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anderson65's review against another edition
3.0
I finished reading Queenan Country by Joe Queenan. The subtitle is "A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country". This man knows England and writes about it in a clever humorous tour de force. I must say that there was a certain whoosh! right over my head factor here since I don't know enough about some of his references to understand the wit that is at play. So, I skipped over the parts I didn't get and went directly to reading where I could laugh, chuckle and enjoy the humor. My favorite chapter is "No Mersey" wherein the author describes following the trail of the Beatles. If you don't read anything else in this book, go directly to this chapter! And, of course, it is Queenan's love of England and his English wife that allows him to poke fun at the country and its inhabitants in hilarious, good fun.
aditurbo's review against another edition
1.0
I thought I'd love this book, as the shameless anglophile that I am. But I struggled through it, until I decided to finally abandon it at 80%. What broke me in the end was a chapter in which Queenan took cheap shots at people's looks, describing UK women as "porcine," deriding their and their male-counterparts' hairdos, etc. Throughout the previous chapters, Queenan had something nasty to say about anyone who does not like the same music or food as him, about remote places and their residents, and almost anyone or anything else. But coming down on people's looks was already too much for me. I wonder why Queenan insists that he loves the country so much and lived there for so many years if he seems to like almost nothing at all about it. I appreciate sharp wit but not when it's just mean and degrading, and do not enjoy it when an author maliciously uses their "gift of the gab" to make themselves look better and smarter. To me, looking down on others is no special feat. Being inquisitive about different people and cultures and trying to find what's worth learning from there and what causes them to be as they are is more impressive and worth reading about.
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