Monday, September 04, 2006

 

Fall Book Recommendations!

Yeah, yeah, yeah—I should be reading my assignments and ignoring fun reading, now that I'm back at my doctoral program. Well, I am keeping up with reading my assignments—it's only my divergences to reading fun stuff that prevents from hacking my eyes out at some of the agonizing academic writing, OK? Give me a break.

The Town that Forgot How to Breathe, by Kenneth Harvey. Remember how I lamented that the entire horror genre was transmogrifying into bodice rippers featuring fanged or furry Lotharios? This is the book that soothed me, convinced me that the horror genre isn’t dead just quite yet.

Lamb, by Christopher Moore. I’d tell you about this book, but I’m too busy laughing. Pat, a friend of ours and fellow book addict, took a brief peak at a section of this book. After he was able to stop laughing long enough to breathe, he said, “Is there a Christian Fatwa on Christopher Moore, you know—like Salmon Rushdie had to endure for the Satanic Verses?” (The book retells the story of Christ, seen from the eyes of his best buddy Biff, who was left out of the original texts.) It was only after I was able to reassure him that true Christian fanatics couldn’t read or else they’d never approve of their own bible that he was able to relax again. Fortunately for all of us, the inability of psycho Christian Fanatics who believe authors should be killed to string sentences together in their heads will keep Christopher Moore alive and well and able to freely publish as many books as his sick imagination and agent force him to.

The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt—just a lot of fun, so give it a shot. I can’t resist any fantasy fiction that combines alternate dimensions, the modern art world, and Western clichés into a rumbling, amusing text.

That’s it for now, as I have a study methodology to rewrite!

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