RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[silversea]

What are you reading (or not reading)?

Also reminding people about the 2025 October Review-a-Thon!

Comments

[spiralsheep]

You could read the novel! ;-P

Explaining humour always ruins it, especially humour that relies on context!

Still reading? Okay. It's the same old joke about the French army surrendering which isn't funny in, for example, the awful contexts of the First or Second World Wars. But it is funny set in a period when the French army was one of very few global superpowers (only two in Europe - the other was Spain, obv) and had invaded their neighbours the Italian states in support of a terrible warmongering pope, because it's allowable to target powerful people as the butt of humour. Binet also puts the joke into the mouth of The Worst Character (in the novel but also a horrible person in real history) because (1) it's usually the worst people who say things like "cheese eating surrender monkeys" and (2) it gives Binet plausible deniability to defend himself against any reader who still doesn't think the joke is funny even in this context. And now I have ruined Binet's nuanced humour by explaining it! The joke is dead, long live the joke! XD