[.ca] Too Good To Be True (ISBN 039332088X)

From Amazon.com:
Have you heard the one about the new computer owner who mistook the CD-ROM player for a cup holder? Or the woman who thought her brains were oozing out of a gunshot wound, when the "truth" was that when her Pillsbury Poppin' Fresh® can exploded, striking her on the head with the lid, the goo she felt was biscuit dough? Jan Harold Brunvand, professor emeritus at the University of Utah, and author of numerous urban-legend collections, including The Vanishing Hitchhiker, The Choking Doberman, Curses! Broiled Again, and American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, has been studying urban legends for some 20 years, and his new book, Too Good to Be True, relates more than 200 of these indestructible tales. There are relatively recent stories based on modern technology, such as the classic microwaved pet, and yarns that have been making the urban-legend circuit for decades, such as the solid-cement-Cadillac story, which can be traced back to the 1940s, at least, involving a cement-truck driver who spies a new Cadillac convertible in his driveway and his wife talking to some strange man. He dumps his load of concrete on the Cadillac, but later discovers the stranger was a car dealer and the car was to be a gift from his wife, one she'd spent years saving her pennies for. The stories are grouped by subject, including "Dog Tales" and "Just Desserts," "Sexcapades" and "Losing Face." There are baby stories and work stories, criminal tales and college anecdotes, plus stories of mistaken identity, human nature, and technology. Brunvand achieves more, however, than a mere compendium of highly entertaining stories. He discusses the nature of urban legends--those almost believable, addictively retellable tales that always happened to a friend of a friend (FOAF, in folklorist parlance)--and for each individual story, Brunvand includes as much of its history as he has been able to trace, including newspaper accounts, alternative versions, and the story's natural cycle, that is, how many years, typically, between resurfacings. The result is an exceptionally engaging book, and a great resource for debunking that next story, as heard from a friend by that unnamed acquaintance of unassailable honesty, that sounds just a little too perfect to swallow whole. --Stephanie Gold

a friend of a friend recommended it:
For those of you who may not be familiar with the term, an Urban Legend is one of those stories that someone tells you--typically they claim that it happened to a friend of a friend (FOAF)--which just seems, in the words of this title, "too good to be true." But when the person tells the story they do so with great authority and include some little hyperspecific detail that tends to allay some of your skepticism. Or at least it does until someone else tells you a slightly different version of the same story two days later. Personally, I've heard dozens of these stories over the years, many from my Mom or my friend Charlie, and I've developed a particular awareness for when folks are peddling these myths, becoming a kind of amateur clearing house. Here are a few I've had folks tell me personally : The Blow Dry Rabbit; The Vibrating Cactus; the Confused Driver; Batman in the Closet; The Disgruntled Bridegroom; any others, anybody? I don't know that he coined the term Urban Legend, but Jan Harold Brunvand, a professor at the University of Utah, certainly popularized it with his newspaper column and a series of books in which he collects them and tries to trace their convoluted paths through the popular culture (It's amazing how often Ann Landers has a hand in promulgating them). I've been a fan of Brunvand's work for years, even submitting some of my favorites to him, including one which he reprinted in The Baby Train. His writing tends to be a little prosaic and, in letting his correspondents speak for themselves, he often presents the legends in less amusing form than he might. But in all honesty,the real pleasure in his books lies not in the stories themselves, but in the joy of recognition, the thrill of the "Gotcha!," when you finally have proof that a story is bunk. This debunking process has been made much easier by the advent of the Internet; all you usually have to do is include a couple keywords from a given story and the term "urban legend" in a search line and you'll get numerous hits from websites that specialize in collecting and trying to stay current with them. It's a good thing too, because this latest effort from Brunvand suffers from a major and inexplicable weakness : it has no index. This curious omission is especially unforgivable in a reference book and is almost serious enough for me not to recommend the book. As is, we'll give it a very qualified nod, but suggest you seek out the earlier books instead. GRADE : C

Just tell us the legends please:
Well, this thick tome is basically a collection of urban legends, which is, unless you have been hiding under a rock, are stories which people tell each other is true but has no real basis in facts. Who haven't heard of alligators in the sewers, the woman who cooked her cat in the microwave, the hooked killer, and so on. Usually, after the story are told, there is a little caption that suggest how the legend may have started As fascinating as these stories are, the book itself leaves something to be desired. Because it seems all too often, the author is either constantly doubting that this is a true story (duh!) or that he cannot believe in the gullibility of people (there is quite a liberal amount of self righteous sarcasm). Okay, we got the message! Just tell us the stories and give us the facts. The book would otherwise woudl have worked more effectively in giving me the creeps. But it didn't. Maybe it wasn't suppose to. Still, I can't help but think that the author insulted my intelligence.

Fun and interesting read:
Mr. Brunvand's book is a delight to read simply as a collection of Urban Legends - the stories play on our love of fun, irony, mischief, coincidence or even morbid twists of fate. But anyone could compile a bunch of urban legends. The real meat of the book is in Mr. Brunvand's analysis of each legend, or group of legends. It is pretty amazing to see him trace the origins of each legend and pick apart the contents. Several of the legends actually have their root in real events, but most are pure fancy. Why do I give it only a four star rating? I save the fifth for truly outstanding books. This one is fun, but not a must-read. Format of the book: The author divides the book into chapters based on the theme of the legends. Each chapter has many legends (from his "files"), interspersed with his analysis. In his analysis, he may talk about the feasibility of a legend, the origin, other occurrances of the same or similar legends in history, or sociological aspects of the legend. "Parental advisory": A few of the legends have some somewhat twisted sexual content. So bottom line: Fun book - it will keep you entertained and give you the upper hand next time someone tries to tell you one of these legends.

Four stars, but only in the Bathroom Reader category:
Urban legends are anecdotal yarns, sworn to be factually based, which become embellished to the point of being "too good to be true" as they percolate through society. Today's urban legends will become the future's fairy tales. TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE is an assemblage of over 200 such stories gathered by Jan Brunvand, who is an expert, perhaps obsessively so, on the subject. They cover a wide range of source topics: pets, criminals, cars, sex, accidents, babies, work, technology, human nature, mistaken ID, academia, food, the supernatural, wild animals, and more. They inspire laughter, horror, disbelief, or just plain "Oh, yuck!" Each story is followed by a paragraph, sometimes lengthy, on the times and places the anecdote, or some variant of it, has appeared. Some go back to the 19th century. After the first twenty-five or so, I decided to leave this last bit to the truly compulsive. My favorite was the one about the American couple staying at the Moscow hotel during the bad old Soviet era. Obsessed with the possible presence of listening devices, the couple searched the room for "bugs". Finding only a metal plate under the carpet, they removed the screws from it. The next morning on checkout, the desk manager asked if they'd spent a pleasant night. He was concerned since the couple in the room below our intrepid travelers had the chandelier fall on them. My wife said she's never seen me laugh so hard. The trouble with these stories is that they have no developing plot, no hero to love, and no villain to hate. Like eating popcorn, the experience, however delightful, ends with the last kernel/paragraph. Nobody ever exclaims, "Wow, I had a great bag of popcorn last week!" Similarly, I doubt this book will stay memorable for more than a minute. As a bathroom diversion for those contemplative moments, it stands out. Otherwise, it's light reading with a capital "L".

Colossal Book of Urban Legends:
For those who don't know, Jan Harold Brunvand has a column out in Salt Lake City, but has acquired a following all across the country, or rather the world. He is the leading scholar on the subject of urban legends, those sometimes funny and often terrifying stories you first heard on the playground or by the watercooler, which are always supposed to be true but can't be proved because they happened to a friend of a friend of a friend . . . This book, the "Colossal Book of Urban Legends" is really an updated combination of most of Brunvand's previous books, such as "The Vanishing Hitchhiker", "The Choking Doberman" and "The Baby Train". In other words, if you are going to buy this book, I doubt think you'll want to buy all the previous ones, though there might be a few stories in those not included here.