Last Call at the 7-Eleven: Fine Dining at 2 A.M., the Search for Spandex People, and Other Reasons to Go On Living

Description

Discusses fine dining at 2 a.m. and other loopy subjects with which we're all familiar.

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-06-07
Summary: "Bite-sized nuggets of humor!"

I thoroughly enjoy nonfiction, especially humorous essays and memoirs. Last Call at the 7-Eleven is a collection of selected columns written by Kevin Cowherd, a nationally-syndicated humorist and sports writer for The Baltimore Sun.

What a hilarious read! Kevin Cowherd's essays run the gamut and had me laughing out loud as I zipped through this snappy number. Each essay is only a few pages-originally published individually in a newspaper column format in The Baltimore Sun-and were like snack-sized bits of humor.

I giggled my way through columns with titles like "That Barney is Such a Reptile" and "Real Men Don't Wear Pajamas". One of my favorites, "Surgeons Good Enough for Celebrities", brought up a salient point-the American public tends to "measure surgeons...(by the) famous patients they have cut open."

I'm a huge fan of nonfiction humor writing and really enjoyed this book. Cowherd is witty and hyperobservant. He's still writing for the newspaper, though his focus seems to have shifted to a more sports-based column, I still had a chuckle while reading a recent column.

Some of the references in this book are pretty dated-it was published back in 1995 and the columns were culled from over 1200 written from the late 80s to the mid-90s. Cowherd also has a tendency to repurpose some of his favorite sayings and metaphors, but I'm guilty of that myself.

The book is a breezy read that packs a humorous punch on scores of topics. You can read a few columns here and there without a huge committment; the book lends itself to that reading style.