A Book You Can Buy From Me
Book Title: Life: a Warning
Author: Stephanie Brush
Interview with the author: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20088399,00.html
Date: 1987
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0-671-61130-5
Length: 173 pages
Quote: "All of us are brought into the world with the same basic operating parts. All, if not most, of us are given bodies, and some, if not all, of us are given brains."
In the rest of this very witty, very 1980s book, Brush discusses fear, childhood, school, adolescence, bad luck, jerks, work, pets, food, computers, psychology, romance, friends, parenthood, "success" books, leisure, senior citizenship, the afterlife, and the future.
Brush's "future" would now be our present, which makes her future predictions especially hilarious (although the computer section is a blast, too, for similar reasons). The predictions had a certain logic in their day...and there is currently a massive shortage of (recent) photographs of Diana Spencer...and online dating really is "for the admittedly and unabashedly superficial," in ways Brush did not anticipate.
If you enjoyed the 1980s, you'll enjoy reminiscing about a time when those predictions seemed as goofy as Brush's other predictions: priority parcels would by now travel faster than the speed of light, Evel Knievel would still be leaping, people (i.e. the same people) would still be having their color swatches done...
Brush's style of comic narrative is similar to Dave Barry's, but perhaps a bit jumpier. It was funny then, and it's funny still. This book is recommended to anyone who wants to use laughter for pain control.
What's not to love? Well...Brush was very young at the time. Life: a Warning is a laugh riot but, on rereading, I'm not sure whether there is any serious message behind the jokes. This doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the comedy but it might be a reason for some people to choose a book like Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See, which came out about the same time, instead of this one.
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