Review: I'd Rather We Got Casinos

I’d Rather We Got Casinos: And Other Black Thoughts by Larry Wilmore

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is one of the oldest books that I added to my “to read” list on Goodreads. It was #28 and I added it on 3 Oct 2014. Wilmore was probably on the Daily Show at the time, which is where I know him from (subsequent roles not withstanding). At the time I found him to be very funny.

This book I did not find funny. I don’t know if it would always have seemed that way to me or if my humor has changed in the almost 11 years since I added it to my To Read list. The book reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld’s book of observations and essays. It mostly seems like a Seinfeld-but-black routine going on throughout the book. The book is a series of essays, fake letters (mostly to the NAACP), and (I think fake) transcripts from a radio show helmed by Mr. Wilmore. I just didn’t find any of them really all that funny.

There was one brilliant gem among all the stuff in here, though. Mr. Willmore has 2 back-to-back essays. The first one is about how fat, black weathermen make him happy. This is immediately followed by an essay about how fat, black weathermen make him sad. He uses ALMOST exactly the same reasons both times, but it works so beautifully well. It made me wish more of the book was this brilliant.

This book might be for you, but it wasn’t for me.

• Comedy