Not sure when I'll get around to checking out the book proper, but I sure do enjoy the Very British Problems Twitter feed, and from what I can tell, the book is basically that but categorized. "Very British problems" seem to mostly include passive-aggressive politeness, extreme understatement, and paralyzing self-consciousness. In short, lots of people can suffer from Very British Problems, regardless of their nationality. A sampling of my favorites from the Twitter feed:

Insisting so emphatically that someone go through a door first that your tone becomes a little bit threatening

"I might join you later" - Meaning: I'm not leaving the house today unless it's on fire.

"That's certainly an option" - Translation: Let's not do that

"I've been involved in a fracas" - Translation: Several people are dead

Finding someone standing in front of your desired sandwich, so pretending to study a pasta salad until they leave

"I'll put the kettle on" - Translation: I'll temporarily solve all our problems

Not too bad at all.

Like binge-reading the fb page. I love his sense of humour and giggled my way through the book, highlighting half of it never to get around to actually quote it. Go, visit the fb page, it's fun. Not in a "well, this is fun" way. I truly enjoyed it. ( )

This book was quite a bit different than what I expected. It's basically a collection of tweets (and maybe Facebook posts?); observations on the British cultural identity - each page only listing a half-dozen or so and each chapter attempts to categorise them into different areas (travel, weather, sex, etc.).

That's not to say I didn't enjoy what was there; most of them are funny and quite a few of them apply to me. Either I'm secretly British, or the UK has a lot of introverts; I'm guessing it's more the latter than the former. Some of them were so spot-on it was scary.

I'd have preferred a narrative style myself and if asked, I'd say while it is definitely worth reading, it might be better borrowed from the library or picked up at bargain prices. ( )

I grabbed the kindle edition, so these notes are particular to that release:

* Formatting: bleh. Not a single consistent font though the book. Pages that have two lines of text. At least the formatting made for a quick read (I see goodreads lists the book as having 200 pages? More like 50. I read the bulk of it in an hour.)
* Content: I (mistakenly) expected something with a bit more discussion. This book is to Britain what Foxworthy is to Red Necks - largely a collection of "you know you're British if..." punchlines without any actual framing discussions.

Somewhat disappointing, to be honest. In chapter 3 there's a quiz for how British you are - I came out decidedly British, which was fun/amusing, but that was really about as deep as the book got. ( )

Comedy is truth. Or, as that modern day Socrates puts it:



As a corollary though, humour is only humourous if you can relate to it, if you find it true. “What's up with airline food?” is hilarious if you've often been kept awake at night wondering what is up with airline food. If you're not that kind of person then you'd probably just shrug and point out that given the demands placed on them, most airline's selection of meals is rather tasty. Besides, you're getting a free hot meal six miles in the air. Never mind what's up with the food, what's up with you?

So then, onto Very British Problems. My arch-nemesis saw the book on my desk earlier in the week and accused me of cheating with the Goodreads reading challenge, he said the pages were mostly white space, and that I was reading a glorified Buzzfeed article. That's completely unfair of course. The book is actually a glorified Twitter feed.

It's hard to recommend purchasing a book that you can read a constantly updated version of on Twitter, so I won't. But if you do find yourself in possession of the book, through means fair or foul, then your enjoyment of it will probably be heavily dependent on how much of yourself you recognise in the book (or how much you recognise your British friends). Apparently I'm rather British, so chortled along merrily through a good portion of the book. But I'm well aware that the peoples on this rainy little island are a lot more diverse than that, and so for every person that readily identified with the woes listed in the book there will be plenty of people who wonder who these weird people being described are, and if they really exist.

For the same reason this is a risky choice to leave out on the coffee table. And I'm saying that as someone who happily leaves [b:Sexually, I'm More Of A Switzerland|12395914|Sexually, I'm More Of A Switzerland|David Rose|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1331164013s/12395914.jpg|9693633] on mine. The decision of whether to buy the book, and whether to leave it in the lavatory, on the coffee table, or hidden on some shelf is ultimately up to you; it's just another British problem. ( )