Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome

Three Men in a Boat

My first thought on finishing Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) was, these people managed to conquer a fifth of the globe? It’s a wonder they manage to get downstairs for breakfast. The entirety of the book can best be described as a comedy of errors, with a dollop of absurd hubris ladled over the top. Even though its clear that this book was written to make its contemporaries laugh–and is no doubt making fun of stereotypes that no longer exist (maybe)–it can still get modern readers going. I snorted and chuckled and snickered my way through the whole book.

We meet our protagonists as they sit about one evening comparing their diseases. It’s clear that the only thing wrong with them is laziness, boredom, and a lack of ambition. None of the three men really has any goals beyond avoiding work for as long as humanly possible. Weirdly, this book helped me understand Freud a little better. When you have people of means without any real problems, they will invent things to be wrong. To help with their ennui, the three decide to boat up the Thames from London to Oxford, in the hope that the fresh air and exercise will restore them. Our narrator, Jim, also plans to bring his dog Montmorency–a fox terrier with “more than the usual amount of original sin in him.”

From there, nothing goes right. Not only do they have inclement weather and unhelpful locals to deal with, they also have their own incompetence messing up their plans. In every chapter, at least one thing goes wrong (usually more than one). I’m surprised they didn’t drown on the first day. Our narrator does try to raise the tone every now and then by writing, in the most grandiose terms, about the history of various points of interest or particularly beautiful vista. But something always happens to Jim to interrupt these flights of intellectual fancy–such as steam launches trying to run them down on the river, Montmorency trying to fight all the village dogs at once, all the food ending up in the river, etc. etc.

Three Men in a Boat is a frivolous delight and I mean that in a good way. Sometimes you just need to read something silly.

Sacre Bleu, by Christopher Moore

Sacre Bleu

If my art history class had been anything like Christopher Moore’s Sacré Bleu, I would have had to switch majors to art. I love books were the fiction fits so neatly inside the boundaries of actual history. A significant part of the cast of this book comes straight from the pages of art history. Renoir, Manet, Monet, Pisarro, Toulous-Lautrec (pictured on the cover), and van Gogh all make appearances in this book. Not only to the artists show up, but their art work is the book, too–which saved me a lot of time running back and forth to Google images to look at the dozens of works referenced in this book. Oh, and the book is actually printed in a beautiful blue ink.

Olympia, Édouard Manet, 1863

In the author’s note at the end, Moore says that he started out to write a book about the color blue. And as is usual with Moore, things get pretty weird pretty quickly. Sacré Bleustarts with an alternate version of van Gogh’s suicide in which the artist is murdered by the man who sells him his colors. It becomes readily apparent that something supernatural is going on, and that it has to do with a particular shade of blue (please do click the link, ultramarine is beautful) that the Colorman specializes in. And then there’s the Colorman’s companion, a woman named Bleu who appears to be the inspiration behind works of art like Manet’s Olympia, among many others.

The story bounced back and forth from the Colorman and Bleu to a Monmartre baker named Lucien Lessard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Lessard and Toulouse-Lautrec, saddened by van Gogh’s death, become suspicious of the circumstances and start to investigate. As they learn more, they find that the colorman and a mysterious woman (Bleu) have already visited a number of their fellow painters, inspiring them to greatness and ruining their lives. To complicate matters, Bleu chooses Lessard as her new artist.

The book is filled with flashbacks to other artists and points in history, showing you just how long the Colorman and Bleu have been playing their games. And it also shows you just how talented Moore is about working within the constraints of history. This is something I like about Tim Powers, as well. They can take a welter of disparate facts, events, and unrelated oddities and create a story that can coherently and logically link them together (with a little help from the supernatural. Be warned though. This is Christopher Moore we’re talking about here. So in between all the sublime art and poetic descriptions of painting, there are enough knob gags to keep an entire class of seventh grade books giggling for years.

Even with all the sex jokes (and I’ll be the first to admit that I laughed a lot), I really enjoyed reading this book. I’d say Moore is maturing as a writer, but that’s entirely the wrong word. There will always be something boyish about Moore’s writing. But his last few books have show incredible depth. I have no idea what he’s going to come up with next, but I’m so going to be there.

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons

Cold Comfort Farm

The thing–well one of the things–about satire is that judging the book is more than just a matter of critiquing the plot, the style, and the characters. You have to look at how well it hits its mark. When the book in question is about 80 years old and it satirizes a genre that we don’t see much anymore, it gets harder to make a judgment. In the case of Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, we’re pretty much left with asking, “But is it still funny?” I’m happy to report: It is. This may be because I have a warped sense of humor, but I was chuckling every few pages as I read it.

Written in 1932, Gibbons (for some reason I still don’t understand) chooses to set her story at least a couple of decades into the future. The book is littered with references to phones with TV screens and wars that never happened. If you ignore them and mentally reorient the story to the 1930s, it works a lot better. (This is what the movie version did.) Setting this bizarre problem aside, the book is fairly straight forward. In the first chapter, we meet a young woman, Flora Poste, whose father has recently died, leaving her with a small legacy and no place to live. As she has no ambitions beyond living an orderly life without too much effort, she decides to go live with relatives. Of the four invitations she receives, she chooses to go live on Cold Comfort Farm with her father’s people, the Starkadders, primarily because the invitation hints at irresistible family mysteries.

Cold Comfort Farm is a derelict place. The cows literally have pieces dropping off of them every few chapters. The inhabitants speak a strange patois of English farm language that takes more than a little getting used to. And they all have fascinating mental disorders or behavioral problems. Amos is a fire and brimstone preacher. Adam appears to be intellectually disabled. Elfine is a wood sprite. Seth is a misogynist nymphomaniac. Judith is depressed. And, the jewel in the crown, is Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something nasty in the woodshed when she was younger and who threatens to go mad if anyone leaves the farm or changes anything. Almost as soon as she arrives, Flora begins setting people to rights. Most of the novel covers her skillful manipulations of her relatives while avoiding the attentions of attempted writer Mr. Mybug (actually Meyerburg, but the local mispronunciation sticks).

Gibbons was mocking what Wikipedia refers to as the “loam and lovechild” genre. In this genre, the farms are miserable and the people doomed to the consequences of their own poor judgment and family curses. Think Wuthering Heights but with less style. Gibbons observes that if only there was someone to take them all in hand, everyone could end up with a happy ending. Just like Othello would have been a lot happier if one of the characters had been a marriage counselor.

While this “loam and lovechild” genre has (apparently deservedly) disappeared, I think Cold Comfort Farm still stands. You can’t really read it as satire anymore, but you can read it as a humorous novel. It’s sort of like an inverted soap opera, now that I think of it.If you have the right kind of humor, this book is hysterical.

The Damned Busters, by Matthew Hughes

The Damned Busters

I love comic novels that involve religion. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens and Christopher Moore’s Lamb are permanently in the my top ten favorite novels list. So I really enjoyed The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes. It takes the Faust premise and twists it into a 400 page running gag about heaven, hell, free will, demonic deals, and superheros. I’m really looking forward to the next installments in the series.

The novel opens with a demon trying to convince young Chesney Anstruther to sign a contract and Chesney trying to convince the demon that he summoned it purely by accident. The dispute escalates to the point where Chesney ends up in negotiations with the devil and a representative of heaven with the help of a TV preacher. The upshot of it all is that Chesney gets to moonlight as a superhero for two hours out of twenty four without having to pay the eternal price. The whole thing had me snorting with mirth.

I’ll admit that the middle of the book doesn’t quite match up to the fantastic beginning and thrilling ending, but it’s still a lot of fun reading Chesney’s misadventures trying to be a superhero. (He gets maced by a woman he attempts to save from muggers.) Keeping up the level of hilarity is Chesney’s demonic sidekick, Xaphan, who talks like people did when he was last topside and sounds like a stereotypical gangster from the 1920s. He completely steals the show. Things do drag a bit in the middle while Hughes moves characters into position for the surprisingly thrilling ending.

This was a very, very fun read. I hope the next installments come out soon.

Florence of Arabia, by Christopher Buckley

Florence of Arabia

Christopher Buckley has some guts. Florence of Arabia seems tailor made to piss off all sorts of people: Arabs, politically correct people, women’s rights advocates, etc. etc. Let me back up. Florence of Arabia is a political comedy about one woman’s attempt to “become the godmother of the Arab women’s movement.” And, of course, things go to hell from there.

Florence Farfaletti gets a call late one night from a friend who has run away from her husband. The problem is that this friend and her husband come from a country, Wasabi, (made up) that practices all the worst stereotypes of Muslim culture. After her friend comes to a bad end, Florence hatches a plot to broadcast comedies and talk shows that poke fun at this imaginary country and its version of Islam. Strangely enough, she has some serious baking from a gentleman who won’t say who he works for. Things go to hell when the Wasabis arrange a coup in the country where Florence has set up shop. Rather than slowly encouraging women to stand up for themselves, things get much worse for them. After some very tense days, Florence and her partners manage to get international opinion on their side and things (sort of) resolve themselves. At the end of the book, it’s a no win game.

You have to have a strong sense of humor to find this book funny. It’s amusing enough if you don’t think too carefully about what they’re making fun of. It’s almost Swiftian in that, you can sort of see the point from this side of the socially acceptable line. Buckley has some gumption to have written it. But then, what could I expect from the guy who wrote Thank You For Smoking?

Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett

Unseen Academicals

I always look forward to book by Terry Pratchett, especially the Discworld books, because I know I’m going to have a good time. The books are not only entertaining satires in and of themselves, but I also get to try and chase down the references. In Unseen Academicals, not only is Pratchett lampooning soccer and soccer fans, but he also takes shots at psychoanalysis, Romeo and Juliet, and fashion. It’s kind of a messy book, because these lesser targets sometimes steal the stage.

The book starts when the wizards of Unseen University (nunc id vides, nunc non vides*) find out that their funding is in trouble if they don’t field a soccer team. One of their bequests had that annoying clause stuck into it. But by this time, soccer has devolved into a streetfighting matches between nearly tribal groups in the city. Fans of one team don’t mix with the other. And this is where the sadly underused allusion to Romeo and Juliet comes in, when a Dimwell fan falls in love with a Dolly Sisters fan (and vice versa). Parts of the book has the characters trying to come up with rules that mean that they don’t have to worry about keeping their teeth or, possibly, death, on the field. This was so well done that I’m closer to understanding the off-side rule than I’ve ever been. Now if only Pratchett would go after cricket.

The psychology comes into play with another character, an over-educated orc from the hinterlands who has the uncomfortable ability to instantly psychoanalyse people or speculate on the philosophical dimensions of soccer. (The best part of this plot, I think, is when he is forced to analyse himself, complete with Dr. Ruth accent.) I speak some German, but unfortunately not enough to understand the jokes that I know are embedded in the names of the books Nutt cites. The English ones, like The Doors of Deception, is good enough it itself. The fashion satire really just seems tacked on to the whole. It’s a little distracting, even though it turned out to be necessary.

Other reviews of this book have pointed out that Pratchett also goes after racism. He does, but he’s gone after that in all the rest of his recent books. Some reviewers have seen it as an interruption, but I thought it was incidental. Anytime you get a new “race” in Ankh-Morpork, there’s some stereotyping, but people get over it. And the population has been getting over it so much in their recent history that’s not such a big deal anymore. One of Pratchett’s other books, Thud!, is much more about racism than this one. I read the reviews before I read the book, but as I read, I just didn’t see what the critics are making such a fuss about. I just wish that Pratchett had played around more with the Romeo and Juliet motif.

Still, I really enjoyed this books. Everyone is precious, given the author’s condition. It will be an unutterably sad day when Pratchett retires his pen (or keyboard or whatever).

* Now you see it, now you don’t.

Finger Lickin’ Fifteen, by Janet Evanovich

Finger Lickin' Fifteen

I know this book only came out today, but all I did after I got home was read the latest installation of the Stephanie Plum series: Finger Lickin’ Fifteen. Almost three hours of reading and I was done. I haven’t laughed so hard while reading a book since the last Terry Pratchett novel. I laughed so hard when I hit page 243 that it took me a good five minutes to stop giggling enough that I could finish the page.

I don’t know how she does it, but Evanovich is one of the few authors I know who can pull off visual comedy in a book. For obvious reasons, humor in books is usually limited to word play or absurdity. But Evanovich can create such wacky situations for her outrageous characters, and describes them so vividly, that you can’t help but see the scenes in your head and laugh.

I know that one person who will read this post hasn’t read the book yet, so I don’t want to describe the plot. The thing about funny is that it’s so much better when you don’t know the punchline. Plus, I know it drives her crazy when I won’t tell her how it ends, or even much about the mystery. Also, there’s the fact that the purpose of this book is just to entertain. It’s brain candy and apart from the fact that I really, really enjoyed it, there’s not much else to say. If you need a good laugh and some fairly mindless entertainment, run, do not walk, to pick this one up.

Fool, by Christopher Moore

Fool

I’m so glad that Moore manages to get a novel out about every year. I’m not sure if I could wait much longer than that to read a new Moore story. The man is hilarious, and never disappoints. Fool is, sort of, new territory for Moore. It’s essentially a retelling of King Lear from the Fool’s perspective and with a lot of comedic license. According to the Author’s Note at the end, the idea can from a desire to write a story about a fool and, after a conversation with his editor, turned into a story about the fool from Lear. Because this is Christopher Moore, it has a lot of knob jokes in it. Pocket, the fool, reminds me a lot of another of Moore’s characters: Biff. Biff, for those who haven’t read Lamb (if you haven’t, you simply must read this book), is Christ’s childhood friend who is hilarious, horny, and unafraid to say what’s on his mind no matter how much trouble he’ll get in.

In this retelling Lear, it turns out that the Glouchester subplot started because Pocket helped Edmund trick his father into disinheriting Edmund’s legitimate half-brother. And the rest of the Lear plot kind of snowballs from there. We learn more about the wicked elder sisters, Regan and Goneril, than you probably wanted to know. Moore highlights how whiny the fathers, Lear and Glouchester, are, since they were the cause of most of their own problems. Moore wrote in the Author’s Note that, after seeing more than thirty productions of the play, you want to push Lear off a cliff to stop the whinging.

SPOILER ALERT! STOP READING HERE IF YOU DON”T WANT TO LEARN HOW THE BOOK ENDS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

For the most part, the retelling works very well. The only part that didn’t ring true for me is when the ghost (“There’s always a bloody ghost”), tells Pocket that his father was Lear’s older brother and that his mother was raped at Lear’s insistence. Up until Pocket learns this, his is firmly the king’s man. But after that, of course, he hates the king and doesn’t want to do anything to help him. He also doesn’t care to get revenge on Lear. This plot twist seems like Moore needed something to turn Pocket against Lear. It doesn’t really serve a purpose otherwise, and it seems rather extreme. Plus, I could totally see who the ghost really was about half of the way into the story.

END SPOILERS

Still, this is a fantastic read. I didn’t do much today other than read Fool, because I  was hooked from the first chapter. I love reading Moore’s books. I’m always assured of laugh-out-loud jokes and humor, wonderfully quirky characters, and a madcap plot. I can’t wait to see what Moore cooks up for his next novel.

Christopher Durang Explains It All For You, 6 Plays by Christopher Durang

Christopher Durang Explains It All For You

This morning I finished reading this collection of plays by Christopher Durang. a while ago, my brother turned me on to this playwright and I remember really liking the anarchic absurdity of it all. I also got to see my brother perform the lead role in The Actor’s Nightmare, and it was just hilarious.

This collection contains some of Durang’s most well-known works, like Titanic and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You. I enjoyed reading this collection. But as I read it, I realized how hard it is to fully appreciate a play when you can’t see it being performed. There are stage notes and annotations that help, but a lot of Durang’s comedy really hinges on how it’s played on stage. There’s a lot of casual violence in here, and if you read it with out taking the notes and the intentions into account, it’s sometimes very hard to see how it could be funny.

My favorite piece in this collection is The Actor’s Nightmare. Durang explains that a lot of actors have a nightmare where they have to perform in a play they haven’t rehearsed or don’t know at all. In this play, George Spelvin finds himself in the middle of performances of Hamelet, Private Lives, a fictional piece by Beckett, and, I think, A Man For All Seasons. It’s really funny to see how Spelvin keeps trying to go along with it.

Barking, by Tom Holt

One of my co-workers got me hooked on Tom Holt a while back. I’ve been working my way (slowly) through the backlog of titles Holt wrote before I got clued in. Barking is the newest book, and tells the story of Duncan Hughes, a lawyer-turned-werewolf who has to fight off vampires, hostile werewolves, an undead shapechanger, and his inability to do math.

One of the things I love about writers like Holt and Terry Pratchett is how they can take an absurd little idea like, in the case of Barking, someone being out of step with reality by 0.1% and spin 400 pages or more of absurdist plot around it. Barking is wonderful absurd. It hooked me right from the start. (I read more than 250 pages of it last night before I made myself pack it in.)

I think this book was the perfect storm for me. It had great characters. At first, I was a little leery of the main character, Duncan Hughes, because he sounded like many of the mild-mannered wimps that often get sucked into evil corporation/contemporary fantasy novels. But Duncan surprised me. Well before the end of the book, he was tough and wily–just what you want in a werewolf. It had a fantastic (in both senses of the word) plot, with plenty of twists and turns. There was even a false ending in there, for good measure. And it had humor. I’ve mentioned before that a book has to be extraordinarily funny to make me laugh while I read it. Barking had me laughing through out. It was a very fun read.