Shakespeare for Squirrels

by Christopher Moore
271 pgs  (Shakespeare series #3)

A Midsummer Night's Dream is my favorite Shakespeare play. So, I was excited when I learned that it was to be (or not to be) the next one to receive the "Christopher Moore" treatment. Moore began his homage to the Bard with Fool, in which he introduced Pocket, King Lear's diminutive and bawdy court jester, and unleashed him into the literary world. He followed it up with The Serpent of Venice, in which he sent Pocket to thirteenth-century Venice and had him deal with, among other things, a sea monster prowling the city's canals.

In Shakespeare for Squirrels, Pocket, along with his sidekick Drool and pet monkey Jeff, find themselves in Athens. Pocket hopes to become the Duke's fool, but instead manages to insult the Duke and has to flee for his life into the nearby forest, which is ruled by the fairy king Oberon, who happens to be in need of a new fool himself, since his last one, Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck) was found murdered. Oberon promises Pocket he can become his fool, and receive his protection from the Duke, if he can find out who killed Goodfellow.

The story that follows is a great example of why Christopher Moore is one of my favorite authors. First and foremost, his books are hilarious. They're crude, irreverent, and not the type I'm inclined to recommend to those with sensitive literary palates. But that's kind of why I like them so much. There's something to be said for a book that will regularly shock me into laughing out loud on occasion, and his always do. But Moore doesn't just tell a story in a fantastic way, he also tells fantastic stories, and Shakespeare for Squirrels is up there with his best.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Squirm

by Carl Hiaasen
276 pgs

Squirm is one of Carl Hiaasen's books written for younger readers (but still entertaining for adults) and it features Billy Dickens, a kid who lives in Florida with his mother and sister. His father left them when Billy was 3 years old, and since the only contact they've had from him since is the check he sends every month like clockwork, and since his mother always cuts up the envelope with the return address into tiny pieces, Billy doesn't even know where he lives, let alone what kind of a man he was, or what he does for a living.

But that hasn't stopped him from trying to learn more about his father. And when one month his mother fails to cut up the envelope into small enough pieces, Billy is able to figure out his father's current address, and using almost all of the money he's saved up from working at the supermarket, buys a plane ticket to Montana to go see him.

While in Montana, Billy meets his father's new wife and stepdaughter, who are members of the Crow Nation, but he never sees his father. It seems like even his new family doesn't know much about the man. They tell him he has some secret government job involving drones and that they don't know where he is most of the time.

But as Billy will eventually learn, even though his father wasn't involved in raising him, Billy still shares a lot in common with him. And eventually, those similarities will bring them together.

Squirm is a fun read. Hiaasen's humor is still there, even if it's bridled for younger audiences, but it's still enough to have made me smile often throughout.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

John Dies at the End

by David Wong
456 pgs

Every once in a while, I read a book that doesn't lend itself to an easy or concise description. To adequately describe it would probably take half as long as it would take to read the book itself. John Dies at the End by David Wong (pseudonym) is one of those books.

Somewhere in a small undisclosed town, somewhere in the heart of the country, a new drug has hit the streets. It's known as Soy Sauce, and it promises users an experience unlike any they've had before. John and Dave are friends who live in this undisclosed town and both are perpetual underachievers. John plays in a similarly underachieving band, and one night, at a party after a gig, John is introduced to Soy Sauce by a strange man pretending to be Jamaican. John calls Dave in the middle of the night while experiencing a "bad trip" from the drug. Dave picks up John at his apartment and the two end up at the local Denny's. While there, Dave gets another call from his friend John, whose sitting in the booth across from him eating and not calling him. John asks Dave whether he (John) has died yet, and from that point on, things only get more and more absurd.

John Dies at the End is a book with a cult following. It was originally published as an independent web series by David Wong (again, pseudonym) who was working as a a copy editor at a law firm. It became so popular that he eventually decided to turn the online chapters he had been releasing into novel and through word of mouth, the book became so popular it was turned into a movie starring Paul Giamatti.

While the book isn't fantastic, I enjoyed it enough that I'm interested in reading its sequels: This Book is Full of Spiders, and What the Hell Did I Just Read. I'm interested to see if the things I liked about this one improve in those books, and if the things I wasn't crazy about improve.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Calypso

by David Sedaris
259 pgs

Calypso is the latest collection of essays by humorist David Sedaris. I would have thought that after nine books, in which he gives merciless insight into his own and his family members' lives, he'd be out of things to say by now. Thankfully, he isn't.

Sedaris has a wry, caustic sense of humor and it's firing on all cylinders as he describes his family life as well as his interactions with the general population. I can't help but feel a little bit of a kinship with him, which is why I think I enjoy his stories as much as I do. He's a gifted story teller who holds nothing back, and is willing to share things most of us would keep deeply hidden, if there's a chance others will find some humor in it.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Noir

by Christopher Moore
339 pgs

Christopher Moore's latest book Noir is set in San Francisco in 1947. As the title implies, it's a moody crime story in the spirit of Mickey Spillane or Raymond Chandler. The protagonist is Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin, a bartender at Sal's Saloon who falls in love on page one with Stilton, the blonde bombshell who walks in one day wearing a dress two sizes too small and knowing it.

Because of the genre Moore writes in this time, there's also a dirty politician, a profane rug rat, a boxer, a dirty cop, and a group of gangsters. But, because it's Moore writing, there're also drag queens, a Chinese man obsessed with collecting snake urine, a snake (the supply of said urine), men in black, and a little alien affectionately called moonman.

What I enjoy most about Moore's books is the witty, and frequently hilarious dialogue and descriptions he writes. In this area the book doesn't disappoint. Where I was left feeling a little disappointed however was in the plot. The story never grabbed me. While I enjoyed reading it, I never felt excited and anxious to pick it back up again. This is not the book of his I'd recommend to the uninitiated.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

by David Sedaris
257 pgs

In Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, humorist David Sedaris has compiled 22 of his essays, most of which share the common theme of his family life, both the one he had growing up in his borderline neurotic family and the one he shares now with his partner Hugh.

In "Us and Them," the essay he opens with, he tells the story of the Tomkey family, who lived in his neighborhood growing up, and who didn't own a TV, a fact that fascinated him to no end. The family had other idiosyncrasies as well, like the year their children went door to door for Halloween candy on November 1st, because they were gone the night before, forcing Sedaris to preemptively stuff as much of it in his mouth as he can, rather than give any of it up.

In "Possession" he tells of touring Anne Frank's home in Amsterdam with Hugh and of being obsessed with it from a real-estate-ownership perspective, asking himself "Who do I need to knock off in order to get this apartment?"

"Six to Eight Black Men" is a hilarious comparison between the differences between the American and Dutch Christmas traditions. While the idea of Santa and his sleigh-pulling reindeer might seem bizarre to some, he points out how it pales in comparison to the Dutch's tradition of St. Nicholas and his six-to-eight black men who show up every year.

To the uninitiated in Sedaris's writing, the idea of reading essays about someone else's family life might sound boring and uninteresting. But that's definitely not the case with this collection. Sedaris never pulls his punches, especially when they're directed at those closest to him. And he spares no one--including himself--from his scathing humor and wit. The end result will make you grateful for both the family and life you had growing up, as well as the one he had. Because if he hadn't had his, there would have been nothing worth writing about.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Syrup

by Max Barry
294 pgs

Syrup is the first book written by Max Barry. I've read others of his and really enjoyed them, so I was looking forward to getting my hands on this one. It's a satire focused on the marketing industry and features a young ambitious marketing graduate named Scat.

Scat has an idea for a new soft drink he wants to pitch to Coca-Cola, a drink targeted at the newest generation that Scat believes could bring in millions of dollars in increased sales--and make him rich in the process. He takes his idea for the new drink to 6 (that's her name), an equally young and ambitious marketing manager at Coke, who loves the idea. The two start working together to bring the drink to market, but before they get very far, they learn that Sneaky Pete, Scat's roommate, has stolen the idea and registered for its trademark behind their backs.

Sneaky Pete leverages "his" idea into a senior position at Coke and gets put in charge of one of the largest marketing endeavors ever undertaken, a $140 million movie to advertise Coke. Scat and 6, furious with Sneaky Pete's machinations, set out to do everything they can to undermine and discredit him and take back what they believe is rightfully theirs.

Barry sets a pretty good pace for this story and keeps things moving along nicely. It's a creative plot and this characters, while a little too contrived, are relatable and somewhat appealing. Barry does his best to keep you on your toes wondering what's going to happen next. There were times I found myself rolling my eyes a little at some of the dialogue and characters and had to remind myself that he was writing satirically. Keep that in mind and the book is good for some laughs and provokes some thoughts about how much our choices are influenced by those who market products to us.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It's All Relative

by A. J. Jacobs
337 pgs 

In A. J. Jacobs’s latest book, It’s All Relative - Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree, he undertakes the quest for organizing the world’s largest ever family reunion, a global family reunion. Why would a self-described “introverted misanthrope” undertake such an endeavor? The idea grew out of his desire to instill in his children an understanding of where they came from and a sense of belonging in the world. He also believed that if he could somehow get everyone to realize they were all related to each other, if you go back far enough, that people might treat each other with a little more kindness and respect.

In true Jacobsian fashion, Jacobs immerses himself in the practice of genealogy for an entire year leading up to The Global Family Reunion, which took place in New York (and remotely in dozens of other locations throughout the world) in June of 2015.

Jacobs recounts countless hours of researching his own family line, along with those of his wife’s family and other relatives. He interviews experts in the field and attends conferences held throughout the country. He spends a lot of time researching other topics related to the idea of family, and discusses the various relationships formed throughout the world that form a family.

He becomes a subject-matter expert on DNA testing, and shines a light on the pros and cons of that increasingly-popular practice. He researches marriage between closely-related people, and why that has occurred throughout history, and its effects on the global family tree.

Jacobs then does what he does best, and what has garnered him thousands of fans and helped him sell so many books, he writes about his quest in such a way that is humorous, interesting, and entertaining. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Razor Girl

by Carl Hiaasen
333 pgs

Authors who live in, and write stories set in the state of Florida, often include characters in their stories whom those of us outside of Florida would consider farcical caricatures, people who couldn’t possibly exist in real life. Authors like Elmore Leonard, Dave Barry, Tim Dorsey, Bob Morris, and Jeffery Lindsay are some of the ones which come to mind. But Carl Hiaasen is in a class all by himself for his ability to pack such an eclectic, bizarre, and hilarious cast of characters into a story and then it’s almost as if he lets them loose on the page and watches as the mayhem ensues.

There’s not a better example of Hiaasen’s rare gift than Razor Girl. It begins with a minor car crash involving a reality TV agent named Lane Coolman and Merry Mansfield, a beautiful woman who gives the term “distracted driving” a whole new meaning. The accident was intentionally orchestrated by Merry’s employer, who ends up kidnapping Coolman for ransom. Coolman is the agent for Buck Nance, the star of a series called Bayou Brethren, a Duck Dynasty-style reality show about a family of Cajun rooster farmers. The accident leaves Buck without adult supervision at a Key West bar in which he gets himself into hot water with a series of racist and homophobic jokes and then disappears without a trace.

Former-cop and current health inspector Andrew Yancy becomes involved in trying to locate both missing men. But Yancy has problems of his own to deal with. Not only is he trying to get his police job back—which he lost after assaulting his mistress’s husband with a portable vacuum cleaner—but he’s also trying to prevent a newly-engaged couple, who just bought the property adjacent to his, from building an obnoxious mansion on it, blocking his serene view of the Keys. The man is a high-profile class action attorney, who is currently both suing the makers of a pharmaceutical deodorant gel which causes random tissue deformities and life-threatening erections, and, who is addicted to using the gel himself--much to the delight and consternation of his fiancé, delight due to the latter, consternation due to the former.

Somehow Hiaasen always manages to incorporate the over-the-top cast of characters he assembles in his mind into an elaborate, fast-paced, and hilarious story, which alternately makes you laugh, blush, and shake your head in disbelief at the absurd spectrum of humanity, which the state of Florida seems determined to continually stretch.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Skin Tight

by Carl Hiaasen
319 pgs

Dr. Rudy Graveline is the director of a highly-successful surgical center in Florida. The rich and the famous come to him for tummy tucks, facelifts, boob jobs, and any other procedure they believe will keep them looking young and beautiful. He has built a reputation for himself that has made him a very wealthy, and morally corrupt man.

But Rudy has some skeletons in his closet, secrets that if discovered would mean the end of his career, and more importantly, the end of his extravagant way of life. The first is that he was never trained nor certified as a plastic surgeon. He earned his M.D. from a questionable medical school, and he was barely even able to accomplish that. After his patients are anesthetized, Rudy usually steps aside and lets someone else perform the procedure. But every once in a while his ego gets the best of him and he attempts the surgery himself--usually with disastrous results. One of those occasions led to another one of his secrets: he recently accidentally killed a young woman during a botched nose job.

When he learns that Mick Stranahan, a retired investigator for the Florida State Attorney is looking into the girl's disappearance, Rudy decides to hire someone to get rid of him.

Skin Tight is one of Hiaasen's earlier books, so when I say it's classic Hiaasen, it really is. It has everything that makes his books so fun to read. His characters are as hilarious as his plots. His villains are threatening, but absurd, and the combination results in books that are a lot of fun to read.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Secondhand Souls

by Christopher Moore
335 pgs  (Grim Reaper series #2)

In A Dirty Job Christopher Moore introduced Charlie Asher, the owner of a second-hand store in San Francisco. Charlie was selected to be a death merchant, responsible for retrieving the souls of the newly-departed and protecting them from the forces of the underworld while they wait for a new soulless body to be born.

At the end of that book Charlie sacrifices his own life in order to save the city from the forces of darkness. Fortunately his new girlfriend Audrey is a Buddhist nun who knows the practice of p'howa and uses it to transfer his soul into a small creature she pieced together using the head of a crocodile, various parts from roadkill, and cold cuts.

Secondhand Souls begins one year later, and the city of San Francisco is once again on the cusp of being overtaken by dark forces from the underworld. The other death merchants in the city haven't been fulfilling their obligations and the souls of the dead have been piling up, especially on the Golden Gate Bridge, the most popular suicide spot in the city.

Charlie is once again needed, but before he can do anything, he needs to find a way back into a living body, preferably one of an adult male with all the right parts. He and Audrey must find someone willing to leave their own body and voluntarily give it to Charlie.

I love reading Christopher Moore's books. It's cliché to say a book is laugh-out-loud funny, but his always are. They're also vulgar, profane, and irreverent. But they're always filled with a lot of heart and soul. His protagonists are usually flawed in some spectacular fashion, but they usually exemplify some of the best qualities possible. Secondhand Souls is no exception. It's not the right book to start with if you've never read one of his books, especially since it's a sequel, but if you're already a fan, and have read A Dirty Job, this won't disappoint.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Gone-Away World

by Nick Harkaway
499 pgs

I believe that for the first time ever, I'm at a serious loss as to how to describe/summarize/review a book--and it's not that this is the first book by Nick Harkaway that I've ever read. Awhile back I read his second book Angelmaker and really enjoyed it. But this one is unlike anything I've ever read before.

To start with, I can't decide what genre if fits in. It doesn't easily fit into any of the already established ones. It's part science fiction, but not in a science fictiony way. It's post-apocalyptic, but not in a Cormac McCarthy's The Road kind of way. It's got ninjas battling mimes in it, but they doesn't help classify it. It is what it is, and it really deserves its own bookshelf at the bookstore.

The next problem I have with writing this review is that I can't really decide how much I liked it. Parts of it were absolutely brilliant, but I'll admit that sometimes my mind tended to wander. Harkaway's writing talent is undeniable though and if I hadn't known better, I would have assumed that this book was written by someone who had a Stephen King-sized bibliography already under his belt. He really is that good. Even at the times in the book when my mind wanted to venture elsewhere, I have to admit that those parts were still well written.

The story is narrated by a character whose name is never revealed but who works for the Haulage & Hazmat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company of Exmore County. As the story begins, he and his crew are called upon to put out a fire that has erupted somewhere along the Jorgmund Pipe, which delivers a substance known as "stuff." The world was destroyed during the Gone-Away War, and stuff is what makes the remaining world livable.

The book is absurd and witty, and it's every creative-writing teacher's dream come true. But it's not a beach read, and it's not the type of book that can be read in ten minute installments. You have to be willing to immerse yourself in the story and let Harkaway's writing talent take over. Overall, well worth the effort it took to read it.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Serpent of Venice

by Christopher Moore
326 pgs  (Shakespeare series #2)

In 2009 Christopher Moore introduced the foul-mouthed and depraved character of Pocket, based on the royal fool from Shakespeare's King Lear, in his aptly titled book Fool. I'll admit right up front that it wasn't my favorite Moore book, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it quite a bit.

In The Serpent of Venice Moore hijacks characters from two separate Shakespeare plays, Othello and The Merchant of Venice, borrowers an element from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, and places them in Venice in the 13th century and has them meet up with Marco Polo. I know, it's hard to imagine why someone hadn't done this already, but with Christopher Moore, it makes perfect sense.

This time around Pocket has been lured to Venice by three wealthy and powerful men who intend to eliminate the man who has been thwarting their plans for more wealth and power for far too long. When he arrives he's promised an evening with a wanton and nubile young Venetian woman, but instead is drugged, shackled, and confined behind a newly constructed wall in his cell, left to drown with the next high tide. Fortunately for Pocket he's saved by what he erroneously believes at the time to be an amorous mermaid but which turns out to be something far less worthy to brag about later on.

As Pocket goes about seeking revenge against those who think he's dead, Moore's talent for making you blush while you laugh out loud is on display. But don't let the language and the debauchery that Moore loves to throw into his stories fool you, there's a genius at work here and even though I'll never be buying one of his books for my mother, I have no doubt I'll be buying every one he writes for myself.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Bad Monkey

by Carl Hiaasen
317 pgs

Until recently, Andrew Yancy was an officer with the Miami Sheriff's Department. But for the past few months he's been relegated down to the position of Health Inspector, visiting the local eating establishments and either shutting them down, or writing them up for violations that cause his stomach to churn and which have led to some undesired weight loss. But a severed arm in his freezer may be his ticket back on to the force.

The arm, which had been reeled in by a vacationing fisherman, and which in classic Hiaasen fashion, was landed with the middle finger extended, appears to have belonged to a wealthy man currently under investigation for Medicare fraud. Yancy doesn't buy into the theory that the arm's owner was eaten by sharks when his boat capsized at sea and he's determined to prove that his wife killed him for the insurance money. Yancy believes that if he can prove his theory correct, that he'll no longer have to work on the "roach patrol" and can get his old job back on the force.

If that were a simple or straightforward task to accomplish, then it wouldn't be a story by Carl Hiaasen. Instead, Yancy has to deal with numerous surprises and a host of outlandish characters, including the monkey from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Bad Monkey is Carl Hiaasen at his best. It's hilarious, bawdy, and highly entertaining. If you don't like Hiaasen's books, you won't like this one. But if you do, this one could be one of your favorites.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Insane City

by Dave Barry
352 pgs

As much as I enjoy the "Peter and the Starcatchers" books Dave Barry co-writes with Ridley Pearson, my chief complaint with them is that they prevent him from writing his books for adults more regularly. Insane City is only the third novel for adults by the Pulitzer-Prize winning author and humorist and I wish there were many more already.

First off, let me reiterate the point that Insane City is for adults. The language is frequently foul and may offend some readers, but I don't think you can truly claim to be offended by something if it also makes you laugh, and this book will make you do that often. Seth and Tina are getting married in two days. Seth is an underachiever whose job consists of composing tweets for a feminine hygiene company's products. Tina is a successful lawyer who comes from a tremendously wealthy family. Seth knows he's marrying well out of his league and has no intentions of messing things up. Everyone involved in the lavishly planned wedding has come to Miami for the ceremony that Tina is bent on ensuring goes off without a glitch. But this is a Dave Barry story, things start to go crazy as soon as the plane lands.

Seth and his best men get lost thanks to their cab driver, drunk at a hot-bod contest at a club, and manage to lose the groom's luggage, which contained the one-of-a-kind, never-replaceable wedding ring that he had been given responsibility for safekeeping until the big day. The rest of the story involves a family of Haitian refugees who wash up on the beach outside the hotel, an unpaid stripper who was ordered for the bachelor party but was never used, an amorous orangutan, and a batch of special brownies that accidentally get served at the rehearsal dinner.

Dave Barry pulls out all the stops in this one. He's a fantastic writer who does so many things well. His plot with all its subplots are very entertaining and he keeps them each progressing at an impressive pace. His characters manage to be simultaneously over-the-top stereotypes but still likable and relatable.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Year Zero

Year Zero by Rob Reid

Ever since 1977 every sentient race in the universe has been obsessed with the music coming from planet earth, so much so that they even dubbed it "year zero" and began reckoning time forward from it. In all other aspects of our existence, earthlings haven't developed far enough to be made aware of the other races out there and warrant an invitation into the association of developed planets, but our music is light years ahead of all others.

Nick Carter is a low-level entertainment lawyer, whose firm specializes in copyright litigation and whose career is going nowhere. One day two aliens, who mistakenly believe he's the same Nick Carter who used to sing with the Backstreet Boys, arrive at his office because they need his legal expertise in their attempt to save earth from annihilation. Ever since year zero, every being in the universe has been downloading earth's music for their listening pleasure, amounting to an unimaginable number of downloads. Unfortunately for us, all life off earth follows an unequivocal moral and legal code requiring them to abide by other planets' laws. When they discover that there's a law on earth prohibiting the free download of music, with an associated $150,000 fee per illegal download, they realize that they are in debt to earth far beyond their ability to ever repay it. And some out there have decided that the best way to cancel the debt is to surreptitiously assist mankind in destroying itself.

Year Zero is very similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy both in humor and creativity, but it's not its equal. Nevertheless, the book made me laugh out loud numerous times, causing people riding the light-rail train with me to opt for sitting next to the fragrant homeless passengers instead of me (an added pleasure from reading the book).

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Drop Dead Healthy - One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection

by A. J. Jacobs

A. J. Jacobs is not the type of person who takes his goals lightly. Several years ago he made a goal to improve himself mentally, spiritually, and physically. He chronicled each of those self-improvements its own book. For his mental improvement he set out to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year; which he wrote about in The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. For his spiritual improvement he devoted a year of his life to living every commandment in the Bible; which he wrote about in The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. With this book, he completes his trifecta of self-improvement and focuses on his body. For a little over two years Jacobs spends every waking moment and conscious thought on how he can achieve perfect health.

To start out, this book is not the memoir of a 600lb man who shed the weight and now walks around in a saggy suit of skin nine times larger than his body. Jacobs was not obese. He was what he called "'skinny fat’ — a body that resembled a python after swallowing a goat." So the book is not about weight loss. Instead Jacobs chooses to spend a couple weeks at a time trying to obtain optimum health for one specific part of his body at a time: heart, lungs, stomach, immune system, feet, teeth, bladder, ears, etc.

The true joy of this book, along with his previous ones, is Jacobs's self-deprecating sense of humor as he describes the various health experiments he subjects himself (and by association, his saintly wife) to. Like buying a device to be placed over the toilet bowl, which allowed him to achieve the squatting position he learns is the most ideal for the healthiest removal of waste. Or jury-rigging a treadmill into a writing desk so that he could be walking while writing the book (he walked 1,200 miles at a 2 mile/hour pace).

Jacobs tries veganism, Atkins, juice cleanses, along with dozens of other diets. He tries Cross Fit, anti-gravity yoga, and there's a very entertaining account of him attending a pole dancing workout class where he was the only man among fifty women wearing high heels, and sporting an inordinate amount of cleavage.

The book is entertaining and it's informative. It made me laugh and it made me think about the way I treat my own body. It's not a life changing book, and I don't think Jacobs meant it to be. But I challenge anyone to read it and not come away with some ideas for at least a few changes they're going to make in order to take better care of their body.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Sacré Bleu

Sacré Bleu by Christopher Moore

There's only one author alive that could get me excited about reading a book about the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art movements in France--Christopher Moore. Moore has been one of my favorite authors ever since I read The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (a book I unwisely chose to be reading while my wife was laboring with our first child--the never-ending giggling and frequent outbursts of loud laughter were not appreciated at the time and are still brought up whenever the birthing experience is discussed.) As much as I enjoy Moore though, I'm very selective about who I recommend his books to. They're not for the easily offended. Nevertheless, they're fantastic!

Sacré Bleu is not your typical Moore book (if a typical Moore book exists). It's not uproariously funny like his previous ones have all been. But that's not to say that it's not funny. But with Sacré Bleu, I think Moore has spread his literary wings and written a book that can stand up among the best books being written today. The amount of research he did is phenomenal and the story has considerable depth. He even created an online chapter guide that includes pictures, paintings, and historical details that I would highly recommend readers include in their reading of the book.

Sacré Bleu is about color, specifically ultramarine blue--the color most prized by artists because of its cost and difficulty in creating. The color was reserved chiefly for painting the robes of Mary and the Christ child during the 14th and 15th centuries and for many years its use was seen as a sort of status symbol of either the painter or the painting's commissioner.

The genesis of the story for Moore was the death of Vincent Van Gogh. Why did the man shoot himself in the chest and then walk a mile to a doctor's residence to seek treatment? Could it have been something other than a suicide attempt? The story that that question led Moore to write takes awhile to unfold. For the first half, I really wasn't certain what was going on, but by the end I was wholly engrossed and highly recommend it. But reader beware, Moore is hilariously crude at times.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Angelmaker

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

I would imagine that some people will read Angelmaker and won't enjoy it. If they don't, it won't be the fault of Nick Harkaway though. It'll be due to some mental shortcoming on their end. I, having no such mental shortcomings, enjoyed it immensely.

This was the first book written by Harkaway that I've read. I remember seeing his other book, The Gone-Away World at a bookstore when it came out a couple of years ago--it was hard to miss with its neon pink cover, but I didn't bother buying it at the time. I'm sure I'll be reading it sooner rather than later now that I've had a taste of Harkaway's writing style and story creation.

Joe Spork is an unassuming fixer of antique clocks who may have just inadvertently doomed the entire planet. While repairing an unusual clockwork device, Joe turns it on and unknowingly releases a swarm of mechanical bees. These bees, and the device they had been stored in, had been created by a French genius during WWII with the express intention of increasing the overall level of honesty in the world by nine percent.

The story was interesting, but I think the story was just a vehicle Harkaway used to release an overload of barely-contained absurdism and a biting sense of humor. Harkaway doesn't use that sense of humor in a subtle fashion either. He repeatedly blindsides you with it and keeps you on your toes wondering what he's going to say next. The dialogue between his characters was fantastic. I repeatedly went back a page or two while reading it just because I enjoyed it so much.

Reading Angelmaker takes focus and attention. He skips back and forth in time and the subplots are a stark contrast with each other in both style and tone. So I think some people reading it will either get lost and mentally check out, or simply quit. But again, that would be due to their own shortcomings and not the book's.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Lunatics

Lunatics by Dave Barry & Alan Zweibel

If a novel has Dave Barry's name associated with it, I'm going to read it. Both of his previous novels written for adults (Big Trouble & Risky Business) were hilarious. The Peter Pan prequels he's been coauthoring with Ridley Pearson for young adults are good too, but they're not the kind of laugh-out-loud funny books that cause people to move away from me while I'm reading them on the train into work that his others were. Pearson is kind of like Ritalin for Barry and my preference is to read Barry uncontrolled.

Lunatics was the first I had heard of Alan Zweibel and he made quite a first impression. If Pearson is Barry's Ritalin, I'd describe Zweibel as NoDoze with a Red Bull chaser. The pace of the book is fast, it never lets up, and it goes all over the place.

The book is about two men; Philip Horkman, a mild-mannered owner of a pet shop called The Wine Store (just go with it) and Jeffery Peckerman, a hot-headed, foul-mouthed forensic plumber (again, just go with it.) Their paths cross one day when Philip, a volunteer referee for a girl's recreational soccer league, calls off sides on Jeffery's daughter at a pivotal point in the game. From that moment on, the two can't seem to unseparate their paths and go back to their normal lives.

The story that follows made me laugh out loud regularly. If I wasn't laughing, I had a big grin on my face. I'm sure people around me when I was reading thought I was challenged in some way. Philip and Jeffery find themselves accused of masterminding a terrorist attack, hijacking a clothing-optional cruise ship, leading a revolution in Cuba, bringing down Somalian pirates, ushering in long-lasting peace in the Middle East, and then on to China.

I'm not going to try to pass this off as high-brow literature. This will not be an Oprah Book Club Selection. What it is is an hilarious book that's for those looking for an enjoyable time, and who aren't self-conscious about making a scene while reading.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆