Best. State. Ever.

July 1, 2016
A breezy travelogue through swampland, strip clubs, and a retirement community reported to be rife with swingers.As a humorist who has long found plenty of material in his adopted state, Barry (Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster): Life Lessons and Other Ravings from Dave Barry, 2015, etc.) has come this time to celebrate Florida, though in the process, he recounts plenty of the sorts of anecdotes that have made the state such a national laughingstock. The author believes that the tide turned toward ridicule in 2000, when Florida's pivotal role in the presidential election made the state seem particularly inept--and introduced "hanging chads" into the national parlance. Yet the more significant before-and-after where this book is concerned dates to three decades earlier, when Disney World transformed the state's tourism in 1971. The Mouse remains the elephant in the room as Barry focuses his attention on Florida's distinct identity as a tourist destination pre-Disney and what the behemoth has done to those attractions since. Typical is his visit to Weeki Wachee Springs, "which, of all the classic Florida roadside tourist attractions, is one of the Florida-est." Its underwater theater and mermaid choreography may pale in comparison with the high-tech, heavily marketed Disneyfication of the state, but for those who love bargains and hate crowds, this is the Florida that Barry celebrates. "I concede that, by modern theme-park standards, it is dated, hokey and unsophisticated," he writes. "In other words, it's great. I mean that sincerely. Weeki Wachee is a time machine that takes you back to a different era." The tour also encompasses the Everglades, Gatorland, and a ghost town with a haunted hotel. It ends with the back-to-back bacchanalia of an upscale Miami night club and Key West, "Florida's Florida--the place way down at the bottom where the weirdest of the weird end up; the place where the abnormal is normal." Readers may not embrace Florida the way the author has, but they will understand why a humorist loves it.

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April 15, 2016

The very funny Barry, a Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary, not to mention a New York Times best-selling author, goes out on a limb--or maybe a sandbar--to defend his often-scoffed-at state of Florida.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016

In his typically humorous style, Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer Is Much Faster) author Barry proclaims his love for Florida and shares his experiences at some of the state's tourist traps. He offers his unscientific assumptions that the Sunshine State became a "joke state" as a result of the 2000 presidential election, and that some people who come from other places stay because they can't find their way off the peninsula. He extols the area's virtues: it's warm, not boring, and has low taxes and amazing women. He checks out the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters, where there's a lot of merchandise for sale featuring a creature few have spotted. In the town of Cassadaga, known for its spiritualism, Barry meets a medium. He visits Weeki-Wachee, home of a mermaid show, and the Villages, a wildly popular retirement community. Each sight is rated with a possible five out-of-order Mold-A-Matics, although Lock & Load Miami, where he shoots a machine gun, earns six. He spends time at Gatorland and Spongearama, rants about celebrity DJs at the hottest club in Miami, and barhops in Key West. VERDICT Illustrated with the author's snapshots, this title offers a funny view of Florida. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/16.]--Janet Clapp, N. Clarendon, VT

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.