“You’re a lobster if you don’t read this one.”

“Funny bone ticklers that are hot and crisp from the popper.”

“We’d like to have been able to hand him a few swift swats in the breadbasket.”

“This one’s about a very chesty French hayseed who had a swelled bean over his ability as a lion hunter.”

Passages from a Damon Runyon story? Lines from an old-timey gangster movie? No, just cracking-good quotes from a handful of pungent, salty, to-the-point early 20th-century book reviews by a Sing Sing prisoner that were unearthed by an enterprising Times reporter and printed in the paper on April 30, 1911 and May 21, 1911.