Use This Book! The Only Book You’ll Ever Need

Book Reviews

Rita Kohn

By Melissa Heckscher
Designed by Michael Rogalski
Quirk Books;, $16.95

This tome, designed to simplify what we need to do or know on an almost daily basis, arrived hot on the heels of a Saturday at Purdue for the annual Rube Goldberg Contest, which challenges teams of college students to design a machine to overcomplicate the simplest chore. While not quite “the only,” this book is useful and just quirky enough to be a trendy gift for the 2006 graduate. Along with useful stuff like getting organized, knowing how to get water in the desert and cluing into time zones, you’ll get a serving size chart and a chicken soup recipe to feed a dozen hungry friends. There are templates for making stuff you may have run out of when you’re desperate and can’t run to the store, instructions for doing the waltz, fox trot, rumba and tango, driving a stick shift and learning yoga positions. On the esoteric side, there are psychic cards, fortune dice, where-I’m-off-to post cards and wonders of the world checklists. Games, signs, charts, emergency phone numbers worldwide, useful foreign phrases and names of currencies. It’s all in 208 perforated pages, designed to be assembled, posted and tucked into the wallet.