“It’s good, it’s all over the damn place, and in a good way.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about another title I found here on Goodreads: SUMMARY of Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh by Don Pubbro.
I’ve seen these summaries floating around, and I guess I always figured they were for two kinds of books.
One would be a book you have to read in school. I can totally get why a summary of Huckleberry Finn would be something people would read. You could probably ace most high school english classes so long as you know the gist, right? As long as you didn’t say something stupid in your essay like, “And then Jonathan Taylor Thomas was near the river…”
The other type would be a book like The Obstacle is the Way, which is intended to impart knowledge. Maybe that’s a bad example, I think that book might be one of those things that if you don’t read it, you don’t get the benefits. I wouldn’t know, I DNF’ed that sumbitch because it was boring and repetitive. EXACTLY the sort of thing that warrants a summary, though.
I could also see application for a third set, which would be something like Summary of Amazing Spider-Man Issues 1-500. Maybe you want to start reading a little but of comics, maybe starting in the 60’s sounds like too much. And trust me, it is. It’s like they got paid by the word back then.
But then there’s SUMMARY of Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh by Don Pubbro. This one I don’t get.
Is there any reason to read this book other than recreation?
Does a book that takes, I don’t know, maybe an hour or two to read really necessitate a summary? How much time are you saving in the summary?
Also, does Don Pubbro draw crude, simplified versions of the illustrations, what I imagine to be the best way to summarize an illustration?
I tried to buy it, reader. I DID! I was that damn curious about the contents. I also just wanted to see, was this a fair representation of the book? Would I walk away feeling like, “You know, I still don’t understand WHY this exists, but Don Pubbro gave this book a fair, if extremely brief, overview?”
But I can’t find it. The only Don Pubbro book I can find is SUMMARY Of American Crisis By Andrew Cuomo. Which, again, I get it. That sucker’s a 320-page book of leadership lessons that could probably fit on a cocktail napkin.
In fact, most of Don Pubbro’s books are political/leadership books, which fall very neatly into one of my categories. And then there’s SUMMARY of Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh by Don Pubbro.
You know, one thing that sucks about the internet, there are SO MANY unsolved mysteries that nobody but me gives a shit about. I can already tell you how this is going to go. I’m going to explain this to my girlfriend when we go to bed tonight, and halfway through me explaining it she’s going to tell me that this doesn’t sound like something that interests her. Which she’s going to be correct about. I just need someone to understand and be bewildered about the existence of a self-published book that summarizes a piece of popular nonfiction that has no hard-to-understand concepts, language, or themes, and that wouldn’t take someone long to read.”