Sunday Salon: Review: Amy's Answering Machine by Amy Borkowsky

Borkowsky is a comedian. Or at least she was when this book was written in 2001 (and the reason I give you the date is to orient you to the dominant technology of the time). Apparently one of the things she does/did in her act was to play tapes of her answering machine messages from her mother and then riff off of the over-protective messages. I have to hope that she is funnier doing stand-up than she is when writing this stuff down. Because this isn't funny. It's just dull. There is a good chance that her intonations and mannerisms made this a successful stage bit but it clearly loses in the translation to the page. Thank heavens this was short because had it been any longer than it was, I would have been sound asleep, head pressed to print, and drooling into the spine. I'm also hoping that the advent and proliferation of voice mail and the lack of taped evidence of her mother's over the top concerns means that we won't ever be subjected to another book of this stuff. Obviously not the way I wanted to start off my reading year and I recommend you don't bother with this either.