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Rating: 
Summary: Gullible's Travels
Review: Gullible's Travels is a thoroughly enjoyable perusal of life lived to its fullest. John T. Dybvig writes with a refreshingly open and irreverent style, always maintaining that crucial conversational tone with his reader. He is at his best describing the vast differences between life in California and New Zealand. Far from being arrogant, his observations remain both poignant and humorous. He moves from topic to topic with a
plethora of anecdotal descriptions, all laced with a full-steam-ahead attitude. Dybvig is unashamed, unembarrassed, and totally honest.
The book is not constructed for heavy analysis or critique. It's a joyous romp through a vast array of experiences ranging from high school basketball to professional drama and everything in between. All this laced with Dybvig's often salty, yet frequently hilarious brand of unabashed written monologue.
Enjoy the read. John Dybvig entertains.
Rating: 
Summary: Dybvig cracks me up
Review: How different a single entity is depending on one's perspective. I'm a born and bred Kiwi and John Dybvig is a household name in these dark and rainy little islands of New Zealand and his story is especially enlightening and pertinent to the New Zealand reader. Where US readers have will get some idea of the situations and gallery of characters in Gullibles Travels, New Zealanders will know exactly what's going on and who these people are, and that makes it an even more cracking read for us than anybody else. I'm appalled it doesn't have a national distributor here. It's a top read and I laughed out loud at least 5 times and ran about to find somebody... ANYbody, to read hilarious passages out aloud to, plenty. The cat loved my recitals. John Dybvig is a bold and brash risk-taking big man who takes large bites out of life. Bless him. If you're not from New Zealand you'll crack up and love this book anyway, BUT, if you're a New Zealander there's a very special treat here. An acid test to see if you can laugh at yourself. Top work that man.
Rating: 
Summary: Land of Opportunity
Review: John Dybvig writes as he talks - loud! He is, as he puts it, an "American billboard" and appears to accept most things American uncritically - the star-spangled patriot abroad - while casting an often humourous and sometimes rancorous and dyspeptic eye on most things New Zealand. Fair enough, this book is written principally for Americans en route to NZ, to help them understand the locals and appreciate, as John now does, that when we speak, we don't mean the same things, even when we use the same words. This John has learnt at some cost - and his adventures in coming to terms with this ornery, cussed, un-american little outpost, are narrated here. This book is at its best when it's being a funny guide to a quirky land of mono-syllabics. There are chapters, like the one on John's brief career as a tv commentator for the pro wrestling circus which are gut-hurtingly funny and beautifully descriptive.
It's less successful when it tries to be a straight memoir. John seems to get caught between trying to give an honest account of something which might have been serious and painful, and keeping it light and funny. Let's see the memoir next! I'm sure there's more to be said, having watched various Americans struggle to come to terms with a country which seems to them at first glance to be simple and straightforward. For the breadth and variety of John's adventures in NZ, from basketball coach to tv host, from serious dramatic actor to after-dinner commedian to accent coach, from bachelor on the tiles to happily married loving father of two little kiwis, provide one of the greatest ironies - that for this Yank, it was NZ, not the US of A, which turned out to be the Land of Opportunity. However, if Gullible's Travels does nothing more thna prove to in-bound Americans that NZ is not a smaller, cuter, stranger, quieter version of the US, it will have done both them and NZ a service.
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