Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Synopsis
Polite, pensive, mature, reserved ...Charlie Brooker is none of these things and less. Rude, unhinged, outrageous, and above all funny, "Dawn of the Dumb" is essential reading for anyone with a brain and a spinal cord. And hands for turning the pages. Picking up where his hilarious "Screen Burn" left off, "Dawn of the Dumb" collects the best of Charlie Brooker's recent TV writing, together with uproarious spleen-venting diatribes on a range of non-televisual subjects - tackling everything from David Cameron to human hair.

Customer Reviews

Open Season
What a fantastic gift Charlie has for seeking out deserving targets and what an icredibly witty and acidic delivery of his megaton scorn, and the recipients truly deserve it. I noticed on breakfast TV a couple of days ago we had a celebrity builder (a legitimate target if ever there was one). Maybe next we will have a celebrity welder, mini photolab operative or VAT inspector in line for the Brooker treatment.

A great book of truly amazing humour and I think one that is best enjoyed in short bursts, so that you can gird up your loins for the next bit, Brilliant stuff. Also check out Viz's 'Roger's Profanisaurus' and Alan Bates' 'The Post Box at the Crossroads'

Charlie Brooker is right about everything
This is a collection of Charlie Brooker's newspaper articles and TV reviews from 2004 to 2007. About half is television reviews, the other half is what I'd hesitantly call 'lifestyle' which can cover anything from Facebook to haircuts to Banksy.

Brooker is the best ascerbic angry writer and reviewer there is. Maintaining an almost constant level of fury throughout, underneath the sarcasm and the comedic threats of violence are reams of very interesting points about the TV we watch and the culture we're a part of it.

To really appreciate some of the TV reviews you'll be better off if you do have an idea how Big Brother works, or who Gillian McKeith is, and if you do know those things but you wish you didn't, then even better.

Personally I enjoyed reading this book in bite-sized chunks- just the odd few pages here and there when I was feeling complacent. Reading it all in one go would put you in a seriously bad mood- or perhaps it would be a very cathartic experience for you..?

Spider Jerusalem meets Oliver Kalkofe
... the first one being the "Transmetropolitan" comic series cynic' journalist/hero, the second being a German comedian feared and loved for his witty comments on German TV rubbish.

Too obscure? That's exactly my problem with Brooker's book: Not coming from the UK, I haven't heard of half of the TV shows he refers to, and hardly ever bothered to watch the (usually: continental version of the) other half. But brainless idiocy is a world-wide phenomenon - the mindless TV formats and media goons are indeed so generic that it doesn't really matter.

Throughout most of the book, the author is busy shouting back at TV shows that would insult a six-year-old's intelligence and sense of taste. Funny, witty, and aimed at a deserving target - but tiring after some time. It's when he focusses on the retarded stuff of real life this book really gets interesting: Politics. 9/11 conspiracy nuts. Religion, as in "notoriously offended feelings" and violent fundamentalism.

Brookers unrestrained use of sarcasm is simply hilarious, even if his targets are quite often not worth the effort. If you like watching dumbness being bludgeoned in all its forms, you will probably find this book as refreshing as I did.