Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Fat Charlie Nancy isn't fat. All the stories are Anansi's. Don't talk to spiders, unless it's something you really mean.
Oh, and Neil Gaiman's still incredible.


These are the lessons I take away every single time I read this novel. It's probably my favorite of Gaiman's books--including any of the Sandman series. I know, I know, American Gods is incredible, but this is my favorite. And hey, it's in the same storyline anyway. So, shush, naysayers.

The story is about the two sons of Mr. Nancy, Fat Charlie and Spider. Before his father died, you see, Charles Nancy, nicknamed "Fat Charlie" by his father, didn't know he had a brother. And after he finds out, well, he can't wait to believe he's an only again. And that the world is as logical and boring as he'd led himself to believe, and that magic doesn't really exist.

Turns out Mr. Nancy is really the modern incarnation of Anansi, the West African spider god, the trickster. And he's not lost  a bit of his trickster ways though he's become a somewhat modern man. Fat Charlie was subjected through a variety of embarrassments at the hand of his father as a child. Like the time Mr. Nancy told him that for President's Day, all the kids picked their favorite president and dressed up as them for school that day... so Fat Charlie showed up all decked out in his presidential finery. And he was the only one. Then there was his father's habit of taking him "mermaid watching." There weren't any mermaids. Mr. Nancy was also fond of performing what he referred to as the "miracle of the loaves and fishes."


"He loafs and he fishes and it's a miracle that he makes a living."

But the most embarrassing moment was his manner of death. During a particularly fine round of karaoke, singing directly at a group of sunburned tourists, Mr. Nancy had a heart attack, fell gracefully from the stage and managed to pull the top completely off the blondest tourist.

After Mr. Nancy's death, Fat Charlie is told he's got a brother by his neighbor Callyanne Higgler, (who's in fact responsible for the fact that Fat Charlie and Spider were separated to begin with). And all he has to do to meet him is pass a whisper to a spider. But when Spider shows up, he takes over Fat Charlie's life. He steals his fiancee. He impersonates him at his job and blackmails his boss (who's legitimately up to no good). He even turns the tiny spare bedroom of Fat Charlie's apartment into a window into an alternate space with a hot tub, giant TV and tropical scenery. To get rid of him, Charlie ends up making a deal he never should've made with one the god's from his father's world, who is in league withe his father's oldest enemy. In exchange for her word and a feather, he ends up offering her Anansi's bloodline if she makes his brother go away. Turns out though, Anansi's bloodline includes him. So he has to step up and find out how much he really is his father's son to save the day.



As usual I said a lot without saying much at all. What it wraps up to is this: I love Gaiman's odd humor. I like how overtly British everything is.  I also like that it's one of the first non-Southern books I can remember reading where it's made pretty clear that none of the main characters are white. That's something I missed the first few times I read it, honestly. I don't know HOW, but I did. And I love all the stories about Anansi. I love the way he always ends up getting his, in the end. I love how matter of factly the stories are told. I love the descriptions of Tiger, so dark and bloodthirsty. I also like the casual references to American Gods throughout the narrative. And frankly, any book that has people having to flee in the face of hundreds of homicidal flamingos and then later homicidal penguins is pretty worthwhile right there.

Gaiman always seems to deal with unusual family situations, where it becomes abundantly clear that loving your family in spite of what you may view as their faults is infinitely better than losing them to something that wants to kill and/or eat them... or kill and/or eat you, depending on which you're reading. I like that. I like that his characters are often outsiders who can find a place to belong. And who hasn't felt that hope in their heart when they can't help but think there's no where in the whole wide world where they fit in?

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

I'm sitting here, listening to Old Flame by The Arcade Fire (one of my favorite bands). And I adore this book, yet I can't think of a single thing to say about it. I've been trying to write this reaction for weeks.

Here's a summary, to begin with:
Perseus Jackson, known as Percy, is a 12 year old boy and strange things always happen to him... things that aren't his fault, but are so inexplicable that he gets blamed for them. As in most modern YA fiction, there's a supernatural reason he's been kept in the dark about. One day, after just such an event occurs, Percy's strange friend Grover tells him the truth:
Percy Jackson is a demigod.

His father is one of Greek gods. The incredibly stinky man his mother married? She choose him to protect her son. Demigods have a distinctive odor which attracts monsters. And the weird attacks and unexplained events and weird people who seem to mess up his life at school? Monsters that nobody can recognise because of the Mist, which disguises all monsters, from the eyes of the mere humans, the mortals. Grover isn't even a kid with a funny walk like he seems. He's a satyr, a half-human, half-goat. And his math teacher? Not a man in a wheelchair, but a centaur (half-man, half horse).
Grover's job is to go around and find demigods, like Percy, and escort them to the one place in the world they'll be safe: Camp Half Blood.

After some interesting misadventures and tons of really awesome, off-hand lessons in the way Greek mythology and history worked, they reach the camp. There are cabins for each of the gods of the Greek pantheon and nobody is aware of who Percy's father is, so he stays in the cabin for Hermes. During a particularly vicious game of Capture the Flag, he uses the power of a river to defend himself against a daughter of Ares and Poseidon's green trident appears above his head.

This causes a bit of a problem and a bit of a stir, as story goes that due to a prophecy that one of their children would make a decision at the age of sixteen that would either save or destroy Olympus, the three head gods, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades have vowed to stop having children... but looks like somebody's betrayed the oath, don't it?

After he moves into the empty cabin for Poseidon's children, his education in the ways of the demigods and Camp Half Blood continues. He finds an animosity and friendship with Annabeth, a daughter of Athena and Luke, a son of Hermes. He learns more and more about what he can expect his life to bel ike and the lives of those like him. Percy finds the camp is at least partially protected by another demigod named Thalia (a daughter of Zeus), who exists in the shape of a tree on the very border of the camp because she died protecting the two demigods who traveled to camp with her. But soon, disaster strikes. Zeus, finding out that Poseidon broke his oath, accuses Percy of stealing his Master Bold, the powerful lightning bolt that is one of the sources of his power. The rest of the book is about the adventures he has while just trying to clear his name and keep himself alive....

This is an EXTREMELY abbreviated summary and hardly any of my favorite moments were mentioned. I've had such a hard time typing this because it's so dense, so good but not at all overwhelming. I don't want to ruin the rest of the story for anyone, so I'm just gonna have to type from the hip, so I mean, let's put this out there.

I cannot say enough good things about this book to prospective readers at my job. It is a smart, fun, funny and engaging series. The movie looks incredible--I've seen the previews only but still.
I know everyone says "for fans of Harry Potter" and all that sort of stuff about this series, but honestly, this is just for fans of anything smart, anyone who appreciates a good metaphor for the awkwardness and insecurity of the early teen years. This is just for anyone who wants a good time.
So. Read it, kids.

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Now, I'll say loud and proud that I read a TON of teen books. I've read the Twilight books, the Gemma Doyle trilogy, everything Garth Nix has written... the list goes on and on.

But this book was just... bad. I chose to read it because the cover art is freaking beautiful. I gotta say, whoever the designer was for that cover, it's just awesome. I was honestly hoping it'd follow the other trend for YA fiction these days, and that's mythology. It could've made a wonderful story about Icarus with that cover.

It was about a young, brunette self-described average-looking girl in high school... and a mysterious black-eyed loner type she's paired up with in science class.... yes, that DOES describe the beginning of Bella and Edward's illustrious romance... but Patch (the loner) is a fallen angel, not a vampire.

Huh.

I mean, it was done... well? I don't particularly mean well-written or well-constructed. I just remember being sad that the storyline was so simliar to Twilight because it had some real potential. If it had explored more of the history of the angels, both fallen and otherwise, or gone into details in other ways or any of a number of other things, it could've been really really awesome. As it was, I valiantly finished and felt disappointed.

Becca Fitzpatrick, if you see this, I'm sorry I didn't like your book. But I believe in you as a writer... I think you can do more. Make it into a series! Just don't go focusing in on the doomed love story and I think you'll find you've got a winner.

The Wild Things by Dave Eggers

This is the adult novelisation of the movie version of the children's book Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.

Take a moment. Read that twice. Think, oh, ok. And proceed.

The movie Where The Wild Things Are had its screenplay co-written by Spike Jonze (geeeeenius) and Dave Eggers (uber hipster writerman). In as much as the store penned by Sendak all those years ago is about himself.... and so the Spike Jonze movie is kind of about his version of being Max. And Eggers' version is his side of the story of being Max.

Now, I'm gonna post SOME of my thoughts here, but not all of them, as I've yet to see the movie. I promise I'll post a part two to this update as soon as I get a chance.

I loved this book. I mean, I do loves me some Eggers. He created the Haggis-on-Whey books (http://www.amazon.com/Giraffes-HOW-Doris-Haggis-Whey/dp/1932416978/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262992030&sr=8-6), such as I enjoyed what I've read of his stuff and like everyone with even an ounce of hipster street cred, I was both amused and touched by A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But I have to say, seeing him take a tiny children's story and place so much more into it made me smile a little more than I have at him in years.

For those who aren't familiar, WTWA (sendak's version) is about a little boy named Max who gets sent to his room without supper one night. Since his mother punished him, he decides to take a boat to an island where the (can you guess) the wild things live. He is fierce and wearing a wolf suit, so he is made their king. And the Wild Rumpus ensues, which involves tons of dancing and romping about. Eventually, though, he decides to return home... to find that his mother has laid a tray of supper for him in his room.

Well, the book is this, only moreso. It deals more with the loneliness and the issues surrounding his family. His sister is growing up and doesn't have time for him. His mother is dating someone, of whom he isn't a huge fan. He drenches his sister's room in water as revenge for her not defending him against her friends during a snowball fight. I don't want to go into too much detail, so as not to ruin this for anyone who is still planning on seeing the movie, so I'll just leave it at that and say that so far, this franchise (yes, it's a franchise now) did not disappoint.

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

I don't read what I consider to be an excessive amount of science fiction or fantasy. I used to, don't get me wrong. Just, these days, I tend to prefer straight fiction or humor, excepting of course Neil Gaiman's body of work which I will continue to devour, reading-wise. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised by this book... though I shouldn't've been. It was a Philip K. Dick award winner, it's about British people and mythology and it had tons of literary references (the guy goes back in time ostensibly to see a Samuel Taylor Coleridge lecture... that's right, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Kahn inspire freakin' time travel, bitches. Oh, pardon me, is my English major showing?)

Either way, the novel was clever. The main character, a historical biographer named Brendan Doyle, goes back in time from 1983 as a part of this group of millionaires (and, unbeknownst to him, evil scientists) going to see an 1810 Coleridge lecture and ends up accidently getting stuck there. It was a lot like Buffy in parts, which made me love it. It didn't take itself too seriously but it was well-thought-out enough that I didn't cringe and say "Really? Really?!" out loud to my faithful but deaf reading companion, my dog Ruby. Doyle ends up living through all these horrors perpetuated by a group of people attempting to control the travel through the streams of time called the Anubis Gates, which are like holes in the ice covering of the river of time. I probably screwed up that metaphor, but still. There's a man called Dog Face Joe who is sort of a werewolf thing who can jump into other peoples bodies, people splitting their spirits, a group of evil disfigured beggers the leader of whom is dressed as a clown on stilts, Doyle realises that he's not the only person from the 20th century when he hears people whistling "Yesterday" by The Beatles--a splendid time is guaranteed for all! Also, there's a woman disguising herself as a tough street boy street urchin. So, see, everything I love pretty much reverts back to drag.

Through hours of strenuous research (ie: idle googling), I discovered that the character of William Ashbless, the poet whose biography Doyle was working on only to discover that he himself IS Ashbless, was actually created as a joke in college with one of his buddies, to kind of poke fun at crappy poets by submitting "nonsensical free verse" to the paper under the Ashbless name.. The link to the wiki is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ashbless

There's a lot of the plot I didn't reveal here, but really, I enjoyed this novel. Good times, two thumbs up.

Forever Odd & Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Since this is a series, I'll discuss these two together.

I'd borrowed the second and third, but as the people owning the series had lost the second and fourth, I just went ahead and read them out of order. This entry will be pretty spoiler-heavy as it's hard to discuss any of the events in the latter books without revealing what caused them.

Brief Summary:
A young fry cook named Odd Thomas can see ghosts, spirits and the occasional "other" sort of entity. He uses this sensitivity to help solve the murders of some of these ghosts, aid others in crossing over and to even help stop or prevent certain tragedies (like a shooting or the full scale slaughter of the entire population of a monastery). The love of his live and soulmate, Stormy, is killed in the first book, though it isn't immediately apparent that she actually dies (it's kinda like a less crappy scene from Ghost... only less pottery wheel and bad early nineties hair), so a lot of the rest of the novels deals with him dealing with his grief.
Odd is also haunted by the ghost of Elvis, who believes that Odd is his best hope of crossing over and then later by the ghost of Frank Sinatra, who even helps him out by exhibiting poltergeist tendencies when provoked. His companion in the last two book is a ghost labrador affectionately named Boo. His human compatriots include a chief of police who helps keep him out of the public eye, the folk he's gotten to know at the diner where he became a fry cook and his friend Ozzie, an overweight gourmet-slash-mystery writer. Over the series, Odd prevents a shooting spree, helps save a friend who's kidnapped by an occult-obsessed woman who wants to exploit Odd's sensitivity to spirits and his magnetism for energies, rids a monastery of quasi-mystical science conjured creatures and prevents a pregnant woman from being murdered and the US getting nuked by your typical evil to the bone group of morons.


Forever Odd:
I liked this one. I often find myself a little... embarassed? when I read something like this, the sort of grocery store novels that a lot of my more literary-minded friends would just sneer at. It's easy to dismiss anything popular as trash but darn it, it's enjoyable. Think of it as popcorn literature. You can't always go around eating rich foods, you'd die of surfeit. Same with books. Everything can't be so overtly serious, in the intellectual sense. Either way, I liked it.

In the aftermath of Stormy's death, Odd's having a hard time with his life as Elvis is with passing on. His childhood buddy Danny gets kidnapped by a psychopath who wants to use him to make Odd use his powers according to her designs and he's got to come to the rescue. I think the main part of this novel that stuck with me was the guilt. The recurring theory that Elvis lingers because of the guilt he feels at facing his mom after dying a superstar, but one with a drug problem and unfulfilled potential. Danny's guilt at having revealed so much as to inspire the psycho to want to use Odd's powers. Odd's guilt and grief deal with not only his inability to use his 'gift' to prevent Stormy's death, but the fact that it can harm people he loves no matter the circumstance. At the end, it's no surprise that Odd ends up escaping to the would-be peace of a monastery.

I view this entire series as a coming of age story. So this particular book reminded me of the end of your teen years, end of high school. You're further along in figuring out who you are, but you've never had to test it. If you linger, you won't grow, you won't be productive and you might even just become a burden on the people you love. So you deal with the sucky parts of moving on and then you do it. Pretty straightforward, though the metaphor I just made here is entirely my own baggage coming out to play. It never mentions anything like that in the book.

Odd Hours:
Odd has helped Elvis cross over and vanquished the monastery monsters and he's now working as a chef/assistant to former movie star. Now he has Frank Sinatra hanging around and the spectral dog, Boo. He dreams of a pregnant woman who he's seen at the lighthouse he often visits to look over the ocean. Suffice to say, amidst drama, intrigue, coyotes and lots of shennanigans, Odd manages to save the lady, Annamaria, from being murdered and the US from being nuked.

I still kind of look at the nuclear attack storyline askance. It made me kinda go, huh, really? REALLY? But within the world of the story, it's sorta forgivable. This was the book that made me realise, too, what a dog lover Dean Koontz is. There's references to the joy provided by dogs, discussion of how unlike humans, most dogs prefer not to linger, talk about the way dogs laugh. It made me like the book a little better. I'm beginning to realise how all-encompassing my passion for dogs and animal welfare really is. This was, in my opinion, one of the weaker of the series as far as story and stronger in terms of theme. Although I highly enjoyed it and would read it again, I wouldn't describe it as my favorite.

The overwhelming theme I got from this one was loneliness. If I stick to my coming of age story idea, this is more like your early midtwenties. You've done a lot of your growing up, but you're not quite done. You've got a pretty good idea of what you can do with who you are, but not how to apply it quite yet. You're setting down roots, but you don't know where you belong. Odd can't make friends, can't stay in one place because he has to use his gift to help but he's constantly bombarded by serendipity and the chance good he witnesses in strangers. It helps balance out the cruelty and out and out evil he witnesses in the world.


Wrap It Up:
This series is, maybe as should be expected, a little predictable and at times kind of over the top. But above all, it's fun. It's easy to read and has characters that I really liked and cared for. I don't mind suspending my disbelief and accepting that, yeah, a fry cook can see things others can't. That there are real evil, real monsters and real interactions with them in the world. So I'm pretty excited about this series, still, and I'm really looking forward to reading the graphic novel, In Odd We Trust and whatever future titles Dean Koontz churns out. Bring on the popcorn.