Happy Cruelty Day!: Daily Celebrations of Quiet Desperation

For everyone looking to find a little extra magic in a life with little to celebrate, Happy Cruelty Day! is here. Beginning on January 1, this book features 365 new holidays, each accompanied by a strange, dark and humorous short story explaining the day you woke up in and how to celebrate it. These 365 daily doses of delight, perversion, and nonsense include Hire Someone Attractive To Pretend To Love You Day, Hang on to Your Wide-Eyed Innocence Day, Sit in Abject Terror Day, and, of course, Cruelty Day.

Far more than just a humor book, Happy Cruelty Day! is like a daily instructional manual written by a psychopath. On one page, the book has you joining a community crime watch group in an effort to make friends (it won't work). Flip the page, and you'll find the details of your attempt to rescue your husband from a POW camp (you'll fail). Flip it again, and Happy Cruelty Day! will have important insight into how best to befriend a runaway teen (offer her some soup).

These holidays celebrate everything from that pivotal point in your life when everything changes, to the day you're not going to do anything but sit on the edge of your bed and get very drunk. When people realize they've fallen in love, or when they realize their love was just a lie. And of course, when love of whatever incarnation brings an index finger to clench tight around the trigger of a gun.

Raw, ridiculous, and laugh-out-loud funny, this is a sharp-edged satire on the subtleties, shallowness, and stupidity of daily life.

Author: Bob Powers
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Published: 12/26/2006
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780312359522

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/27/2006 pg. 45
Library Journal 02/01/2007 pg. 73

About the Author

Bob Powers has performed at HBO's Aspen Comedy Festival, and he cohosts and performs in the monthly reading series How to Kick People in New York City. Bob has written for Flaunt magazine, The Onion A.V. Club, and the New York Press.

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