Granby Teacher Creates Awkward Moments with Book

The last thing you want to do when having a friend or family over or being a guest in someone’s house is to create an awkward moment.

But a book co-authored by Gary Gotberg, a Granby resident and math/physics teacher at , is designed to do just that.

“Is This Really Your Book?” by Gotberg and longtime friend and Chicago native Jack Marino, is a spiral-bound book that features mock-titles that is meant for the practical joker in all of us.

Here’s the typical set up: you’re having a friend over for lunch. You take a copy of Gotberg’s and Marino’s book and flip to the cover that says “One Step Away From Smooth, Helping Your Lame Friends Achieve a Level of Coolness” and leave it somewhere your friend is sure to see it.

The idea is to create that uncomfortable — but not too over the top — moment to see what that person’s reaction will be.

“It’s meant to be a joke book,” Gotberg said in a recent interview.

Other humorous titles — there are 93 in all — include “Cougar on the Prowl: 10 Strategies Guaranteed to Snare that Younger Man” and “Here We Go Again: Enduring the Self-Righteous Liberal.”

Gotberg said that he and Marino had been brainstorming on how to capitalize on the American Dream and came up with the idea of the book as a practical joke prop.

Gotberg said one of the two would come up with an idea and then they would work collaboratively; they used a mutual friend, who is a man’s man, as a starting off point to see what would possibly make for an awkward moment for him if he were to see a title of a book.

“We tried to stay away from things that would make somebody feel bad, but instead turned an overblown feature inward,” Gotberg said.

The results have been uniformly positive, and the book even had a minute-long shout out by Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford on the Today Show on Jan. 25.

“Not in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be on that show,” he said, explaining that the book was discovered through a friend of a friend who was a Today producer.

Since the book was featured on the television show, sales have doubled, Gotberg said.

“We’ve heard hysterical stories from people who’ve used it,” he said, including the one about the parents who had their newlywed daughter and son-in-law over the house while leaving out the book with the cover “It’s Never Too Late: Talking to Your Adult Children About Sex.”

“The son-in-law pulled the daughter aside and said, ‘I can’t believe they’re going to have this conversation.’ It was a very funny testimonial,” Gotberg said. “If we can put this out there and make people laugh, then it feels good.”

Books are available for $16.95 plus shipping at www.isthisreallyyourbook.com.