Now patriciar

I reviewed this one and the Playbook together on BE. Letter to my Future Self:Dear Patri­cia,you love How I Met Your Mother and you love Bar­ney. Mostly because he’s a bas­tard, a hilar­i­ously ego­tis­ti­cal, nar­cis­sis­tic, and very, very sick puppy. You love HIMYM because so far it’s been a very con­stis­tent show. Things that have been men­tioned in the first sea­son weren’t dis­re­garded later, some­thing that is rare for tv-shows. (Yes, I’m look­ing at you Gilmore Girls)And as a Bar­ney and How I Met Your Mother fan it pains you to admit that, while you do not regret lis­ten­ing to the Ger­man Audio­book (which has been nar­rated by Barney’s Ger­man voice!), you wished it had been.. bet­ter. More.There are many excuses for the things I’ll bring up now, but in the end, if the books had been bet­ter over­all, these few points wouldn’t stick out that much:1. The rules in the Bro Code have been bro­ken sev­eral times, even though Marsh­mal­low said in one episode that Ted had never bro­ken even one of them. So far, though, both he and Bar­ney have. (And I’m not only talk­ing about hit­ting some­one in the nuts, which – I know – has been done after Bar­ney did ‘the thing’ and un-bro-ed himself.)2. Book-Barney isn’t TV-Barney, espe­cially in the Play­book. I sup­pose because Matt Kuhn didn’t want to insult women too much, but really, that took Barney’s charme. As a reader I wanted Bar­ney to be his ruth­less, annoy­ing self, but there were moments when he really wasn’t. I know that (3) will be very sim­il­iar, but it focusses on a dif­fer­ent part:3. Bitch Please- moments. Some parts of the Play­book were just stu­pid* and Bar­ney is a –with obvi­ous excep­tions– very intel­li­gent* char­ac­ter. If Kuhn wanted to show another side of Bar­ney – and I don’t mean a stu­pid side, but a more sen­si­tive, more insight­ful side – he would have needed to explore that part of Barney’s per­son­al­ity, some­thing that is impos­si­ble to do in books such as the Play­book or The Bro Code.* Stu­pid because they didn’t match the char­ac­ter set up pro­vided in the show, not because they were unin­tel­li­gent. And with “a intel­li­gent char­ac­ter” I mean that the way he’s been por­trayed so far was intel­li­gent, which is why sev­eral parts of the book dis­ap­pointed me so much.Over­all I wouldn’t rec­om­mend buy­ing the books for the full price. Either buy it used, or bet­ter yet, just bor­row it again!Love,Patri­ciaP.S. Maybe read the third Bar­ney book once you find the time.