Book-It 'o13! Book #33
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a secondhand find.
Title: I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun by Professor Happycat and icanhascheezburger.com
Details: Copyright 2008, Gotham Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): " Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami cofounded www.icanhascheeseburger.com in January of 2007 as a gathering place for their favorite "LOLcats," picture of cats with funny captions. For this book, they've selected over two hundred LOLcats from all over the world and all over the internets. I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun is guaranteed to make you laugh out loud or wonder wtf?"
Why I Wanted to Read It: The LOLcat phenomenon was arguably one of the first pieces of internet culture to cross over into the mainstream. This book is essentially cementing it as a "real" entity, at least by the old standard.
How I Liked It: This is an uneasy gap to bridge. Your grandmother or someone else who likes cats/funny pictures but somehow doesn't access the site online can enjoy all the laughs in book form, right?
But so much of the humor of LOLcats is based in internet meme, down to LOLspeak borrowing from various obscure subculture references ("DO NOT WANT" being a mistranslation of an epic Star Wars battle, "I'm in ur _____, _____ing ur ____" referencing a multiplayer game).
Therefore, Professor Happycat has to "explain" each genre ("IN UR __ teh kittehs iz alwayz in ur sumthing") in a little cartoon capping each "chapter." And when you have to explain something, as the rule goes, it's not funny.
There's also the main stumbling block that anyone new to LOLcats wonders over, the LOLspeak. Given that this book was probably seen as a good way to introduce the site/phenomenon to non-internet frequenters, that's especially difficult and references again explaining the origin of LOLspeak (the site itself "translates"; the book does not).
The execution is clumsy and haphazard, and the material not new. This apparently was not enough to stop either this franchise from releasing more books nor other sites from publishing books of their material.
The book probably won't help you in getting your internet-fearful but animal-loving aunt to enjoy LOLcats and most if not all of these you've seen already. But the book is still kind of interesting as a history piece, the new media interacting with the old in a seemingly jarring way.
Notable: Interestingly, the book credits the contributors and creators of the "LOLs" in the back. This raises questions about content-creators, being compensated for your "work" (are you being "paid" by seeing your submission in print form?), and more about the new media/old media debate.
Title: I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun by Professor Happycat and icanhascheezburger.com
Details: Copyright 2008, Gotham Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): " Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami cofounded www.icanhascheeseburger.com in January of 2007 as a gathering place for their favorite "LOLcats," picture of cats with funny captions. For this book, they've selected over two hundred LOLcats from all over the world and all over the internets. I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun is guaranteed to make you laugh out loud or wonder wtf?"
Why I Wanted to Read It: The LOLcat phenomenon was arguably one of the first pieces of internet culture to cross over into the mainstream. This book is essentially cementing it as a "real" entity, at least by the old standard.
How I Liked It: This is an uneasy gap to bridge. Your grandmother or someone else who likes cats/funny pictures but somehow doesn't access the site online can enjoy all the laughs in book form, right?
But so much of the humor of LOLcats is based in internet meme, down to LOLspeak borrowing from various obscure subculture references ("DO NOT WANT" being a mistranslation of an epic Star Wars battle, "I'm in ur _____, _____ing ur ____" referencing a multiplayer game).
Therefore, Professor Happycat has to "explain" each genre ("IN UR __ teh kittehs iz alwayz in ur sumthing") in a little cartoon capping each "chapter." And when you have to explain something, as the rule goes, it's not funny.
There's also the main stumbling block that anyone new to LOLcats wonders over, the LOLspeak. Given that this book was probably seen as a good way to introduce the site/phenomenon to non-internet frequenters, that's especially difficult and references again explaining the origin of LOLspeak (the site itself "translates"; the book does not).
The execution is clumsy and haphazard, and the material not new. This apparently was not enough to stop either this franchise from releasing more books nor other sites from publishing books of their material.
The book probably won't help you in getting your internet-fearful but animal-loving aunt to enjoy LOLcats and most if not all of these you've seen already. But the book is still kind of interesting as a history piece, the new media interacting with the old in a seemingly jarring way.
Notable: Interestingly, the book credits the contributors and creators of the "LOLs" in the back. This raises questions about content-creators, being compensated for your "work" (are you being "paid" by seeing your submission in print form?), and more about the new media/old media debate.