Another hilarious and fantastic collection of Far Side cartoons. There's a lot of the classics in this one (like the school of the gifted gag with the kid pushing instead of pulling, etc.)

Unfortunately a whole page was ripped in half. Gotta love library books. ( )

Oh, books of my past.

I've had [b:The Far Side Gallery|77281|The Far Side Gallery|Gary Larson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347379733s/77281.jpg|105673] books for as long as I can remember. I grew up reading these comics and giggling to myself. Every time I come back to them I understand some of the more 'adult' and scientific jokes and puns and the comics only get more enjoyable. This collection of five books is fantastic, and brings together all (?) or at least a significant amount of [a:Gary Larson|19928|Gary Larson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1213672623p2/19928.jpg]'s work.
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So simple, so laughable ( )

Another used book store visit, another Far Side book purchased, and now, read. I had to head to the Iliad, the used book shop in North Hollywood, to pick up a children's book to donate in lieu of a birthday present. While there, I happened to pick up this book, and the Get Fuzz book Take Our Cat, Please. I of course enjoyed - and I think this may have been the Far Side book I was reading when I visited Calistoga with my parents about 14 years ago ... memories. ( )

The Far Side Gallery 3 is, as one might expect, the third omnibus collection of Gary Larson's very funny but always off-kilter comic strip The Far Side featuring the usual cast of cows, cavemen, nerds, insects and other strange denizens of Larson's twisted imagination. The single panel comics that make up the bulk of the book are the usual collection of weird but funny windows into a strange alternate reality where lions open car doors with coat-hangers to get at tourists and praying mantises argue over who ate whose husband. As usual for his collections, Larson recruited someone interesting to write the introduction to the book, in this case the noted scientist (and co creator of the theory of punctuated equilibrium) Stephen Jay Gould who merely introduces himself as a paleontologist and taxonomist who studies snails.

Though depreciating his own talents at humorous writing, Gould dissects why Larson is so popular among scientists, noting that by Gould's estimation 80% of the doors of his colleagues are decorated with a Far Side strip or two. Gould's introduction examines why this is the case, as he says, it isn't just the chuckles. And the fact that, as Gould notes, Larson has such a keep eye for reality and the weirdness that is just a hair away from reality that makes his strips so enduring. The idea of a cow in a hamster ball rolling about the house is funny because it is silly, but so is the idea of putting a hamster in a ball and setting him loose about the house. we just don't think about the silliness of the hamster in a ball until Larson makes us. Over and over again, Larson takes the mundane, rotates it slightly and gives us flies examining their garbage filled baby nursery or birds getting excited over cocktails served with skewered bugs or cavemen playing rock paper scissors before paper and scissors were invented. Almost every strip is funny, some will make you laugh out loud.

(As an aside, I only found one comic in this book to be not very funny. It is on page 181, and involves a brother playing a prank on his sister. There's nothing offensive about the strip, in fact it is just so boringly mundane that it seems like it should be filler in Family Circus rather than something in The Far Side).

The comics in this collection are from Larson's prime as a cartoonist, and it shows. The comics are almost all at least funny, and over and over again a strip will hit just the right comic note to make it hilarious. If you like The Far Side and its strange humor as I do, then this book is a must read.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. ( )