Ant Farm

February 5, 2007
A contributor to Mad
, 22-year-old Rich is a Harvard senior, a former president of the Harvard Lampoon
and the son of New York Times
columnist Frank Rich. Half of the short humor pieces collected here previously appeared in the Harvard Lampoon
, and Rich has taken his college collage and mixed it with new material for a satirical salmagundi that bites back. Since brevity is the soul of wit, the book has 57 varieties of playlets, essays and mirthful monologues, and most are only two pages long. Imaginative premises abound, such as X Files
with dog characters. In the title piece, ants plot an escape: "We've been digging tunnels ever since we got here. We always end up hitting glass." Since a college-level audience is targeted, older readers might find some references puzzling. In his original proposal to Random House (a portion of which was printed in the New York Observer
), he claimed that the "subject matter—horrible, inescapable doom—is well-suited for a younger audience.... I think kids will be attracted to the book's unpredictability. The tone remains constant throughout, but the topic changes every page with the abruptness of an iPod shuffle." True, these fragments are fun, and some are so abrupt they could have been iPhoned in. Others are as unpredictable as YouTube, as in your face as MySpace (which will both surely be used for online promotions).

April 15, 2007
This laugh-out-loud funny, oddball collection of 57 short sketches contains the observations and memories of Rich, a 22-year-old Harvard senior and former president of the "Harvard Lampoon" (also the son of "New York Times" columnist Frank Rich). Recollections of childhood pen pals, imagined notes from teachers, make-believe girlfriends, and other schoolboy tales make up most of the text, and many of the pieces are written as dialog between two characters. Rich parodies professional athletes who thank God for their victories and reflects on what happens when murderers accept religion to get into heaven. He explains how "The X-Files" would change were the protagonists dogs investigating what's missing after pets are neutered and considers what happens when the carnival "guess your weight" worker gets married. He finishes the collection with thoughts on government and war. Recommended for academic libraries and larger public libraries where contemporary humor is popular.Joyce Sparrow, JWB Children's Svcs. Council, Pinellas Park, FL

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2007
In this collection of comic vignettes, Rich, a Harvard senior and former president of the " Harvard Lampoon" , displays a knack for extracting humor from scenarios of discomfort and despair. There's the son who unwittingly exposes his single mother's promiscuity, the nerd who becomes cool in the eyes of his Bulgarian pen pal, and the factory employee who goes a little nuts on the job. Performance anxiety among pandas, small talk gone wrong, the validity of "love coupons" when a relationship goes bad\emdash all are covered here. Readers also learn about unlikely applications of math. (Who knew solving a trigonometry problem could mitigate a murderer's wrath?) And on the liabilities of being invisible, Rich writes: "When I was a lifeguard, I never got any credit for any of my heroic rescues. It was always 'angel this' and 'angel that.\rquote" Some of the selections are more dark than droll (a boy's discovery of his father's alcohol cache, the text message of a teenager with hepatitis C), but all have the same good-natured goal: finding levity amid the gravity of everyday life. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)