Covid isolation is driving Christopher Buckley's unnamed protagonist crazy. Literally. To the point he thinks he might have early onset dementia -- certainly his wife Peaches believes it, because he's driving her crazy with all of his antics.

With little else to do, he takes deep dives down the rabbit holes of his imagination, aided by the internet, researching his latest screenplay about a Nazi plot to kidnap FDR during WWII, imaginary muckraking in the campaign for the local coroner's office, words of Carthaginian origin, moles devouring his prized tomato patch, and all sorts of other silliness.

Yes, this is Christopher Buckley, and you can just imagine him writing this book during his own Covid isolation, taking these deep dives down these rabbit holes, documenting it for us with a healthy of comedy (or perhaps an unhealthy dose of fractured facetiousness).

So lots of fun, especially if this is exactly what you know to expect of Buckley. Hit or miss, for sure, but mostly hit for me. Somewhat scattershot, as befits the central conceit of filling up an endless amount of time by taking sometimes random roads down streams of consciousness.

It's close to 4.5 stars for me, but I'm going to go with 4 rather than 5 because the book ultimately does not deliver on the promise of satirizing the big Covid quarantine of 2020. It does humorously albeit narrowly examine its impact on one eccentric isolate, but I was hoping for a broader send-up of what was one of the biggest events of our lives.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for giving me a chance to read and review this book in advance.

I have read 3 previous books by Christopher Buckley and enjoyed them all. However, this one did not work for me. The narrator is a somewhat successful screenwriter isolating in South Carolina during Covid. He has gained so much weight that he can no longer see his toes. He wallows in self pity and thinks about huge sandwiches at the local fast food restaurant all the time. He also is trying to think about writing a new screenplay His idea is to have German commandos kidnap FDR in 1944 and get FDR to abandon D Day and surrender to Germany.
But the humor fell flat and I started skimming halfway through the book, skipping chapters. I can't honestly recommend this book. I rate it 2 stars.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for sending me this eARC through NetGalley.

I really appreciate the chance to review the ARC of Has Anyone Seen My Toes? It certainly was entertaining and it was very unique in its writing style. But for me, it was far too stream of consciousness and random to maintain my interest. It definitely could offer many readers a great escape from the weight of today's world, my exploring the main character's thoughts, but it was just not my kind of book. It was missing a significant enough overarching thread.

I got about 30% of the way into this book, and it just was a struggle to continue. It was so random, that it couldn't hold my attention. I'm hoping I can pick it up another time and make it through, but this was a DNF for me for now.

Has Anyone Seen My Toes? is exactly the kind of book of this genre we have come to expect by Christopher Buckley. It is full of humor tied into some current events. It is laugh out loud satirical without needed needing a true plot line. A funny story of a man’s life in the time of Covid. Another success by a leading satirist/humorist of our times. I am still chuckling.
Thanks to the author, publicist and NetGalley for the advance copy for review.

I must caution the reader they will experience great difficulty trying to read "Has Anyone Seen My Toes?" because of the uproarious humor. Seriously, there were so many moments I was laughing too hard to turn the pages. My gosh, the world has needed Christopher Buckley and, in his inimitable way, he has answered the call with another comic classic. Who knew the pandemic could give rise to such an entertaining book? One farcical scene after another immerses the reader into the world of small town politics, fast food, Google searches, and Hollywood screenplays. We won't even mention the clever use of Sus domesticus either. Let's just say our main character knows how to write himself out of jams. It's the sort of witty masterpiece we have come to expect from Buckley and I'm happy to report he's still the best. Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the advanced reading copy via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I have been waiting for this pandemic book! Buckley captures the absurdity of Covid times, from gaining weight to the "Oaf" keepers to telemed. It captures the absurdity of the times while holding lens to the times we are living through.

This book had a strong start, but it became super repetitive and I just became less and less interested in the content. I thought it started out entertaining and funny though, and it was a unique perspective on the pandemic.

It has been quite a while since I laughed over a book as much as I did Christopher Buckley’s latest satirical look at today’s society through the eyes of a middle-aged screenwriter growing fat but not happy during the COVID pandemic. The pressures of life during COVID stimulate our protagonist’s creative juices to write a new screenplay about a German attempt to kidnap FDR during WW II with a plot that involves, among other things, setting pigs on fire and letting them loose on Bernard Baruch’s estate while FDR was visiting. It also stimulates his interest in a local contested election for coroner, and he thinks Putin may be interfering with the coroner election. Gradually, he begins to fear he is losing touch with reality, and he does not know whether to blame it on COVID or dementia or something unknown.
The humor runs the gamut from erudite to tasteless and although I confess to enjoying the vast majority of it, my favorites were the smiles that grew out of the protagonist’s love of etymology and great literature. There were marvelous quotes from sources like Mark Twain saying about a book by Henry James, “Once you put it down, you can’t pick it up.” There were also clever unbelievable bits of history, but when I looked several of them up they all turned out to be true, like the fact that Marcel Proust’s brother was a well-known urologist who performed the first successful prostatectomy in France, leading his colleagues to nickname it a “Proust-ectomy” or the origin of the term “Nazi”, which was originally rather derogatory. I learned the odd origin of the word “mayonnaise” and also added some nice words to my vocabulary, like “hypocorism”, which means pet name.
Satire by its nature, though, generally involves a serious subject, and where you draw the line at poking fun at serious subjects can be difficult. Readers have varying levels of tolerance for laughing at sensitive subjects, and as the book progressed I found myself disturbed by the inclusion of one topic in particular that I will not name because it would be a spoiler.
My disagreement with some of the objects of Buckley’s barbed humor was not great enough to keep me from enjoying the book, though, or to keep me from recommending it to readers who need some laughs and can tolerate humor about serious matters.

I would like to thank Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for the chance to read this book as an ARC. Christopher Buckley has written a humorous book about Covid. It sounds like an oxymoron. This book is more like a series of short essays, strung together , about a man, who is living in South Carolina with his second wife, during the pandemic. He is not sick with Covid, but is overweight and seems to be spiraling towards dementia. At least, that is what his wife thinks, when he starts to be convinced that Putin is rigging the election for county coroner. Among other strange thoughts, he is obsessed with a burger chain called Hippo King, Proust, the origin of the word mayonnaise, fat shaming by i phone, and it does go on and on. He is also trying to write a screenplay about an attempt by Hitler to kidnap FDR. I realize that this does not sound funny. Trust me, it is. Pandemic and quarantine does strange things to your mind, and this book is one man's attempt to shed a funny light on an unfunny subject. It is satire in its truest form.Interestingly enough, I read it just now while quarantined with covid. The fact that I laughed throughout the book, despite being sick, tells you how on the mark funny it is. It is an odd book.one not everyone will like, but I did like it very much!

I love intelligent humor. Let's face it, anyone can succeed with a well-timed fart joke as it speaks to our inner 10 year old child. But intelligent humor is where it's at, and it's hard to successfully pull off. I was laughing out loud so many times while reading this, that my husband kept asking if I was okay. There is so much humor in life and the situations, but it takes talent to find it and successfully point it out. This was bawdy and irreverant and genuine and just plain wacky and ridiculous (in an extremely good way) at times, and I loved every word of it. Who would have thought Nazis were so darn funny.

This book had me laughing out loud at several points. Buckley has such wonderful satirical insights and dry wit, that I have enjoyed since THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (still one of my all-time favorites). His latest novel delivers yet again on the humorous cultural critique we've come to expect in his writing. At once pessimistic and hopeful, this story incisively cuts to the core of what's wrong in contemporary America, yet does so in a way that makes us believe the future will be better.

This story didn’t really have a plot. It was like listening to a comedy routine. Lots of funny bits!
I liked the one where the doctor gives him “diet pills” to lose weight and yet he is in line at his favorite fast food binge place, after running every scenario of a big binge order through his head., he orders a side salad no dressing.
Too many funny bits to name. Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

Christopher Buckley presents his take on the pandemic, and much of it will ring familiar, which is comforting in a hilarious way. Suffering writer's block, a scriptwriter is living out his lockdown at home in South Carolina in relative luxury, and is struggling with his new screenplay, which defies description. In performing "research," he finds himself falling down Google rabbit holes, which many can relate to, and the text sallies off into diverse subjects that had me laughing out loud. Warning -- Anything further will take away the fun of reading this for yourself -- just don't read it in public.

This is fantastically funny and frenetic. The plot is all over the place and mainly serves as a backdrop for hilarious tangents. I loved this book because not only is it laugh-out-loud gleeful, it is also very smart and well-written. I have avoided all other books set during Covid times because it just feels too soon to read about lockdowns etc. but this was great.

Clever and ever so funny, laugh aloud funny, is only the beginning. Christopher Buckley has such a command of the English language, which makes him even more enjoyable to read. I just loved this book……thank you NetGalley and Simon Schuster for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. Publication scheduled for September 2022…..don't miss it and don't read it on a bus, train or airplane or someone will think you’re crazy for laughing so loudly.

I am a huge fan of Christopher Buckley’s writing.
HAS ANYONE SEEN MY TOES deliver’s the wit and writing that his admirers count on..

Use of language is one of the elements that makes or breaks a book for me and Mr. Buckley is masterful in his command of archaic adjectives. And verbs. It has not been easy for most of us to find humor our “ pandemic lives” but Buckley has done his best to contrive some. I applaud the effort to lighten the tone of our lives during this period, but it felt a little heavy-handed to me. . . If he were not so clever, I would not have expected more.

Netgalley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for a candid review.

I received an ARC of the latest from Christopher Buckley through NetGalley.

I have read several works from this author. Has Anyone Seen My Toes? delivers what is expected from him. A rambling plot, farcical humor.

This is about an aging screenwriter coping with the 2020-2021 pandemic. And not coping very well. He has gained a ton of weight. He is seeing a psychiatrist. He is seeing a medical doctor also, a lady who is not hard on the eyes. In addition to gaining an alarming amount of weight, he also thinks he has dementia.

During the pandemic, he is also trying to write a screenplay where the WWII Nazis are trying to kidnap Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This amounts to a book within a book. He is also overly involved in the local election for CORONER (!), accusing one candidate of burying people alive and the other of being under the influence of Russian President Putin.

You get the idea. This is crazy and funny. That's Christopher Buckley's trademark.

I don't know about you, but I do not possess much interest in a dramatic film or novel about the pandemic. But I am definitely ready to indulge in a comedy. Thankfully, Christopher Buckley is here to take a shot at it. Buckley is a legend of political satire, one of the few greats of the quickly dying genre. I was very excited to receive this book, dove in, and read it in one sitting. It is fantastic and hilarious. At 69 years of age, Buckley has not lost a step in the slightest, and I think this is his wittiest book in years. Here, like many of his other books. Buckley's humor is reminiscent of the Marx Brothers, Wilde, Mencken, Dennis Miller, and Woody Allen all combined into one unique voice. The other amazing thing about Buckley is, despite the uproarious, and sometimes slapstick/screwball comedy, he is as erudite and well-read as any living author at the highest level of literature. The pages are littered with fascinating, adept references to history, etymology, mythology, philosophy, literature, film and more, such that you are just as likely to learn an interesting fact as you are to laugh. And the word play, diction and wit are all incredible here. I also love that, unlike so many other writers who avoid comedy/satire now like it is Covid itself, Buckley hasn't shied away from his penchant for political incorrectness. Sure, the plot, such as it is, isn't particularly compelling. But I am not reading Buckley for the plot, this isn't a Michael Connelly crime procedural. This is a satirist and comic writer in top form and Buckley gives us the laugh we could all use after so much sanctimony and fear the last couple years.

Pretty Random, But Good Random......

This doesn't feel much like a novel with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rather, reading this book is sort of like watching a standup comedian work out the bugs in his new material. Some of it is sharp, tight, and right on. Some is a little too long and unfocused and needs to be tightened up. Some of the bits just don't work, and some are killer. That was fine by me because when Buckley is on he's really on and there are loads of laugh out loud moments here.

In a way this book reads more like a loosely linked anthology of short humor pieces. Bits like the Proust takedown are brutally funny, and most of the funniest rants are just popped into the novel out of nowhere and for no reason related to the plot. This is probably for the best since the plot itself is inane and not especially engaging.

So, since humor is currently in short supply and topical humor is virtually nonexistent, I was happy to watch Buckley riff and improvise and fool around and fine tune his stuff. Sometimes plot is just a thin excuse for numbering the pages.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)