Book-A-Day 2014 #60: A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting by Guy Delisle

Guy Delisle is best known for his long travelogues about times spent in interesting places (in the not-actually-Chinese ironic sense of the term), including Jerusalem, Shenzhen, Pyongyang, and Burma Chronicles. But he's done other work -- his two books of sex-role based unsettling humor, Aline and the Others and Albert and the Others (see my review of both of them) have come over to the US as well, and there could well be other work still untranslated; Delisle is a French Canadian married to a Frenchwoman and now based in French and working in French.

And he's also clearly discovered that just being a parent gives lots of fodder for stories -- his kids were an important organizing element of Jerusalem -- and has now spun that out into a whole (small) book of amusing stories and wry anecdotes, which, inevitably, mostly show Delisle in a bad light. (That's required for all light entertainment focused on parenting since at least Erma Bombeck.)

A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting is short, with a number of stories told in open-sided panels arranged loosely on its small pages. It has Delisle's usual blocky, cartoony line, and it's a joy to read -- particularly if you have children of your own. (Though I don't think that's required.)

And, since it will take even the most leisurely reader no more than three-quarters of an hour to read, that's about all needed to say about it.

Book-A-Day 2014 Introduction and Index