A Load of Hooey

The first humor collection from comedian Odenkirk is—to quote Forrest Gump— like a box of chocolates. That is to say, its 34 offerings are small, diverse, and consistently delicious. Whether skewering pretensions or making darker, sometimes political, points, the narrative has the deadpan earnestness of Comedy Central’s fake news shows, and the details are blissfully on point. Some standouts include “Martin Luther King’s Worst Speech Ever,” “Baseball Players’ Poems About Sportswriters and Sportswriting,” and “So You Want To Get a Tattoo!” More mordant in their humor are “The Phil Spector I Know,” which takes the American cult of celebrity to a disturbing extreme, and “I Misspoke,” in which a political candidate with heinous views slickly “corrects” the public record. Sprinkled throughout the book, like palate cleansers, are 15 fabricated “Famous Quotations”: for example,“Know thyself. Come on. Hurry up. We’re waiting. Oh, forget it.—Socrates.” Readers who know Odenkirk from his role as Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad may not remember his HBO sketch comedy series, The Mr. Show with Bob and David, which was similarly topical and mischievous. His work here is in the same vein—whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny. Agent: Erin Malone, WME Entertainment. (Oct.)