A Small Review for a Little Book
I just finished reading my first holiday-themed book of the year, and I enjoyed it. It's called, Every Person On The Planet, and it was written by a cartoonist for The New Yorker named Bruce Eric Kaplan. The book is subtitled, "an only somewhat anxiety-filled tale for the holidays".
I have to say that if it hadn't been subtitled, I would not have been able to tell that it was a holiday book, so if the holidays make you miserable, and you feel compelled to read books about them anyway, this would be a good choice. I intend to display it prominently on my coffee table on the stroke of November.
It's a very sweet little book, with lovely, spare, gently humorous illustrations on every page. It's not a knee-slapper, but it is a tongue-in-cheek, wry, droll little nudge. I read it in about an hour, during work breaks, and intend to read it again a few times before the actual annual catastrophe hits.
The story is: A couple decide to throw a party. Neither of them really likes parties, and they don't really want to do it, but for various reasons, they feel like they should. They are so ambivalent, and so indecisive about the whole thing, that they can't make up their minds who to invite and who to leave out, so they invite everybody in the whole world. They figure that not everybody will come. They figure wrong.
I've had parties like this, in the distant past, and every note strikes true. And it becomes believable as it unfolds, despite the preposterous premise. Like all good fiction, it becomes truer than true.
I'm sitting here trying to imagine the person that wouldn't like this book, and, granted, I'm not wide awake yet for the day, and I liked this simple little cartoon story so much that I'm more than a little biased, but really, you'd have to be dull or wildly fussy or extremely uptight not to get some pleasure from this. I recommend it. All possible thumbs are up.
And, no, you can't borrow my copy. Sorry.