Remember THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK, which was all the rage in the publishing world that was 1999? After sequels, cards, calendars and other products, the brand recently has branched into a series of POCKET GUIDEs — roughly 4.5″ x 3.5″ hardbacks that literally can fit into your pocket.
And why not? As written by series co-creator David Borgenicht and SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS‘ Ben H. Winters, the guides are good for a quick laugh or a few while on the go, whether that’s via commute or toilet.
One is THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO POCKET GUIDE: MEETINGS. Part of it offers practical advice, while the other part is strictly tongue-in-cheek. For example of the former, you can learn how to revive a co-worker who has fainted or how to flatter an insecure boss; for the latter, escaping a meeting via catering cart. I’m not sure as to which category “How to Discreetly Pass Gas Mid-Meeting” falls.
POCKET GUIDE: CARS is a mix of the same. For instance, parallel parking with a trailer attached is something I failed at miserably the one time I tried to it, so that would be helpful, but how to pee in your car while stuck in traffic? (Um, I’ve done that, and didn’t need any instructions.)
POCKET GUIDE: SAN FRANCISCO isn’t really a travel guidebook, but more of an excuse to lump together items dealing with driving in fog, rescuing whales and escaping from Alcatraz. The more practical books lie with POCKET GUIDE: CATS and POCKET GUIDE: DOGS, making them ideal gifts for owners of felines and canines, particularly the former. (Because let’s face it: Cat pee isn’t an easy odor to remove … which is why I will never own one.)
Each title is small in size, but packed with 100 pages nonetheless. The POCKET GUIDEs carry the visual hallmarks of the original WORST-CASE release and all its various spin-offs ever since: namely, crisp design, line illustrations and a near-NPR sense of inoffensive humor. —Rod Lott
Related posts:
- Hooch begets Hard Case Crime line
- Hard Case Crime introduces book club
- Hard Case falls for 50-year-old VIRGIN
- Hard Case to PEDDLE Prather
- Q&A with WORST NIGHTMARES’ Shane Briant
