Many humorous books are funny because they make up things that cause us to laugh at others. The best humor is that which causes us to laugh at ourselves. This book falls into the latter category. For a humor book, it has an unusual format: a series of about one hundred questions and answers concerning aspects of retirement. Each q and a is a page, and there are some humorous illustrations to go with some of the q and a's.
What I liked was that the better q and a's mirrored things that my retired friends have said to me.
"Q: What amazes most new retirees?
A: They're so busy now, they don't know how they ever had time for work."
This seems to be true because retirees find so many interesting things to do, and more time to do them.
Here is one to think about:
"Q: What are the greatest perks of retirement?
A: Running errands in the middle of the day and never standing in line."
You can organize your day to be much more efficient by picking the times to do things when everyone else is at work.
As you can imagine, there are the inevitable jokes about how many retirees it takes to change a light bulb, and other familiar gags.
I felt that the message of the book transcended the humor to actually make me think more realistically about retirement.
People who are retired might see this book as poking fun at them. People who are about to retire would see it as an object lesson. I recommend it for the latter.
Most potential retirees would probably not buy this book for themselves, so you should give it to them as a gift. Then, a nice thing to do would be to have a friendly conversation about retirement plans with the person you gave the book to. That would allow for a greater chance that the book's message will sink in: Retirement can be the best time of your life, but you have to get organized to take advantage of that.
