Life in Five Seconds

If time permitted, this book review should contain no words.

How could a review with no words require any time at all?

Well, “Life in Five Seconds: Over 200 Stories for Those With No Time to Waste” is a book that uses words for a title and for a brief introduction but that’s it.

If time permitted, this review should be “written” in a similar series of drawn figures. But something that takes five seconds to understand can take far more than five seconds to create and compose.

Take this book, for example.

The 200-plus stories are told in drawings. Take a look at the cover – the type of figures there tell the stories inside the book.

In some ways, the stories are a series of rebus puzzles. Some readers may get one thing from a picture story while other readers may come to a different conclusion – no real difference from readers debating the meaning of a traditional short story. Other picture stories may stump readers but most of the stories are easy to follow and take as little as “Five Seconds” to understand. 

The stories are amusing, funny, deep and thought provoking … just because a story takes five second to “read” doesn’t mean it won’t have a much longer impact.

“Life in Five Seconds” is a very different take on story-telling. It reminds readers that letters are figures that translate into words. So do the figures in this unforgettable book.