Book Review : "Animals Talking In All Caps"

Animals Talking in All Caps: It's Just What It Sounds Like by Justin Valmassoi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having just slogged through a pair of dusty old classics, I needed something light to read, and voila! This.

What began as something posted on social media became this book, with rather lovely photos of animals, birds, and other wildlife, accompanied by the author's hilarious, deadpan and spot-on inserted dialogue attributed to said creatures.

This is not "I Can Haz Cheeseburger." The grammar is correct and punctuated. The animals opine about very specific coffee orders, relationships, veganism, bands they like, work, cosmic truths, and being very very high. What makes this book particularly funny is the author's ear for how people actually talk, even down to the stuff that most of us think but rarely express. There is celebrity lust. Petty complaints. Stuffy snobbery. Revenge on exes. Musings about the Universe.

An orange tiger asks a white one to explain the appeal of Coldplay. A tree frog wonders what Joseph Gordon-Levitt smells like. A horse gets excited about knick-knacks in a shop window. An over-enthusiastic insect tries to sell you a property. A goat touts the quality his meth. A turtle couple squabble over what "taking a break" from each other means. And so on, including pedantic animals who are sensitive to bad grammar.

You will recognize yourself and those you know or have met, on these pages. You will laugh yourself silly, and just sometimes, you will see yourself and it will hit a little close to home but you'll still laugh. A lot. Above all, this is a pin of a book aimed straight at the balloon of our human preoccupations, pretensions, and puffery. It is spit-your-drink funny, Linda. Highly recommended.

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