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| Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline | 
 enlarge | Author: Charlie Brooker
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
Buy Used: £1.61
You Save: £8.38 (84%)
New (21) from £1.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 563
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0571238416
EAN: 9780571238415
ASIN: 0571238416
Publication Date: November 1, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 "Kitchen sink" approach doesn't really do the reader many favours September 25, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Brooker is currently the best-loved pop culture pundit amongst the jaded workshy internet-hogging sullen misanthrope demographic. This is an indesputable fact. He has sat aside the collective imagination of this unhappy group like a grumpy colossus since the launch of the spoof listings website TVGoHome back in what now feels like the mid-1800s, and he continues to do so with his Guardian articles and the brilliant Screenwipe show, which I'll wager most of you have seen on the Guardian website and youtube respectively rather than in actual grubby print or on actual proper telly. This all feels very word-of-mouthy and grass-rootsy, with friends slinging URLs at you every time he says something particularly interesting or rude, and part of the reason for this popularity is that, despite his grumbling and slightly forced self-deprecation, Brooker seems like a likeable, smart guy and has an unmatched talent for a pithy little vignette.
Seriously, it's completely unmatched: I've never read anyone who can produce a one paragraph nugget that manages to be as clever, scatological, sharp, heartfelt, and funny as Brooker. When most columnists try this sort of recipe it comes out indigestible and smug, like trying to swallow a lump of self-satisfied rancid grease; Brooker pulls it off effortlessly and still manages to seem human. This is probably the reason for his enduring net popularity, as in the land of short attention spans and thousands and thousands of competing distractions short, brilliant quotes are the primary currency - and he has them in abundance.
Which is the problem with the book, really. It's like printing out an entire website to read through it page by page rather than being linked directly to the funny picture of the cat with the amusing caption. It's impossible to write the brilliant little gems mentioned above every single week, and between them his writing is either ephemeral at best or completely irrelevant at worst. For every brilliant insight and one-liner, there's pages and pages of wibbling about, say, 2006's Big Brother - perfect for a weekly column, but its inclusion in a book seems a little eyebrow-raising. The fact that its readable at all two years later on is a tribute to Brooker's skill, but still you get the feeling that you've been swindled a bit by some sort of bait-and-switch scam. Yes, I know it never claimed to be anything other than a collection of articles, but "Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline" to my mind suggested something more trim and toned and toothier. Perhaps this is just an inescapable result of taking Brooker out of his natural environment and cramming him willy-nilly into a book or perhaps they just wanted to bulk the book out some, but the "kitchen sink" approach doesn't really do the reader many favours.
A genuinely mixed bag, this: undeniably a good read, but you feel sort of like you'd rather have just googled "best Charlie Brooker quotes" instead. On the plus side, Brooker is one of the most genuinely enjoyable columnists you can read today and you get the feeling that much, much better is still to come.
 Charlie Brooker is right about everything March 25, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a collection of Charlie Brooker's newspaper articles and TV reviews from 2004 to 2007. About half is television reviews, the other half is what I'd hesitantly call 'lifestyle' which can cover anything from Facebook to haircuts to Banksy.
Brooker is the best ascerbic angry writer and reviewer there is. Maintaining an almost constant level of fury throughout, underneath the sarcasm and the comedic threats of violence are reams of very interesting points about the TV we watch and the culture we're a part of it.
To really appreciate some of the TV reviews you'll be better off if you do have an idea how Big Brother works, or who Gillian McKeith is, and if you do know those things but you wish you didn't, then even better.
Personally I enjoyed reading this book in bite-sized chunks- just the odd few pages here and there when I was feeling complacent. Reading it all in one go would put you in a seriously bad mood- or perhaps it would be a very cathartic experience for you..?
Puerile, mordant, genius February 25, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Poor old Charlie Brooker. He's a man out of time, trapped in a world he understands little and likes even less. Here is an essentially decent, liberal man who feels the need to defenestrate himself for our reading pleasure each week in the dear ol' Grauniad.
Reading this book is really like reading a potted social history of recent times, or at least for most of this book the televisual part of it. CB takes random and withering potshots at most of the deserving targets of our pathetic adulterated culture. Thankfully, most of the time, he manages to score direct hits. And how.
This book is not really to be read cover to cover, instead to be dipped in and out of because these columns were produced to be satisfying little gobbets; little secret missives that we read and where we knew that finally, here was someone who saw our risible so-called celeb-culture for the hollow, dead-eyed, grasping sham it all undoubtedly is. And worse, he loves TV the same we that we do (you can tell). As a result he is all the more coruscating when he thinks it falls short of what it should be. his rants about TV companies, their dalliances with premium rate phone lines and journalistic integrity were just beautiful.
And while I don't quite agree with the 'Macs are Fisher Price activity centre's for adults' line, it was was still funny enough to make me spit out hot tea through my nose as I laughed. Damn you, Charlie Brooker!
The Best Stand-Up Comic You Never Saw February 21, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Many books claim to be laugh-out-loud funny. This is the Real Deal. I'm just glad I've never read it in public as there were moments when I genuinely couldn't get my breath. I've not been a Brooker fan long (I only discovered Screen Wipe during the last series, which wasn't that long ago) but, on the strength of this material, I'm now a fully-fledged convert to his brand of excoriating, sardonic, not to mention laugh-your-lungs-up-funny bile. He's like the best stand-up comic you never saw - imagine Bill Hicks doing 'Harry Hill's TV Burp'. The weaker chapters are merely inspired but there are definitely pieces that are touching genius, if only for the completely original thought processes that Brooker goes through. These are most evident in the non-TV related chapters, which I generally enjoyed more than the TV stuff. Which is not to say that the TV stuff isn't also joyously mirthsome because it is. Imagine every other TV critic in the world (particularly the NOTW's Ian Hyland) as a scurrying cockroach...then picture a huge, black, hobnailed boot slowly descending to crush them. That's Brooker. To sum up then: Charlie Brooker takes absolutely no prisoners in perhaps the most nihilistically comedic collection of prose money can buy. And I make no apology for fawning all over this because it's utterly bloody brilliant. Buy it.
 Scabrous and Hilarious February 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Dawn of the Dumb, the latest collection of Charlie Brooker's writing from the Guardian and the Observer confirms his position of the master of the celebrity insult. Only a man who can describe racing pundit John McCririck as lookign like a partially shaved womble deserves to be awarded that status, and that man is Brooker.
His talents don't end pouring scorn on Z-list 'celebs' (and A-Y List ones too if they deserve it). If you like your humour blacker than pitch, cynical and served with a side order of general loathing he is also your man. With some of his columns causing uncontrolled public chuckling, Brooker is a genuinely funny writer about a wide variety of subjects (although if you have no interest in contemporary popular culture and specifically TV you might want to give this a miss). He's also an equal opportunity insulter, with anyone and anything considered by him a legitimate target for his laser sharp and withering scorn.
Of course his eternal cynicism or his sense of humour will not appeal to everyone. These things are subjective after all. Equally some of the collected columns and articles are stronger than others. Finally it should be said that Dawn of the Dumb is not really a book to be read from cover to cover in one sitting; it is more the sort of book you dip into whilst on a break from reading something else to have a giggle and find yourself secretly agreeing with Brooker's views on life.
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