What I'm Reading

NOVEL: LAMB: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
AUTHOR: Christopher Moore
RATING: Three.5 out of five Siggies

Christopher Moore rocks. Even though the only book of his I have read is Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, that was enough to make me a fan.

The first half of LAMB had me laughing my ass off. The book attempts to explain what happens to Jesus Christ between the time he's born and when he turns 30, which is his grand re-entry into the Bible. Come on, he was a kid, a pre-teen, a teen, a twenty-something, the time of life when we all find ways to damage ourselves and get into trouble. Christ was once that age too, and like all kids (wait, is he human? I've never ironed out that plot point ... maybe part-human, like those lizard babies in V), he has the grand adventures that help shape his personality and his Holy Superpowers.The Bible completely ignores this formative time, so enter Moore to fill you in on the Messiah's backstory.

I say I liked the first half, because I just started to glaze over the second. The book's setup is excellent, and Moore is a funny, gifted writer. The problem was he did the best be could to give adventures to Jesus & Co. in the Savior's early years, and since you know he makes it to 30, it kind of lost steam. There's no grand plot or large-scope situation for him to solve -- he's gathering knowledge, and slowly becoming the man that will have more impact on the world than any person in history.

So, I skimmed the end. I still think it's solid and Moore is off-the-charts good, but this particular title lost me. It didn't build to a connected climax like Bloodsucking Fiends did.

David Moody seems to have a similar backstory to that of the FDO™ -- write a great story, give it away, build a fan base, then cash in like 50 Cent selling discount rocks at a Narcanon weekend getaway. After giving the book away (as a PDF, I think), Moody landed a book deal and HATER was optioned by Hellboy meistro Guillermo Del Torro.

This  book is sweet. Solid horror, some really cringe-worthy moments, and a genuine original spin on the zombie apocolypse plot. While I thought the book was a bit long-winded in parts (okay, Main Character, we get that you're confused and scared, we do!), this story kicks ass and I really enjoyed it.

I reccommend HATER -- you might skim a little in parts, but just don't lose track of the story thread because the ending will plant a size-10 right in your bean bag. And you'll say "Thank you, Mr. Moody, may I have another?"

I had just finished FIGHT CLUB and was rolling in the glee of finally finding a novel that I didn't bitch about, I just enjoyed the crap out of it. That filled my book karma quota, which usually means the next three or four books are going to either suck balls or just be so-so.

I picked up AGENT TO THE STARS at Book Expo America. I read Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR not too long ago and loved it. AGENT was free (a galley copy, no royalty for you, Scalzi, sorry about that) so I put the dog on the leash and dug in.

Was it possible to go two-for-two with friggin' awesome books? Apparently, it was. Scalzi writes fantastic dialogue. Funny, intelligent, full of the little digs that bounce back and forth between you and good friends. It seems clear he had fun writing this, maybe as much as I had reading it.

AGENT is a fun book. If you liked my short story CHUCKLES MULROONEY, ATTOURNEY FOR THE DAMNED you will love AGENT.

The premise is simple -- aliens finally visit Earth, but theare not the cute E.T. variety. They are smelly gelatanous blobs. They hire a Hollywood agent to introduce them to humanity, to figure out how to show people an alience race that looks far more like snot than Alf. Aliens, snot, Hollywood agents -- you can see the hilarity begin to add up.

Having just lost a dog, I found the dog scenes in Agent to be fantastic. Loved this book. Loved it, loved it, loved it.

My beloved dog Mookie recently passed on, so I'm taking longer walks with our 10-year-old dog Emma. I read while I walk her , which gives me about an hour of reading time a day. I finally picked up FIGHT CLUB by Chuck Palahniuk. A couple of reviewers have compared my writing style to this guy, but I haven't read him before. I'm a huge fan of the Fight Club movie so I thought I'd check him out.

Normally when someone is a critical darling, winning all dem awards and sech,  I find the book to be garbage. COLD MOUNTAIN is an example -- I couldn't make it through fifty pages of this self-absorbed work, which chooses to eliminate most punctuation that tells you who is talking, what characters are doing, etc. Apparently, if you throw grammar out the window (on purpose, not like my daily butchering of the language), then you are an artist and deserving of much praise.

So I had low expectations for FIGHT CLUB. Or to put it another way, I left my guard down, and Palahniuk kneed me in the balls and thumbed me in the eye. Holy shit. This book is an immediate entry into my Top Ten. Even though I'd seen and loved the movie, the book is even better. And even though he plays fast and loose with regular-person punctuation, and that takes some getting used to, it's a brilliant piece of work. I'd say if you like my stuff, you'd like FIGHT CLUB. If your male, you'll probably like it more. If you're male, ages 25 to 40 and you had a public school education, you will likely put it on a shelf surrounded by some little candles.

Quite honestly, I have never, ever, ever read a book that captures how I feel about my culture and my station in life with such brutal honesty and utter perfection. It's a rock-em-sock-em-robot of a story, but there's a lot of modern-day philosphy about what it's like to be a man stuck in a pacifist job when your primitive soul wants to go out and beat the shit out of something. 

How much did I dig it? I want to run out and read the rest of his work, but I'm afraid his other books won't live up to the same level of fucking awesome, and that will somehow dull the fucking awesome of FIGHT CLUB. And I refuse to let anyone dull the fucking awesome of FIGHT CLUB, even if I have to knee them in the balls and thumb them in the eye.