My first Dilbert book was ‘The Dilbert Principle’ which I had read some four years ago. And I still vividly recall how uncomplicatedly I could draw parallels between my own professional life at that point and the stuff mentioned in the book.
I was very much aware that a lot of things mentioned in ‘The Dilbert Principle’ were nothing but a monument of author’s notional vehemence. Despite all that I had liked the book so much that I actually took down notes – notes in which Scott Adams guides fed-up-with-management workers how to put one back on the management. Chapters on Marketing, Sales, HR, especially, were my favorites. Even today, I refer to ‘The Dilbert Principle’ as much as I do ‘Seven effective Habits’.
‘Stick to drawing comics’ is not a management book and I was cognizant of this fact before I bought it. Having read ‘Gods’ Debris’, ‘The Religion War’ in addition to ‘The Dilbert Principle’, I was quite certain of Adams’ wherewithal to write on an array of topics besides management.
Although Adams does scrape the management landscape in ‘Stick to drawing comics’, most of the fun lies in other chapters which make up the bulk of the book. In short, this book is a compendium of Scott Adams’ blogs comprising cornucopia of topics.
Chapters that struck a chord with me were ‘Immortality Plan B’, ‘Overrated intelligence’, ‘Losing weight’, ‘Dancing’, ‘Relativity’, ‘Heat waves’, ‘Undergarment dysfunctions’, ‘Sadistic mumble movies’, ‘Self-criticism’, ‘Chinese striptease funeral’, ‘German cannibal’ and last but not the least, ‘The donut theory of the universe’.
There is no common thread in this book. All the chapters can be treated as mutually exclusive. You can thumb through the book looking at the titles and stopping at the ones you feel appeal the most to your humorous side. Also, unlike Scott Adams’ previous books, this one has an absolute scarcity of cartoons.
Adams does toss in a few strips here and there to remind the readers that he isn’t giving up on drawing comic. His syndication had gagged most of these strips on some account or other.
This book has its share of unparliamentary, crude language, too, which I think only adds to the humor. I have not read the reviews of this book on other sites but I can say with certainty that Adams must have received loads of left-handed compliments for the use of language and his musings on sensitive topics such as religion, especially from purists. All said and done, with all its warts, this book is a must-read for all Scott Adams fans and for those as well who have a sense of humor. The touchy and upright lot should avoid this book.
Finally, I got to know a few things about Scott Adams. A mere repetition of the following clued me into his likes:
a) He loves playing tennis, b) he adores ‘Grey Goose’ vodka, c) ‘Electric fence’ is his favorite phrase and d) he fantasizes a lot about being President of the United States.