Lessons from Lucy by Dave Barry

Published by Simon & Schuster on April 2, 2019

Dogs are effortlessly happy. Joy is a default state. Humans too often ignore daily or even hourly opportunities to be happy, if only for a few moments. Humans should be more like dogs. And there you have one of the lessons Dave Barry offers, but with a lot more humor, in Lessons from Lucy.

Barry is 70; Lucy is 10; both are entering their senior years. Barry wrote the book, he says, to try to identify how his dog Lucy manages to be so happy and whether he can apply those techniques to his own life.

Barry meanders a bit, as is his style, before he gets around to imparting each lesson, some of which are only tangentially related to dogs, not that it matters. The funniest chapter (to me) explains why aging sucks, and the funniest line is that AARP is the last sound people make before they die. Barry also pokes fun at mindfulness, motivational events, scallops, the folly of outsourcing customer service to distant countries, people who don’t think about what they might want to order until they reach the front of a fast food line, and many other targets. For a bit of time in each of the seven chapters, he talks about Lucy, who sounds like a wonderful dog, much like all other dogs except possibly the little ones who need to be carried all the time (one of the many prejudices I have in common with Barry, whose books I like because he seems to be a lot like me, only funnier).

Lucy’s lessons are things like Make Friends Easily, Never Stop Having Fun, Be a Good Companion to the People You Love, Let Go of Your Anger, and You Do Not Need More Stuff to Be Happy. All of those lessons (and more) are illustrated with amusing examples of the ways in which Barry could make his life better, as well as amusing examples of how Lucy lives those lessons effortlessly. So this is sort of a self-help book (although Barry makes fun of self-help authors in an epilog), but it is really a light examination of how someone who is getting older might not be too old to think about how to live a better life. And who can teach better lessons about living a good life than an aging dog?

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Best. State. Ever. by Dave Barry

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on September 6, 2016

Dave Barry set about rehabilitating (or destroying, if that’s even possible) the image of Florida, which is perceived (in Barry's words) as “being a subtropical festival of stupid.” To make his point, Barry chronicles a number of events (some of which actually happened) in which Floridians did things that were stupid, or at least weird. Those events have made Florida “the Joke State,” the state everyone loves to mock. Barry took on this project because Florida’s critics live in states that are equally mockable, a fact he proves by defining the shortcomings of a good number of states, particularly Illinois and New York.

To extoll the good things about Florida, Barry drove around and wrote about the things he found, most of which are pretty stupid, although (as Barry sees it) in a good way. After introductory chapters that I thought were hilarious, the bulk of the book rates only as amusing on the Dave Barry laugh-o-meter.

Highlights of the book include: a politically correct tribute to Miami’s smoking hot women (not that, as an evolved male who does not objectify women, he would ever notice them); a critique of senior line dancers at The Villages, a retirement community that celebrates its lack of diversity; an incursion into LIV, an outrageously expensive Miami nightclub; and bar-hopping in Key West, a city that is renowned for its Jimmy Buffet clones and naked people who should leave their clothes on.

Extended discussions of sketchy tourist attractions (skunk apes, the Weeki Wachi underwater theater, concrete dinosaurs, Spongeorama, Gatorland, and the spiritualist community of Cassadaga) are less funny, if only because so much time is devoted to narrating things that Barry saw, rather than mocking them. Or perhaps he’s just too nice, and too genuinely appreciative of kitsch, to give ripoff roadside attractions the skewering they have earned. Still, he does mock the Cassadaga spiritualists, making that one of the better parts of the book. I also enjoyed his celebration of manliness during a visit to Lock & Load, where visitors get to shoot machineguns, an activity that has sensibly been declared illegal in nearly every other non-military context.

This isn’t as funny as vintage Dave Barry, but it’s still funny. It’s even funnier if you’ve traveled in Florida and can attest to the wisdom of Barry’s observations.

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The Worst Class Trip Every by Dave Barry

Published by Disney-Hyperion on May 5, 2015

The Worst Class Trip Ever is narrated by Wyatt Palmer, an eighth grader. I suspect that eighth graders are the target audience (this is a Disney book, after all) but hey, it's Dave Barry, so it has to be funny, even for adults (particularly those who, like me, have not matured much beyond their eighth grade years). The novel relies on fart humor, always a winner for eighth graders, and "short geeky boy has no chance with cool tall girl" humor, which works at any age.

The class trip that gives the book its title involves a flight to Washington. On the plane, Wyatt and his friend Matt believe they are foiling terrorists who want to attack the city, but they may be mistaken, or so the Air Marshal believes who nearly arrests them. Once in the city, Wyatt and Matt spend much of their tour time worrying about the strange men from the plane -- with good reason, given that Matt has stolen a suspicious object from their backpack. The strange men spend about half of the brief novel chasing the kids around the city in an effort to get it back. Hijinks ensue.

The Worst Class Trip Ever is a quick read. The story is cute, funny in a silly but predictable way (although perhaps not so predictable to an eighth grade audience). It made me chuckle, as Dave Barry always does, although not as much as he does when he gears his writing to a slightly older audience. Barry's language is simple and clean (unless you think fart is a bad word). I have no trouble recommending this to an age appropriate audience, which might range from 12 to 90. Maybe even a year or two younger or older.

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