Review: Angels Chimps and Tater Mitts

Title: Angels Chimps and Tater Mitts 

Author: Mike Ball 
Published: March 29, 2012
Publisher: CreateSpace
Reviewer: Annie

Summary: For years the essays of award-winning humorist Mike Ball, published under the title "What I've Learned So Far..." have evoked laughter and tears in readers all over the world. Mike's sharp wit, blended with his gentle homespun style, has been compared to Mark Twain, Erma Bombeck, Dave Barry and even Ernie Pyle. One reader said, "Mike Ball can make me laugh and cry in 400 words." This is second What I've Learned... So Far book. Volume I, Bikes, Docks & Slush Nuggets, was published in the fall of 2009.

Review: This book is a collection of what I think was at one point a newspaper column.  It’s a bunch of short snippets/stories about his life, his opinion on things, or stories he has been told.  Each chapter is short and to the point making it a very easy book to pick up, open to any chapter, and enjoy reading for a couple minutes.  Some of the stories were humorous while others were touching and then there some that were just plain interesting.

I enjoyed all the short quirky stories in this book, if there was one I didn’t like as much I could easily head another page or two and pick up a new one.  The only bad thing was that I was trying to finish the book quickly so I could review it, if it were up to me this would be a great book to just pick up every now and then and read a few chapters.  It’s a nice change in between long novels, and it doesn’t hurt that some of the stories were about Michigan and Ann Arbor!

I would recommend this book to almost anyone but especially someone with a short attention span and doesn’t like to get involved with long books.  Or someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to read, this is great because each chapter grabs your attention quickly and it’s over before you know it and you can get back to whatever other important things you have going on in your life.  

-Annie