This book is filled with bookish cartoons. I was a light, fun read. I liked the cartoons about old authors places in the modern age, such as Shakespeare debating to buy local or buy Amazon (because- you know -free shipping!) and another author trying to compose "The Great American Tweet." I highly recommend this to any book lover.

An enjoyable and fun to read collection of comics about books and readers.
I loved them and it was great to read this collection.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC

This was a nice collection of comics about books and reading - Roz Chast and S. Gross are well represented. I don't know how anyone can produce a book of book cartoons without soliciting at least one Tom Gauld comic, though.

To be honest, there isn’t a lot to say about The Ultimate Cartoon Book of Book Cartoons that the title doesn’t already tell you. It’s a book with about 150 cartoons about, well, books. OK, books and writing and reading. Humor is such a subjective concept that it’s difficult to argue how “ultimate” it is in terms of its impact. If you’re familiar with New Yorker style cartoons, then you’ll have a sense of whether or not these will appeal to you as they seem to be either from there or quite similar. If you enjoy those, you’ll enjoy these and if not, well, not so much. As far as my own reaction, I laughed out loud at two or three, chuckled at the vast majority, and thought there were about a dozen I’d like to email to particular people who would absolutely enjoy them. There were only a handful that didn’t elicit any humorous response at all. A good number do focus on the author’s life (jokes about being self-published, about book signings, etc.), so if you’re looking for more general humor about reading versus writing, you may want to look elsewhere. But if you want a mix of the two, this is a solid collection.

I think the title of this cartoon collection is a little misleading, at least to the average person. <i>The Ultimate Cartoon Book of Book Cartoons</i> edited by Bob Eckstein is a wonderful and amusing collection of artwork that really captures various pieces of living in a world where books and writing are the main focus of our lives. Unfortunately, I think a fair amount of it is likely to go over a number of people's heads, particularly those who tend to read more than they write. While deeply enjoyable, I don't think this book really caters to the audience of the general reader.

A lot of the humor is centered around the life of an author, the daily plights that the publishing world and having readers for one's books brings them. It's not exactly focused as much around a love of reading nor the typical things that your average reader might experience. As such, it does kind of require some prerequisite knowledge about the publishing world, what it means and feels like to be a published author, and the authors themselves who have written the comics. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, but I can definitely see the book losing its audience at various points within the collection.

A fun, hilarious take on the life of a writer and reader, <i>The Ultimate Cartoon Book of Book Cartoons</i> is one that I had an absolute blast reading, though I don't see myself ever picking it up again. It's the kind of book I'd appreciate seeing on a table in a library or a waiting room of some sort to read in passing but not really bother to by for myself. I definitely enjoyed my experience with it but, barring a very few choice comics, probably won't give it much thought now that I've finished reading.

<i>I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. </i>