Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

I have always enjoyed David Mitchell's distinctive point of view, from the scripted (The Mitchell and Webb Look, David Mitchell's Soapbox rants) to the extemporaneous rants (QI, Would I Lie To You?, and various panel shows). That said, this work is a bit... darker? Certainly more thought-provoking and personal, and less mainstream observationally comedic. I enjoyed it, but I realize that I don't keep abreast of enough of the British media reporting to get every joke. (As an American, I have never gotten quite all of Mitchell's comedic references, and although I have to do a bit more mental work to glean meanings from context here than I do with most of his more universal works, I did not find that overly problematic. Certainly it won't hurt me to become a bit more aware of the British perspectives.)

All those caveats aside, this is very very funny stuff.

I should point out that the audio verion of this work is read by Mitchell, with his southern middle-class English accent. I don't have any problem understanding it, but my father, had a devil of a time picking up on some of it.

There wasn't enough of it. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely value for money. It's that I was left wanting more. I have to admit I'm a big fan of David's hilarious rants and style of humour, but I guess that most people thinking of reading would at least know who he is and what he's about. I think it's a case of love him or loathe him, David basically says that he gets this opinion in emails. Me? I won't say that I love him, I do however admire his wit and find that some of his comments and opinions are sharp enough to draw blood.

As usual David Mitchell is so funny, albeit in a most exasperating way - due to the state of the world. It is hard for me to read without wanting to keep running up to people with "listen to this..." Doubt he could have picked a more appropriate title for this book.

I really like David Mitchell but I didn't really enjoy his book, the main reason being, I live Down Under and a lot of the topics and people he talked about meant nothing to me plus, it was a bit whingey. I guess if you live in the U.K you would enjoy it a lot more than I did, wish I'd spent my money on something else

A great collection of articles and columns from Mitchell's newspaper writings. Sad to have missed them all the first time around, as being from the newspaper they are all time sensitive, but great to immerse oneself in his head none-the-less. Keen to know what Mitchell thinks of Britain in 2019, which is ten thousand times crazier than ten years back.

Many characters and topics covered in the book are little or not at all known to people that live outside the author's island, rendering the narrative a bit challenging at times. At times, it's difficult to know if the story is about Gordon the potty-mouth chef or Gordon the pork-grooming prime minister, and at other times the names don't strike any chord at all.
But thanks to Mr. Mitchell's charming wit, even at such times I found the book highly entertaining and amusing.

The book somewhat lacks in content, and the "thought provoking ideas" are skin deep. What I mean is that every phenomenon has a deep and quite often interesting reason to emerge, but Mitchell chooses to somewhat implicitly explain everything by dumbness or stupidity of all those people who are not him.

The book is definitely Britain centric, but I live in Australia, in pretty much the same cultural space, so I didn't find any of the content puzzling or unfamiliar.

There are a few witty specks of the very British and very linguistic humour, but not enough to truly engage or make you laugh out loud.

Having said all those negative things about the book, I am still a fan of David Mitchell, and I hope his next book shines his bright and witty side, not the boring commonplace one.

Some fresh ways of looking at things, but, as a person not familiar with British life and politics, much was lost on me.

The man is annoyingly intelligent.

Fun but a lot of British politics. Not that it's a bad thing, but not super relatable for a worldwide audience. Not like you're reading Gaffigan talk about food tho. Very different ranty humor. Still enjoyed!