This has gone into enough editions that I can believe it is popular in the Netherlands. I can't believe it's popular anywhere else, except among very dated English Europhobes, and I'm surprised it should be popular in the Netherlands either. It's not just that I find it unfunny, and not useful in explaining the national peculiarities of the Dutch; it's that so little of it is specific. Entire chapters could be pulled from your lower-grade email forwarding list and renamed to describe the annoying little quirks of anywhere. (The one on driving is especially inane, but complaints that clothing shops play loud music and you might have your wallet stolen at a street market are also typical.)
If it is, in fact, popular in the Netherlands, I can only assume that it has the charms that the bad email does, shared with newspaper horoscopes; plenty of people like being talked about, even insultingly and by rote.
Perhaps I want some good Dutch novels. I very much liked the country, in my one short visit; I liked the sense of design, cultural and physical, that allowed seemingly disparate things to trot along side by side. Some of this is the necessity of crowding, of course, but it didn't feel like -- for instance -- Japan. I can't say what it did feel like, except that I didn't think knowledge of the formal rules would explain the society to me. A novel about the formation of some important aspect of the current Dutch way might help; or one about not fitting in even though brought up Dutch; or I suppose one about moving there as an adult. Any recommendations? Or do I stick with ?
Find in a Library: The UnDutchables
So wrote clew in History (20th c.).