I have been horrible at keeping up with these. I’m going to try and catch up on the last nine months or so of reading.

When I used to have satellite radio, I ended up using the function that alerted you when your favorite artist was playing mainly for comedians. Near the top of that list was Jim Gaffigan, who reeled me (and many others) in with his “Hot Pockets” routine. But as I listened to more and more of his stuff, I realized what am amazingly simple and funny out look he had on life.

That’s why I loved seeing his new book “Dad Is Fat” when I opened my Father’s Day present this year. I could see our beach trip on the horizon and knew his quips would make for the perfect beach read. In the end, I was mostly right.

The book does fit perfectly into a lazy beach attitude. You can float in and out of it or  read it all in one sitting. That’s the good part. The bad part is that not only does he recycle stand-up routines for certain chapters (almost verbatim), but the entire book is very repetitive. We get it, you have a lot of kids in a small apartment, and it takes a lot of coordination and you’re wife is awesome and you wouldn’t change anything for the world.

I expected some of these two scenarios, but about half to two-thirds of the way through, I felt I could have easily stopped. When he complained about the difficult logistics associated with taking his family on tour with him on a tour bus, I kind of lost sympathy for the guy.

I would have dealt better with nothing but recycled stand-up bits than “Oh, my goodness, I have to pay for two nights of hotel rooms even when I have a tricked out tour bus during my sold-out comedy tour!”

In the end, however, I only came to these problems after reading a lot of really funny stuff and some insightful things about his family. This is good mindless entertainment – just know that it runs out at some point. And look for the book on sale.