Fool and King Lear

Book Club this Friday, so I'm rereading Fool by Christopher Moore. A hardship, let me assure you, as I love this book more the second time than I did the first. I'm also rereading King Lear, mostly because it's been years since I've read it, and because I'm scared people are going to ask me tough questions. I managed, in my quest to find a copy of Lear at my school (which we did not have, do you think we should be shut down? Because I think we should be shut down), to recommend Fool to all of the English teachers in the building. Fool is King Lear from the perspective of Pocket, the fool. Except, well, Christopher Moore takes some liberties, so there is a lot more swearing, sex and things I think are hilarious. Can I be a dork and recommend you read Fool and King Lear either together or one after another? It'll make you appreciate Moore's genius all the more. Oh, and I have a copy I can lend out starting Monday, if you want to read it.

Horns

Because I was reading so many romance novels (one of which I just reviewed, the other I'm holding off until I have to reread it for bookclub next month), I grabbed a free copy of Horns by Joe Hill at work. Joe Hill is a writer of his own worth, but despite that, the only way I've ever heard him recommended is "He's Stephen King's son." Now, while this short sentence is accurate and allows us booksellers to sell you curious public on another great horror novelist, it's not really fair. He's not Jonathan Kellerman (wait, is that the son, which one is the son of the two Kellermans?), he's not Carol something Clark. He's going to be just Joe Hill in a decade or so, if he writes books like Horns, or Heart Shaped Box, his first full novel, but for right now, he's Joe Hill, Stephen Kings son. Horns opens with Ig Perrish awakening to find that he has grown horns in the night (as well as a little devil beard, you get the idea). He can't remember what he did, but he does know that these horns make people tell him their deepest darkest secrets. He uses this new power to cause a shenanigans with his family and friends, and to discover the real killer of his high school sweetheart. If you like his father, and wish he would use more Rock and Roll references, this is the book for you. Jesse Kellerman is the son of Jonathan and Faye and is now writing mysteries, for those of you who were wondering, I had to go look it up.

The Girl Who Chased The Moon

Sarah Addison Allen is one of those authors, at least for me, that make me happy without a real definitive reason why. She's Southern, writes romances and has unexplained magical elements to her books, and yet I love them. The Girl who chased the moon is her third book, and the greatest compliment I can pay a book I give to Ms. Allen. I was able to completely drown out everything going on around me while I was reading this. I didn't hear my coworkers complaining about things, I didn't hear the copier in the other room making screeching noises, and I was completely absorbed into her world. The story revolves around Emily, a teenager who moves in with her grandfather after her mother dies. Her grandfather, a giant, doesn't really know how to deal with a teenage girl, so their neighbor Julia helps acclimate the girl, despite a tumultuous past with Emily's mother. Emily meets a strange boy, who let me assure you before you start getting mad at me, is not a werewolf or a vampire. Ms. Allen simply would not put me through that with all the Twilight crap around here. Thought I was honestly a little afraid he would end up being one or the other. Emily tries to figure out his secret, while bonding with Julia. Julia has moved back into town after several years away after her father dies to take over his restaurant, and to do some really awesome sounding baking. She tries to ignore Sawyer, her high school crush with whom she shares more than just a past, and counts down the days until she can leave the town again. It's a romance novel all dressed up in cute, and delightful to the end. It's not the best book of 2010 (see my last post), but it's the first one I was so wrapped up in I was able to ignore all of my coworkers for 30 minutes 3 days straight, and that's a book worth recommending.