Jackpot Hit at Used Bookstore: Quick Reads to Kick Off Summer

It always takes me a while to adjust to my summer routine. This is probably because I work in academia and therefore summers typically mean an abrupt shift in regards to workload and free-time. I’m also used to doing a lot of heavy scholarly reading, and it takes a little effort to ease back into reading for fun and entertainment … I was at the used bookstore and picked up two fantastic books I had previously read, neither of which takes more than an hour or two to get through. Both books offer an effortless and enjoyable transition into summer reading and come highly recommended.

First, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian is the published excerpts of Kurt Vonnegut’s 90 second interludes recorded for New York’s public radio station in the late 1990’s. The book (78 sparsely worded pages) is a series of fictional interviews Vonnegut conducts after hiring Dr. Jack Kevorkian to give him near-death experiences. While waiting outside the Pearly Gates, Vonnegut interviews Shakespeare, Charles Darrow, Adolf Hitler, and characters from his previous novels … I first read God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian when I worked summers at a bookstore to pay for college, doesn’t take more than an hour to get through. It’s a wonderful little thought piece from one of America’s greatest authors, made even more poignant since Vonnegut’s death in 2007.

The other book I picked up is a graphic novel called Unlikely by Jeffrey Brown. Unlikely (subtitled: ‘or how I lost my virginity’) is an autobiography recounting the author’s first love, and subsequently his first exploits into sex, drugs, and heartbreak. Brown’s artwork is startlingly simple with not much more than general perspective lines and pencil scratching to make up the story’s world. The dialogue is equally minimal, as is the general narrative: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, life happens and boy and girl grow apart, boy still loves girl. However, it’s through its simplicity that Unlikely flourishes the most. Both the visual aspects and dialogue of the story are so minimal (yet familiar) that the reader (re)experiences their own “first love” story right along with Brown’s characters. Ira Glass, host of NPR’s This American Life, says of Brown’s simple technique: “He makes the saddest, dirtiest, most humiliating things that can possibly happen to a person seem weirdly innocent” … Both hilarious and heartbreaking, Unlikely is near impossible to put down.