Lamb by Christopher Moore

  Christopher Moore was at BEA in LA this year (I love BEA, a conference of book people with publisher's handing out books), and he had the gift edition of Lamb, which of course I ran from the exhibit hall to get to early in the morning. I love Lamb, the story of Biff, Jesus' childhood friend.  I love this book, I can't say enough good things about it.  I don't find it offensive at all, though I suppose it helps that I'm not Catholic or even close.  Biff is a typical kid growing up, he gets in to trouble, but is saved I suppose by his best friend, Josh, whose mother, Mary, claims he will be the Messiah.  Josh is not a very normal kid, he can heal people and things (oh the scene where his younger brother bashes a lizards head in, and Josh revives him cracks me up).  But he and Biff get into normal kid stuff, and even fall in love with the same girl, Maggie (Mary Magdelene).  The two find themselves unhappy stone cutters apprentices, and Josh is desperate to figure out how to be the Messiah, so they go in search of the three wise men.  The angel shows up thirteen years to late to announce Josh's birth and is stupid, John the Baptist is Josh's cousin who almost drowns Biff, and a slue  of others while baptising them, Maggie is unhappy in her marriage to a moron, and Biff is hilarious.  I have read it three times, and every time they reach the Great Wall of China, I laugh for a very long time.  It's the Ostentatious and Annoying Wall after they walk around it for a couple of months.  It's not meant to be anything but a funny book, and if in the mean time you discover that you can laugh at your faith, all the better.  READ IT.  And if you hate it, well, tell me why.  

The Fourth Bear

  I love Jasper Fforde.  The Fourth Bear is the second in the Nursery Crime Division by this amazing author, and while it's not my favorite of his, it's sooooo good.  It centers around the Nursery Crime Division of the police department in Reading England, with Jack Spratt (who will eat no fat, his wife will eat no lean, though that condition has since widowed him, and he's in love with his second wife) and Mary Mary (who is quiet contrary, though I think her garden was mentioned in the first book).  The two officers investigate the death of Goldilocks, and her possible involvement with the three bears, as well as chasing the psychotic Gingerbreadman.  From porridge restrictions for bears, who are addicted to the stuff and buy it on the black market, to several bear sympathizers who work towards the right to arm bears, it's full of way to many quick jokes to catch them all the first time.  The Big Over Easy, in which Jack and Mary investigated Humpty Dumpty's murder was better, but I really hope he comes back to this series again.  I always hesitate to recommend Fforde at work, because he is so unbelievably wonderfully weird.  But if you don't mind the occasional alien (oh Ashley, hopefully he will have the pluck to ask Mary out again), or biochemical warfare with cucumbers.  No seriously, cucumbers, try one of his books.  The Thursday Next series is probably the best series in popular fiction ever (Something Rotten is my favorite, Hamlet shows up, and Landon is back!), and next year he's starting a new one.   I unabashedly love Jasper Fforde and all of his novels, but if you don't really like weird, or just find me weird, you might want to pick something else to read.