One of my favorite anecdotes about the writing process is from John Swartzwelder. Every writer relates to his complaint - how one's own writing seems to decline in quality as time passes. To paraphrase: "It's like some crappiness gnomes snuck into my room while I was asleep and changed everything I wrote the night before". I love early Simpsons, and the mythos surrounding Swartzwelder is hilarious, but this book is bitterly disappointing. Some of the jokes are okay, I guess. There's no wit, just a lot of cleverness. I was hoping for something with a wider scope or vision, but it's pretty much just a detective novel full of jokes, plodding along without developing in any interesting way. It's barely funnier than a low-tier Simpsons episode, maybe from around the same time Swartzelder left the show (2003). There's none of the surrealism that made the Simpsons so great. Fortunately, Jack Handey's novel "The Stench of Honolulu" exists - why couldn't HE have written a whole series? Incidentally, the top recommended book on this page (Norm MacDonald's) is also devastatingly unfunny. Will I ever be as good a writer as those guys? Probably not, I think they sent the crappiness gnomes to get me. That's why I wrote this bitter review.

Amusing and funny romp of a book involving an inept and bumbling Private Investigator and a time machine. Swartzwelder being a writer on the Simpsons makes a lot of sense, as the structure of the jokes is like "gag-a-minute" with every paragraph containing some punchline. Not all of it's clever, in fact, some of it its pretty stupid, but that's what I really enjoyed about this. It's dumb and fun, and at 138 pages, it just flew by.

there is only one frank burly and its a good thing

After 20 years of yearning, I finally read this, and it did not disappoint! I've been a fan of this writer since noticing that he wrote so many of my favorite Simpsons episodes. That humor remains largely the same here, though he does seem to realize that the page gives some different opportunities and makes some different demands than the screen does.

Yes, this is a very silly book--like Mickey Spillane by way of Jasper Fforde--and the plot is very thin, though it does come together better the further on it goes. That's just fine--no need to be too serious here. Not every joke lands, but many do, and there are so many flying at you that it's hard to even keep up. Books rarely make you laugh out loud, but I did that several times here, and with many a quiet chuckle thrown in for good measure.

Not a masterpiece or anything, but very enjoyable.

Aside from the Douglas Adams books, this is probably the funniest book I've ever read. Written by the guy who's written more episodes of "The Simpsons" than anyone else, it really has a mid-90's Simpsons feel to it. There was a laugh out loud moment every few pages.

I think I liked it even more because it dealt with time travel, and I'm generally a aficionado of time travel stories, and this is a clever riff on time travel stuff.

If I had a complaint, it would be that it's not long enough. It's short, and moves along briskly, and feels like it's over too soon. But that's a minor quibble -- this works as well as any comic fiction book I can remember apart from Douglas Adams. Highly recommended.

A chaotic, absurdist (but not nonsensical) roller coaster ride. It pokes fun at some tropes that are quite taken for granted, and takes the mickey out of all the rest. Relaxed reading. Not going to delve too deep, because that would probably ruin it.

Did we really need more of me to go around?

Detective Frank Burly is terrible at his job. But he is persistent. His new indigent client wants him to find a family ornament that will somehow prove that he is actually a wealthy upstanding member of the community. The sort with buildings named after his family. Frank doesn't know where to start. And it soon becomes clear that he doesn't know when to start either.

The Simpsons was heavily influential on me. It screened every evening, sometimes multiple episodes per night, to the point that I could probably quote jokes from just about every episode in the first 10 seasons. And John Swartzwelder was a huge part of that.

As stunning as it is to realise that The Simpsons is still running 25 years after the start of its decline, it's even more amazing that I'd never picked up one of Swartzwelder's books. And it was fine.

The Time Machine Did It is absurdist humour from start to finish. Jokes pepper the page in a way that most authors would dream of being able to write. Of course, most writers would also not lean quite so heavily into the absurdity as Swartzwelder in favour of a story that is more engaging.

This is an amazingly off-the-wall book, but the way the story is told and the type of humour does hold you back from really enjoying it. Too many of the jokes are just jokes rather than being part of the story. Other jokes that are part of the story create holes that Swartzwelder fills with more absurdity and jokes. E.g. I'm still not sure if the time travel joke about the old elevator driver becoming a 4-year-old in the same job is genius, dumb, or both. Either way, it was clearly the sort of joke you put in a visual medium and not a wordy one.

I see from the ratings that the Frank Burly series improves with each instalment, so I'm likely to read some more from Swartzwelder in the future.

The Time Machine Did It combines two of of my most favorites forms of entertainment: time travel and Simpsons-type humor. Authored by legendary Simpsons writer Jon Swartzwelder, this book lives up to its reputation of having a joke in nearly every sentence, with an almost coherent mystery wrapped around it.

It lives and dies on a paragraph-to-paragraph basis, with setups and punchlines coming at you at a rapid clip. When it really gets going and strings together some solid jokes, it can be transcendent. Here and there it can test your patience, though, which the humor isn't gelling as much and it almost feels like the author is daring you to be even less invested in the narrative than he is.

Absurd to its core, I've never read a book quite like this one. The Time Machine Did It is cartoonish and takes advantage of reality as most cartoons do—utilizing a completely elastic world where literally anything can happen and does, but the style is so easy and fun, you just roll along with it. The book is dense with witty lines and ridiculous situations, and is laugh out loud funny (at least I thought so). Lots of books promise laughs. This one delivers.

I read this in one sitting. By "read" I mean listened to a guy read it to me on YouTube, and by "sitting" I mean spent a few hours weeding and mowing the lawn.

If you're a big fan of classic Simpsons episodes, particularly quick throwaway jokes, people being horrifyingly bad at their jobs, and characters like Homer, Chief Wiggum, and Fat Tony, you'll probably enjoy this. I won't say the writing was award worthy, but I was laughing out loud countless times. I really appreciated the 2-3 hours of entertainment.

Sometimes I wish I was a New York Times book reviewer, simply because then I’d get paid to read, which would be way more than what I get paid now to read…which is nothing. This book made me laugh, although I’m convinced I’m missed many of the hilarious “blink and you miss them” references, which is probably why I missed them, I blink every 15 seconds. Ok I’m done! Trying to write like John Swartzwelder is harder than I thought. No wonder he wrote 59 episodes of the Simpson’s and I’ve written none