Viva Laughter!


Fiction - Humor/Comedy
452 Pages
Reviewed on 05/14/2013
Buy on Amazon

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Author Biography

Patrick Shannon enjoys the comedic side of human nature, and he can think of no higher honor than someday to be remembered as a bona fide humorist. His award winning book, "Letters From Wheatfield", spins yarns about an eccentric town in Montana. His other award winning book, "Viva Cisco", offers three humorous stories for young readers. He is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi scholastic society and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Kim Anisi for Readers' Favorite

“Viva Laughter” by Patrick Shannon is a book that would be ideal as a travel companion or as a book that you read while you wait for food to cook in the oven, for your visitors to arrive or during any other time when you have time to kill. “Viva Laughter” is a collection of short stories that range from very short stories to longer ones. They don't have much of a common theme apart from the fact that they don't take life too seriously and make fun of topics and beliefs that other people take very seriously. There are stories about cats, poodles, famous people, the Bible, made-up people and events in history (that have been “slightly” altered by Patrick Shannon).

Unlike other books that make fun of topics that are very serious or even sacred for other people, “Viva Laughter” never comes across as being malicious or degrading. If you have even a tiny bit of humor, there will be many stories in this book that will keep you very entertained. I enjoyed many of the stories and some I found just a little bit too silly but I guess it is really hard to please everyone with every single story in a collection. Some of the stories I would have liked to be longer (because they are so funny like the story in which the cat talks about her pets, i.e. her humans) and others I would have liked to be shorter because they lost their momentum the longer they went on (e.g. 'Dead Fish Scrolls' is funny at the beginning but then becomes a bit boring). Overall, most stories are good, some are excellent and only very few were simply not my kind of story. Obviously an enjoyable book!

Karen Pirnot



Patrick Shannon has a marvelous sense of humor and it shows to the delight of readers of his latest book “Viva Laughter!” The author is a master of words and their more subtle meanings. He uses humor to take on the famous, the infamous and the common and the not-so-common. Shannon takes on a spoof of the Dead Sea Scrolls and he takes on the questionable activities of our most secret government agencies. He takes on election propaganda as well as the radical right with an authority which (almost) makes readers true believers. The humor is unmistakable but is so clever than even the disbelieving reader has to pause and think about possible credibility.

Although it was fun to speculate on the “what ifs” in the book, by far, I loved the tales of Shannon’s own adventures, both as a child and in Ireland. Although some readers might think some of the Biblical stories a bit sacrilegious, it is fully evident that they are all written with tongue-in-cheek and meant to stimulate the reader into thinking beyond the box. The comments on fair housing and equal opportunity are clever and thought-provoking. Just to attempt a spoof on Shakespeare takes a lot of knowledge – as well as hutzpah! This author has a wit and he doesn’t mind using it! Most readers will end up laughing until they ache and then, another thought will surface which will take them into the more subtle meanings in the book.