Summer Reading

"The first would be Buddy Does Seattle, by Peter Bagge. It captures a lot of that 20-something experience. It's still relevant and funny. Peter Bagge has a very sharp wit, and it has a sarcastic tone, which, while it can be crass, it's easy to relate to. A lot of books try that sort of tone, and it's too abrasive. Somehow Bagge's found that sweet spot that allows him to make those observations and completely pull it off.

"The main character, Buddy Bradley, leaves home, tries to figure himself out — it was very timely for me. And it's interesting — he moved to Seattle during the whole grunge deal. It's got this bizarre sort of documentary quality to it now. This is gonna sound really terrible, but there's a running gag about Buddy and his girlfriend having abortions. It's how the book ended — she didn't want to have another abortion, so they decided to have a kid. It wasn't just a throwaway gag. It was a really big deal to the characters."

An unexpectedly funny freelance technology writer, former KC resident Joel Johnson left town five years ago and got famous, blogging for Gawker Media at Kotaku.com and Gizmodo.com. He's now one of the newest Boing Boing Happy Mutants, editing Boing Boing Gadgets at boingboing.gadgets.net.

He recommends The Modern Man's Guide to Life by Denis Boyles, Alan Wellikoff and Alan Rose. "It's a collection of essays. It's out of print, but you can still find it on Amazon. The conceit is that it's asking various guys their opinions on things — it's not that the individual responses from the men are so funny but how resolutely a man can express an opinion and then, in the next paragraph, express an equally strong opinion on the other side of the argument. The sections on women, dating and relationships are especially good. Asked about sex, they'll say, 'Pay attention to your partner — it's all about her,' and in the very next line, they say, 'Sex is a time to be completely selfish!' I got a copy when I was 12. It covers everything from how to tie a tie to how to buy a used car. All very important for a 12-year old.

"If you're asking for all-time greats, one that continues to completely affect my senses of humor and propriety is the Transmetropolitan comic series by Warren Ellis. In my field — science and tech journalism — you can always tell that tech writers sometimes think they're Spider Jerusalem. As a person who has built up a bit of a reputation as a cranky bastard myself, there's definitely an appeal in the vitriol and hate of his subject. I think it presaged a lot of the tone on the Internet and blogging specifically — it's clearly a Hunter S. Thompson shtick. It's gonzo. But Transmet updated the bowel-centric humor, which defines a lot of contemporary insult humor — really smart and incisive attacks punctuated by the grossest gross-out humor you can think of."

Matt Fraction, who writes Marvel Comics' Invincible Iron Man, Punisher War Journal and his own Casanova, has two-fisted love for author Kurt Vonnegut. He recommended Breakfast of Champions for our 2007 Summer Reading Guide; through a haze of baby-induced sleeplessness, he tried to do so a second time this year, but we forced him to come up with alternatives.

"Anything Mark Twain's ever written. His autobiography is hilarious. It's the man's own story, as if he actually became his own story. I'd put the book down every couple of pages and say, 'Fantastic!' It covers his time in the Confederate army. He and some friends join the army at the outset of the war. They all show up, and the first time they hear gun shots they run. They immediately flee the Confederate army.

"Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel — it's from 1964. He wrote color pieces for the New Yorker. Mitchell would meet eccentric New York people and write about them. Not setup-punch-line-ha-ha funny; he describes these strange eccentrics in a way that makes you wonder if they're still wandering around New York. Strange, wonderful people. He met a guy named Joe Gould and became obsessed with his story — Gould told Mitchell he was writing an oral history of New York, documented in all these notebooks hidden with benefactors around the city, and he was basically a con man living off the largesse of these benefactors. Gould is blocked, and his writer's block transfers to Mitchell, and ultimately, he never writes again — he shows up at the New Yorker in a shirt and tie, people hear him typing, but he never publishes again."

Funny.