Amuzings Book Reviews

Amuzings by Dwayne R. James Book Summary

If you’re new to the story, let me catch you up on the journey already in progress…

I’m Dwayne. Currently, I’m an artist and writer, but it wasn’t always that way. For many years, I was a single-father for a precocious young girl while I worked from home for a large computer company. Then, things changed. Literally overnight.

I met an amazing woman and fell head over toes in love. In a matter of a year, we were married and expecting twins, but it’s the precise manner in which it happened that continues to boggle the mind. As the story goes (and I am NOT making this up), my wife and I found out that she was pregnant with twins the day after I was laid off from the aforementioned good paying job in January of 2009.

The months and years that followed were equal parts challenging and rewarding as I balanced my new role as a stay at home Dad with the excitement of establishing myself as a fledgling artist and all-around creative type. During this dramatic period of my life, one of the things that helped keep me sane was my ability to provide a running commentary on Social Media about the insanity of it all. In 2012, I gathered up all of the posts that I’d made to that point, composed a narrative to link it all together, and self-published it as a book called Gingers & Wry.

In the months and years since G&W came out, my ginger kids have grown quite a bit. The twins have gone to grade school, my daughter has gone to University, and all three continue to delight and amaze me. As for my wife and me, she’s well respected at her job, and I’ve carved out a comfortable niche in the local arts community.
Through it all, I’ve continued to post irreverent commentary about life’s wonders and absurdities on Social Media. I’d been toying with the idea of gathering them all together again like I’d done for G&W when a chance encounter with two different friends in the same week, both who told me how much they enjoyed my irreverent comments, and both who said they would make a funny book, gave me the impetus I needed. I immediately sat down and began to put this publication together.
This collection differs from G&W in that it doesn’t have the running narrative. It focuses primarily on roughly six years’ worth of the quips, puns, one-liners, and zingers that I’ve come to call amuzings.

As an added bonus, I’ve also included two short-stories that I composed originally for two separate iterations of the CBC Non-Fiction story contest. Although neither one was recognized in their respective contests, “Lies I Told My Father” was later noticed by a producer on Stuart Mclean’s Vinyl Café Radio program. She had wanted to include it on a future show as a part of the “Stories from Listeners” segment, but it never happened due to Stuart’s untimely death in 2017 (Um. Just to be clear. I did not mean to make it sound like I’m complaining that another person’s death was inconvenient for me. That’s clear, right?)

I’m not convinced that there’s a good way to read the content of this book. It’s not necessarily designed to be read from start to finish. I’ve broken it up into sections and sub-sections with the idea that you can flip to any part of the book and read a few pages and walk away amused as well as satisfied that you can do the same thing all over again later. With over 1,100 amuzings and stories to choose from, I’m confident that you’ll be hard pressed to repeat yourself anytime soon!

Happy reading!

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