The Good, The Spam and The Ugly is about a man who began responding to spam e-mails, attempting to see what ridiculous lies he could cause spammers to believe. His goal was to see how long they would continue responding as he gave sillier excuses for being unable to send them money yet. It was surprising what he got away with, although as he suggests, this may reflect the spammers’ ignorance of American culture.

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The Good, The Spam and The Ugly is about a man who began responding to spam e-mails, attempting to see what ridiculous lies he could cause spammers to believe. His goal was to see how long they would continue responding as he gave sillier excuses for being unable to send them money yet. It was surprising what he got away with, although as he suggests, this may reflect the spammers’ ignorance of American culture.

The book started off really well, with a humorous introduction by the author and I had high hopes for the rest of the book. However, while funny, the book failed to live up to my expectations. There were definitely some funny parts and some of the exchanges where the author causes spammers to e-mail each other were the funniest conversations. However, there were a lot of e-mails from spammers all following the same general formula and the author’s e-mails were mostly of the sort which would be funny to 13-year-old boys. In part because of the skimmable scammer e-mails, this was a very quick read, 3 hours tops.

The author’s writing and his explanations of the e-mails were by far funnier than the e-mails themselves and it was simply unfortunate there wasn’t more commentary. Although the book wasn’t as funny as I hoped, I wouldn’t hesitate to read another book by the author if the format involved more of the author’s own writing. ( )