Dad Is Fat

Dad Is Fat

Paperback - USA - 1st edition.

Author Jim Gaffigan Published 2013-05-07 Type Non-fiction Genre Comedy, Memoir Themes Comedy Age Group Adult

Dad Is Fat is a comedy book about family life and parenting written by Jim Gaffigan and published on 2013-05-07. It contains many stories from his life since he's had children and plenty of jokes about raising them.

Personal

Own?	No.
Read?	Audiobook read by Jim Gaffigan.
Finished	2022-10-30.

After I became a father, my mother lent me this book and encouraged me to read it. I always intended to read it, but it sat on my desk in my office for several years while I worked through my to-read list. However, after finding an audiobook of it, I was able to get to it much quicker and ended up enjoying it.

Review

Overall:

Good

• Jim Gaffigan has plenty of funny stories about his family throughout the book.
• While the bulk of his jokes are good for a chuckle, several of them made me laugh out loud. Most of the jokes are deadpan sarcasm, which is one of my favorite types of humor. His jokes about Mount Rushmore, especially, are spot on.
• His praise for his wife is sweet.

Bad

• Gaffigan mentions that Bill Cosby is a good father, and the main review of his book compares it to Cosby's Fatherhood. However, this was after over a dozen accusations of rape were made against Cosby! If Gaffigan's comment was meant to be sarcasm, it didn't come off as such.
• He repeats several incorrect beliefs about children: Ring Around the Rosie is not about the Black Death, sugar doesn't cause hyperactivity, etc.
• I know his joke about atheists suddenly praying to his god when they lose their child was in jest, but I see it as punching down.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Quotes

• "The Black Hills of South Dakota are breathtaking. They are sacred to the Lakota Indians, and out of respect, our government had someone carve four white guys' faces into one of the mountains. Lakota Indian: These hills are sacred to us. Carver: [chiseling] Yeah, yeah. I'll be done in a couple of decades. These guys I'm carving were all about freedom. Especially the two who owned slaves."
• "Look, you lost a tooth. Congratulations. Enjoy looking like a hillbilly. Here's a dollar."
• "Whenever one of my children says, 'Goodnight, Daddy,' I always think to myself, 'You don't mean that.'"
• "Whoever came up with the term 'terrible twos' must have felt very foolish after their kid turned three."
• "Raising kids may be a thankless job with ridiculous hours, but at least the pay sucks."
• "I'm getting fat... as I planned. Luckily, my gut is intentional. I'm actually preparing for a big role. Sure, it's a cinnamon roll, but I want there to be room for it."
• "If you've never been to a Catholic Mass, don’t worry, it's still going on, you still have time to catch it."
• "I used to wonder why I had hair on my legs, but now I know it's for my toddler sons and daughters to pull themselves up off the ground with as I scream in pain."
• "If you complain about how you spend your Saturdays taking your kid to birthday parties, that means you are taking your kid to birthday parties. If you complain about how hard it is to get your kid to read, it means you are trying to get your kid to read. If you are complaining about your kid not helping around the house, that means you have a fat, lazy kid. You joke about it. That's how you deal. If parents don't like being a parent, they don't talk about being a parent. They are absent. And probably out having a great time somewhere."

Links

 

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gaffigan - Wikipedia - Jim Gaffigan.