Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern Book Review

Genre: Humor, Non Fiction
Authors: Justin Halpern
Date Published: May 4, 2010
Publisher:HarperCollins
Edition: ebook
ISBN-13: 9780062002945
Size: 176

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After being dumped by his longtime girlfriend, twenty-eight-year-old Justin Halpern found himself living at home with his seventy-three-year-old dad. Sam Halpern, who is "like Socrates, but angrier, and with worse hair," has never minced words, and when Justin moved back home, he began to record all the ridiculous things his dad said to him:

"That woman was sexy. . . . Out of your league? Son, let women figure out why they won't screw you. Don't do it for them."

"Do people your age know how to comb their hair? It looks like two squirrels crawled on their heads and started fucking."

"The worst thing you can be is a liar. . . . Okay, fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then number two is liar. Nazi one, liar two."

More than a million people now follow Mr. Halpern's philosophical musings on Twitter, and in this book, his son weaves a brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his quotes. An all-American story that unfolds on the Little League field, in Denny's, during excruciating family road trips, and, most frequently, in the Halperns' kitchen over bowls of Grape-Nuts, Sh*t My Dad Says is a chaotic, hilarious, true portrait of a father-son relationship from a major new comic voice.

Review

This is a really funny read. Justin Halpern, who put up the twitter page ShitMyDadSays on 2009 wrote this book when reporters started contacting him to interview his father as his twitter page garnered millions of followers in a matter of days.

Sh*t My Dad Says is an anecdotal book following Justin Halpern's experiences in life where his father has a lot to say.

Sam Halpern is a straightforward old man with no filters. His vocabulary involves words like fuck, bullshit, and almost everything would come down to shit. Situations are analogized with going to the toilet to take a shit and just about shit.

Give your mother the front seat…. I don’t give a shit if she said you could have it, that’s what she’s supposed to do, and you’re supposed to say, ‘No, I insist.’ You think I’m gonna drive around with my wife in the backseat and a nine-year-old in the front? You’re a crazy son of a bitch.

Lucky for this old man, he only had 3 sons to put up with his profanity especially when the youngest has to hear it like this one when Justin was just 6:

You say you’re sick, huh? Well, it looks like you’ve come down with a case of bullshit. You ain’t sick. What’s the problem here? We just drove a goddamned continent, and I’m tired. Spit it out.

Justin's father is a well-educated man with a strong credibility in the scientific community. He is a cancer researcher in nuclear medicine at the University of California. He is jewish and yet, not entirely Christian. He is mostly scientific and doesn't care of what happens next after death.

When the author had this fit of contemplating about death, his father told him that there's only nothingness after death, an infinity of nothingnes. By then, he was already an adult and couldn't sleep, like hyperventilating due to sheer anxiety. So his father has to talk him down about it like this,

Jesus Christ. You need to take a fucking science course or something. What I’m trying to say is that what makes you up, it’s always been around, and it always will be around. So really the only thing you should worry about is the part you’re at right now. Where you got a body and a head and all that bullshit. Just worry about living, dying is the easy part.

As you can see, not only do you have a good laugh with this book, you'll also learn a lot of things in life. This book is a fast read. I was able to finish it within 5 hours and that's not taking a lot when you feel happy putting the book down.