Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

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I used to like old-fashioned things like classic cars,” he says. “And that’s fine because when they’re fading into the past and the future is perhaps less picturesque but fairer, then you can enjoy reminiscing about the picturesque.” Mitchell is an exceptionally clever, eloquent and spot-on commentator. We should be grateful for him.’ Daily Mail What has he learned over the years the book represents? He laughs. “Well, that’s a damning question because I don’t know. I think I’m still shouting, ‘Look at what just happened!’”

You can criticize me. You can crucify me. You can love me. You can hate me. Just don't make the mistake of calling me inauthentic because you'd be a d*mn liar. – Stephen A. Smith Lies sound like facts to those who’ve been conditioned to misrecognize the truth. – DaShanne StokesI am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face. – Anne Sexton

Fundamentally, I think I do feel it,” he says. “It’s true that as I walk out of my house in a nice quiet street and go to a nice cafe five minutes’ walk away, I have no reason to have these apocalyptic musings.”

He apologises in the book’s opening essay for his presumption in writing a “trite manifesto”, but argues it’s the least he can do if he’s going to continue moaning. “And my resolve to do that,” he adds, “is unshakeable.” Mitchell and I are virtually the same age and seem to be on a nearly identical spot of the political spectrum of our respective countries. We share a sensibility and I envy his writing style But this is a compilation of newspaper columns written for Brits. I'm sure that I missed a lot of jokes because I was not familiar with a given TV presenter or 2nd tier politician. A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it. – Carlos Ruiz Zafon I still really like David Mitchell’s wit, but the format of this book is not favorable. Essentially a collection of a few recent years of his pop culture/politics op-eds in the Guardian, Mitchell himself jokingly described it by saying “I’m going to really double down on the out-of-touch hypocritical centrist whingeing.” While that self-deprecation is funny, it’s also a critique that’s partially apt (if exaggerated for defensive effect). In the review section for this book on Goodreads, I saw that a few people put the book down after reading the introduction. I can sort of see why. It wasn't the happy, comical interpretation of modern society that many of us would be expecting from David Mitchell. The tone of the introduction does not fit well with the rest of the book. This is, of course, because the book is a collection of Mitchell's columns from The Guardian, not a traditional work of creative nonfiction. This is not a criticism of the book - only an observation.

Anyone who doesn't take the truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones, either. – Albert Einstein In his column for this newspaper and in the comic riffs for which he is known on shows such as QI or Have I Got News For You, he is a satirist of crass innovations, a poet of minor irritations. But in Dishonesty Is the Second-Best Policy, a collection of his columns from the past three years, Mitchell has reached a more macro-scale judgment. His ire is aimed not at film-set canteens but at the world at large, or at least the British part of it. In his opinion, he writes, Britain is now a country where things are “generally getting worse”. My ambition as a teenager was to do what I now do. I don’t want to be a film star and I don’t want to go to Hollywood No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying or by being lied to. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca But the essays and newspaper columns throughout? They show keen and well-thought-out observations and well-written criticism of today’s weirdness, and I am more edified having read them. Overall, I was impressed by how well he summarized complex ideas so economically and perfectly. Being blunt and forthright myself, I appreciate his forthright stance.It’s more like something out of a medieval tale of courtly love, a moral of romantic struggle and triumphant belief. From being the lovable square that people secretly pitied, he became a partner in a fine romance that others openly envied. He’s not unaware of the transition or how he and Coren are perceived. I wasn't sure whether to give this 4 stars or 3. Mitchell is a funny man, who I mostly know from watching British game shows on YouTube. (I know how to live.) He is most famous in the states for the Mitchell and Webb series, which is genuinely brilliant. And this book is good but there are more smiles than laughs in this compilation of newspaper columns.

He is so much fun in a verbal spar with other comedians, but in the Introduction to this volume….not so much, I’m sorry to say. The Introduction makes some excessively loquacious remarks about dishonesty that’s funny in spots. Skim it or skip it but don’t stop there! (Hey, doesn’t the word “skip” in the queen’s language mean “trash can?”) The secret to getting away with lying is believing with all your heart. That goes for lying to yourself, even more so than lying to another. – Elizabeth Bear So he has reached a rare state of professional contentment, except in his case it’s an anxious kind of contentment because he is fundamentally an anxious kind of person. For many years he controlled his various irrational fears through analysing statistical likelihood. “I managed to get myself to a place where the thing I was frightened of didn’t have to be impossible – I could console myself with the thought that it was just vanishingly unlikely.” This was a great book, and half-way through, I bought his first book, "Thinking about it only makes it worse," because it's always fun to laugh at history (as that book is filled with columns over the five(ish) years before 2015.When it was just me on my own, things being probably fine was just good enough. But probably fine isn't good enough when I'm thinking about my child. Suddenly you need things to be definitely fine - and things are never definitely fine and that's frightening. But really, in almost every other thing, I think we're samesies. I found myself laughing quite a lot while listening to this book, and nodding and agreeing. Webb and Mitchell in their Cambridge days, mid-90s. The picture was taken for the poster advertising their first two-man show. Photograph: Courtesy of David Mitchell The book is a collection of columns written for the Independent/Observer with an additional section written for Audible. The last section which is a set of future headlines predictions is one of the most hilarious sections of the book which is also funny because they could be true. Equally funny is the preface where he explains the title. Now if I were David, I would have dismissed the review as someone calling it a bascially pointless book that has only the preface and an appendix that works. :D