Suck It Up

So I'm at the library and find a new YA book about...vampires. What are the odds I'm even going to pick it up? Very very low...however, there was something I couldn't resist about the yellow smiley face with fangs and a straw:

And the story was the same way, after I got past the currently popular misspelling of a cliche ("butt naked," a phonetic version of "buck naked"), the first few bad jokes, and the brief history of vampires in this fictional universe, in which there aren't many "Loner" vampires and all the "Leaguer" (as in the IV League) vampires follow strict rules, including their own version of the modern-day vampire's diet: "if you can get your groceries from the local blood co-op, why waste your nights trapping and sapping?" Lestat only kills the evil-doer, the Cullens only drink from animals, and now Brian Meehl has invented Morning McCobb, a smaller, younger, and seemingly non-blood-thirsty version of a vampire who drinks "Blood Lite" and calls himself "bloodlust-challenged."

One of the fun parts of the story is that Morning wants to be a superhero. He tries on names: "Super-Vamp? Leaguer-Man? Creature of the Right? and then "Blood Lite-Year." His League assignment is to "come out" as a vampire and show the human world how harmless he can be. The ultimate test of his harmlessness is, as the League leader says, to show humans he can be trusted around their daughters. This is hard, because he falls for the daughter of his publicist. At first, neither of them can trust the other, but finally she tells him that it doesn't have to end "with you trying to drink me like a six-ounce Coke," and love prevails.

The title pretty much describes the book, in this case. There's a joke, an attitude, and before you know it, you've devoured the whole thing like the delicious little piece of book-candy it is. It's just right to ease your mood into the carelessness of summer. What other kinds of things are you doing to try to slow down and switch gears?