Funny letters from famous people Book

I was honestly quite surprised to see the low overall rating of this book here on GR (currently it's averaging a 2.97/5 star rating). I looked at some of the reviews, and I guess I can understand why.

This book is a collection of letters from famous people - just as the title suggests. There is quite a variety here, including famous people such as Beethoven, Benjamin Franklin, Julia Child, Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx, Charles Dickens, etc. In order to understand the subtle humor in letters written pre-20th c., you do have to have a decent grasp of the English language and how the usage has shifted over the past 4 centuries. As someone who has read classics since I was 12 years old or so, and as someone who enjoys linguistics and history, this book was not difficult to understand at all. Some of the older letters were ones that I would not really be able to comprehend were I to have read them when I was excessively tired... however, they were still funny.

Also, honestly, this is the kind of book that makes me almost laugh out loud. Other humor books that I have read recently may make me smile but are generally suited to a more crass sense of humor than what I tend to enjoy. (Don't get me wrong, I can crack dirty jokes with the rest of them, but do I want to read a book full of sexual jokes? No thanks. Not my type.) I guess another way to put it would be that the humor in this book is calmer and... gentler? than I have seen in most other books. Yay for the vagaries of history.

Definitely do recommend. Funny Letters From Famous People is an excellent book to pick up, set down, pick up again due to the short nature of the letters/excerpts. Subtle humor, but not in a mawkish sense nor an overly crass manner. I may see about getting myself a hard copy at some point, which should speak for itself regarding how much I enjoyed this little collection.