover graphic novel. For more details, visit Top Shelf Productions right here.
QUOTED: "it's hard not to share in Robby's frustration when he tries so hard to achieve success and for a brief moment gets it, only for that success to falter and leave. It's especially easy to empathize when Robby sees everyone around him seemingly become happy despite their methods having aspects that are just as toxic as the lifestyle they all left behind."
"this book would have greatly benefited from being far shorter than it was."
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Review: The Fun Family by Benjamin Frisch
Beloved cartoonist Robert Fun has earned a devoted following for his circular daily comic strip, celebrating the wholesome American family by drawing inspiration from his real home life... but the Fun Family bears some dark secrets. As their idyllic world collapses and the kids are forced to pick up the pieces, will their family circle become a broken mirror, or a portal to a nightmare world? In his debut graphic novel, Benjamin Frisch presents a surreal deconstruction of childhood, adulthood, and good old American obsession.
I'll be straight up honest with you from the get go. I really didn't like this work. There's a lot going on here and at times I really felt that Frisch was just trying a little too hard to bring in various different themes and deconstruct not only the long running and beloved daily comic The Family Circus, but various American ideas, ideals, and thought processes. There may be some minor spoilers in this here and there, so fair warning.
That said, I do have to say that Frisch has certainly done a good job of capturing some of the most prevalent habits of modern day humanity and showcasing how ludicrous those habits can become. Psychology and religion are two common opiates of the masses and while it'd be initially easy to assume that Frisch is ridiculing them because they exist, this isn't what he's doing here. What Frisch is doing, or at least what I thought he was doing, was showing how utterly dependent people are on either practice, following them so obediently that they rarely question or challenge whether or not they're acting in ways that is ultimately healthy for either themselves or the people around them. The only person who really challenges these ideals is the eldest son Robby, as he tries to find a way to maintain the status quo even as those around him dismiss him for his actions.
Now before you go and start to think that Robby represents the rational mind in this work, you need to understand that Robby is also representative of an unhealthy line of thought himself. Part of the reason why everyone in the book launched into their own particular, frequently dysfunctional methods of finding self-enlightenment and happiness is because the status quo wasn't working for them. They were unhappy because they were in this unchanging world and ultimately what Robby is asking for is for them to return to that life. The only problem is that once the dam opens up and the flooding starts it's pretty much impossible to return to the way things once were, especially when the one trying to restore the prior pecking order is not the person who created said order. Still, it's hard not to share in Robby's frustration when he tries so hard to achieve success and for a brief moment gets it, only for that success to falter and leave. It's especially easy to empathize when Robby sees everyone around him seemingly become happy despite their methods having aspects that are just as toxic as the lifestyle they all left behind.
I really think that this book would have greatly benefited from being far shorter than it was, but I can't help but wonder if the book's length was a deliberate nod towards the longevity of comics like The Family Circus where its never aging cast goes through the same actions again and again. If it was then that's sort of clever but it still didn't do much for me as a reader and at times I just really wanted things to wrap up. If I'd picked this up in a bookstore I'd have put this back unfinished, but as a reviewer I figured that I'd keep going.
Now something to take in mind here is that opinions on work like this are highly, highly subjective. Surreal comics of this type rarely achieve mainstream popularity, so I can't entirely dismiss this offhand. I didn't like it, but I do admire how darn ambitious Frisch was with this work. The artwork is well done in that it doesn't fit well with the story's feel, which produces a jarring effect that's actually one of the things I liked about the piece. The whole wrongness of it was just interesting.
So do I recommend this? Eh... I'm not sure. I disliked the work but as you can tell it clearly made me think, so I kind of have to recommend this as one of those "make you think" type of deals. The reviews for this work are likely to be predominantly negative, but if this work doesn't develop a cult following I'm going to be very surprised.
Edit:
I'm not going to push this up another star since I didn't get three stars of enjoyment out of it, but I do have to say that I have kept thinking about Fun Family days afterwards. When I describe it to people I do say that I didn't particularly like it, but I have to say that I didn't actually hate it either. I'd actually go so far as to say that I might actually flip through this again at some point in the future if I saw it at my library. I wouldn't own it, but I'd read at least part of it again.
2/5 stars