Holiday's on Ice

  Have you read David Sedaris?  Why not?  I love him.  He's hysterical.  And I think the first essay in Holiday's on Ice, in which he takes a job as an elf during the Christmas season at a department store is one of my very favorites of his.  Every year I read a Christmas book.  Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore, Laurie Notaro's Idiot Girls Christmas, and of course Holiday's on Ice. This year I read Holiday's on Ice, I think next year I'll reread Stupidest Angel, but all are funny and very festive for the holidays.  

Lame

  So two of the books I read over Christmas break were lame, and I'm pretty disappointed.   So the first one was Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir.  I have to stop reading the historical fiction chick lit that people keep recommending.  It's about Queen Elizabeth's childhood and right before she takes over the throne from her half sister Queen Mary.  So I find the time period interesting, and I thought reading a book about Elizabeth's early life would be good.  And then it wasn't.  Especially the part where the author has written several biographies and history books on the time period and Henry VIII's family, and in all of them asserted the Elizabeth was actually the virgin queen.  But because it's the new historical fiction chick lit (my new least favorite genre), Elizabeth had to have sex and get pregnant.  WHAT?  

   The second one was Dean Koontz's The Darkest Night of the Year.  Several people told me I had to go back to Koontz.  Despite loving Dark Rivers of the Heart, Seize the Night and it's sequel and lots of his early stuff, his books lately have been awful.  But this one was about a woman who rescues Golden Retrievers and of course something weird and scary happens to her.  I thought I'd like it.  I did not.  The characters were boring, the kids in the story were tortured and beaten by their parents(one was autistic (maybe), the other one had Downs Syndrome, I don't like reading about that kind of thing anyway, but especially for special needs kids, what was he thinking?).  I did not find the dog charming (here's a hint there buddy, people like reading about real dogs.  Not special dogs who can do amazing things.  Remember Rocky from Dark Rivers of the Heart?  That dog was a character in your book).  I skimmed through to the end because I couldn't take it anymore.  If you are curious, the kids live happily ever after.  Despite the emotional damage they had to deal with.  

   I don't like to review books I didn't like, but both of these came recommended by lots of people, and I hated them both.  Luckily I took my manager Kelly's recommendation and started I love you Beth Cooper.  Amazing, when I finish I'll post my thoughts.  

Drood By Dan Simmons

   This book doesn't come out until February (thanks to Dan for making me take this book), but I still can't wait to recommend it.  It follows the final years of Charles Dickens life through the eyes of his less famous contemporary Wilkie Collins (a decent author in his own right).  The outsiders look at famous authors genre (not really a genre, I just think it is) is pretty popular (again, probably just in my head).  I really liked Arthur and George (Sr. Arthur Conan Doyle) by Barnes that came out a few years back, and I love this novel.   Perhaps a bit too much of the thousand pages was devoted to Wilkie's opium addiction, but for a thousand paged novel, it really moved.  Dickens was in a train accident that changed his life and shaped his final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Drood was the man Dickens claimed to have seen in the aftermath of that accident and became obsessed with, claiming to Wilkie (in the novel) that he thought he was an agent of Death.  It's a really interesting mystery, but if you'd rather not spend a month reading a book, skip it.

I see you everywhere by Julia Glass

  This is a book, I think, for sisters.  That was the push at BEA (she would send a free copy to your sister if you gave an address) anyway.  It's the story of two sisters as they move through life, each chapter is a different year with a story about them told by one of the sisters.  Clem is the wild adventurous one, Louisa the steady one, though both are effected greatly by the other.  The ending is sad, which was predictable (every novel I've read in the past five years that deals seriously with the sibling relationship ends sad, it's either a trend in fiction right now, or a easy way to make sure that protagonists realize how much they mean to each other.  Gag.)  I liked the characters, and it was occasionally funny, even if I knew what was going to happen by the second chapter.  I think it would be easier to appreciate it if I had a sister with whom I had ever been close, but this book dealt with a bond I have no first hand experience with.  So I moved on to Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job, where the main character finds out he is a merchant of death, and hilarity ensues.   At least I can understand a warped sense of humor. 

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

This book took me forever to finish, but I'm glad I did.  It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and I have the book she wrote after it, called Home.  John Ames, the preacher in Gilead Iowa is the narrator, and the entire book is an open letter to his young son which he writes as his health fails.  It's a lovely book, I really enjoyed it, though it was hard to get into, and difficult to finish.  But then, I get distracted easily.  John is a great narrator, telling the story of his life and beliefs through a series of stories and thoughts.  I'll let you know if I ever get to Home.

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.