Dad is Fat

by Jim Gaffigan
New York, NY : Crown, 2013.

Comedian Jim Gaffigan reflects on his experience as a father of five, living in a two-bedroom apartment in New York City.

That one line of description both says it all and, well, doesn't really describe it sufficiently, unless you happen to have experience with large families or living in New York City. I'm the oldest of five, so I found many of the stories amusing even though my knowledge of the scenarios he describes comes from being one of the kids. I could relate to some of what he wrote about, and those were the funniest parts for me. Parents could probably relate best, but even if you're not, consider giving it a try. I have it on good authority from a couple of my co-workers that the audiobook is excellent, since you get the comedian's own delivery.

To get both a flavor of his brand of comedy (and to have a frame of reference for one of the routines he refers to often in his book), check out his thoughts on "Hot Pockets":

The Mysterious Howling

by Maryrose Wood
New York : Balzer & Bray, 2010.

At age 15, Miss Penelope Lumley, recently graduated from the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, is on her way to her first position as a governess. When she arrives at Ashton Place, she is shocked to learn that her young charges have been raised by wolves!

It's hard to describe this story without making it sound silly. It is silly, but it's also cleverly poking fun at tropes in children's literature and it's an entertaining story whether you catch the references or not. Because of this, it works well as a story for both children and adults to read - if it's your first story about wild children and governesses, great, and if it's not, you'll chuckle along with the narrator even more knowledgeably. It's smart without feeling didactic; I was amused by the explanations of irony, for example, and the use of poetry was fun without feeling forced. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you if I preferred the audio or the book, since the former is superbly read by Katherine Kellgren, while the latter includes illustrations from Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Jon Klassen.

I Can't Complain: (all too) personal essays

by Elinor Lipman
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

Ever since I read The Inn at Lake Devine in 2009, Elinor Lipman has been one of my "go to" authors when I need some light and fun fiction. So when I saw she'd come out with a book of essays - many of them previously published in various newspapers/periodicals - I had to check it out.

These thirty-one essays composed of broad subjects - family, writing, love & marriage - are truly delightful reading. She's funny one moment and making a thoughtful point the next, and even though she's in a different season of life than I am, her observations made me laugh and cry. I could completely relate to "No Thank You, I Think," in which she talks about why she now says "no" to some invitations. I, too, sometimes want to say "no" just to sit at home and read, and it was nice to know that someone else can not only admit it, but says so with aplomb. In one section, she talks about many aspects of being a writer, from looking for (and providing) blurbs, to the anxieties and frustrations involved in being the author at an event. Her essays about her husband, from a Coupling column she wrote regularly as the "long married" woman, were funny and heartwarming. A highly enjoyable read for anyone who enjoys humorous essays or getting to know a favorite author.

Etiquette & Espionage

by Gail Carriger
Little, Brown, 2013.

Sophronia has been causing mayhem at home and her mother, at her wit's end, sends her to finishing school. But even before she arrives - when they're attacked by flyawaymen who want a prototype, to be exact - Sophronia discovers that Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality is much more than just your average finishing school. Besides teaching young ladies to curtsy and behave decorously, a werewolf and a vampire are teachers, and lessons include such things as fighting (with knife, umbrella, or parasol) and the finer arts of poisoning.

If you're familiar with Gail Carriger's Soulless series, then you have an idea of what to expect in narrative voice and humor. The only clue that this is intended for young audiences is the age of the protagonists and the absence of sex (well, there's one indirect reference to it). There were parts when the action flagged, but most of the time it was a fun romp as Sophronia and friends wreak havoc and try to save the day by finding the prototype that a fellow schoolmate has hidden.

Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

by Robin Sloan
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
Out of a job during the recession, Clay Jannon happens upon a 24-hour book store that needs a clerk on the night shift. Clay really knows coding and the internet a lot better than books, but he can climb a ladder and help the few people who frequent the store. The regular customers turn out to be eccentrics who borrow obscure tomes from what Clay terms the "Waybacklist," and he soon becomes convinced that the bookstore is merely a front for something else...

I tried to think of what I might compare this to, and the best I can come up with is it's like Ready Player One for book lovers. There's a mystery surrounding books, a delightful bookstore that is open all day (who wouldn't love that?), and a wisecracking clerk all wrapped up in an homage to the delights of reading. As much as I can try to describe it, however, there's really nothing that I can say to describe the pleasure I felt every time I opened up the pages. I had a smile on my face to the very last sentence.

More Baths Less Talking

by Nick Hornby
San Francisco, CA : Believer Books, [2012].

In this collection of "Stuff I'm Reading" columns that Nick Hornby writes for the Believer magazine, he is back after a hiatus of, well, not writing such columns, that he finished in Shakespeare Wrote for Money. The essays in More Baths Less Talking cover about a year and a half (May 2010 to November/December 2011) of reflections on what he's read. Each column starts out with two lists - books bought and book read - followed by an essay filled with humor, his life, and most of all books.

I love these columns. There are now four books in the series that can be read in any order, but it is fun to pick up a new book and remember past columns to which he occasionally refers. While Hornby's taste is generally quite different from mine, I nevertheless always add a book or two to the ever-growing to be read list while dipping into these collections. Mostly, though, I just enjoy getting into the head of another reader, someone who loves books as much as I do and who can write about it in a cogent, interesting, and funny way. Reading these books always leaves me wishing I could write my own column like that, but I know I could never do it as well. I shall have to settle for reading (and rereading) Nick Hornby's columns, and wishing that the columns and his books were longer.

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

by Elinor Lipman
New York : Random House, 2003.

Dr. Alice Thrift doesn't excel at interpersonal communication. Actually, that's putting it lightly. She's an intern who wants to become a surgeon, works long hours, and takes everything seriously. When Ray Russo, a former near-patient for a nose job, starts calling her and asking her out, she's rather flattered and can't quite see how this could go wrong, despite the advice of everyone around her.

I was in the mood for something light and knew an Elinor Lipman book would fit the bill. Despite, or perhaps because of, her serious nature, Alice was a really fun heroine. I'm not so great at reading people either, but even I was a step ahead of Alice and sometimes laughing at her naivete. She tells you on the very first page that her relationship with Ray doesn't work out, so reading this felt kind of like watching a car wreck - you just can't look away.

Renegade Magic

by Stephanie Burgis
New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2012.

Second book alert! Check out my review of Kat, Incorrigible (also known as A Most Improper Magick). In the second book of her adventures, Kat Stephenson gets whisked to Bath after the mother of Frederick Carlyle dashes Angeline's hopes at marriage.

It's been awhile since I read the first book in the series, but it turns out not to matter much. Burgis deftly reminded me who characters were and what was going on, as well as introducing new fun. Kat may be rather precocious for her age, but the setting of early 1800s England makes some of her vocabulary more believable and this was just plain fun to read.

This book is known as A Tangle of Magick in Britain, where it was first published.

"You Can Tell Your Kid Will Grow Up to be a Librarian When..."

by Richard Lee
Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1992.

This collection of cartoons about the library profession was published in 1992. Similarly to Unshelved, the punchlines much more funny if you're actually in the profession; this one references some out-of-date technology (DIALOG, anyone?) that may or may not ring a bell to librarians that are my age.

Not all of the cartoons have to do with kids who will become librarians, though the first part of the collection is about that. There's also a section on parents who are librarians, patrons, library school, and more. The ones that really gave me a laugh were the ones I related to, like the one that says "You know your parents are librarians when they make you take pictures in front of boring buildings," with a picture of an annoyed kid, hand to his face, with his excited parents taking a picture outside of the library. Seeing as I did that, um, just this year, I laughed aloud at that one. The line drawings are simple but humorous. Overall, I prefer the Unshelved strips by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, though I spent a pleasant few hours paging through this collection.

The Screwtape Letters

by C.S. Lewis
New York: HarperCollins, 2001 (orig. pub. 1943).

Screwtape, an old demon, writes letters of advice to his nephew Wormwood, who is on assignment tempting a young man with the ultimate goal of bringing his soul to Hell.

This has long been one of my favorites of Lewis' works, and a friend's recent read of it for a class prompted me to pick it up and reread it along with her. To my surprise, I found that though I've owned a copy for over a year, I have not reread it in the last six years or so (when I started tracking my reading). As a result, it didn't have the same sort of immediate familiarity of a yearly reread; it was more a gradual recognition as I read a letter and thought, "Oh yeah, I remember that now!" I had a lot of fun revisiting the book: it's at once humorous and hard-hitting, even convicting. The essay at the end, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" was, if not entirely new, one I had forgotten entirely. In it, he talks about the way in which the idea of "democracy" can be twisted in education, and I was really amazed at how prescient some of Lewis' predictions were.

I've been debating whether or not I would recommend it to someone who didn't share Lewis' faith, and ultimately I would say, if the conceit interests you, then go ahead and try it, but I think that like his apologetic works it would really interest and have the greatest impact on those who already agreed with a Christian worldview.

Timeless

by Gail Carriger
New York : Orbit, 2012.

For my reviews of earlier books in the series, check out Soulless, Changeless, Blameless, and Heartless. (Whew!)

Lord and Lady Maccon have been living in Lord Akeldama's third closet for some time now, as the London vampire has become the adoptive parent of their child, Prudence. At only two years old, Prudence shows every indication that she will be as difficult as, well, either of her parents. All is going as normally as could be expected for this vampire-werewolf-preternatural alliance, until Alexia receives a summons to Egypt. It seems that the vampire queen there is very interested in Prudence, a metanatural.

Normally here I would explain what I liked or didn't like about the book, but as this is the fifth book in a series I've been enjoying all along, it's really hard to do that now. If you've liked the series, you'll want to read it for the fun and imagination and wittiness and silliness. If you haven't liked it, there's really nothing I can say about this one to convince you otherwise. Suffice it to say that I found it an excellent distraction from all the other, more serious books that I've had to read lately. These are the sorts of books I could see becoming my comfort reads when I need something to make me laugh.

Dead End in Norvelt

by Jack Gantos
New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 2011.

Young Jack Gantos is growing up in the town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, a town that was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt as a place where poor people could live with dignity and where folks could trade their services instead of depend on cash. Now, in the decade after World War 2, the Norvelt "originals" are older and dying, and poor Jack is grounded because he let off his father's gun and caused a scare. Miss Volker, his older neighbor with arthritic hands, is Jack's "get out of jail free" card when she calls and needs his help writing obituaries.

This year's Newbery Award winner is the first book I've read by Jack Gantos, but now I want to go back and read his other books. His narrative follows a typical summer in that it's more episodic a traditional plot line, though Norvelt has its share of quirky, original characters and more than a few of the events are unbelievable. Jack's parents are great, and their interactions ring true, how they disagree fundamentally about some things, but also love each other as much as they drive each other nuts. I was regularly chuckling or even laughing out loud at some of the events (some of the obits in particular stand out memorably). This story was a lot of fun to read, and I'll certainly be recommending it to kids at the library.

The Wednesday Wars

by Gary Schmidt
narrated by Joel Johnstone
New York : Scholastic Audiobooks, p2007.

Holling Hoodhood is the only Presbyterian in his class, which means that on Wednesday afternoons when half his classmates go to Hebrew school and the other half go to CCD, he's stuck in the classroom with his teacher, Mrs. Baker. At first, she gives him chores to do, but then she starts having him read Shakespeare.

I'm rather ashamed to say I've been putting this book off, despite the acclaim it's received and the recommendations I've received from others on LT. The truth is, I found Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy depressing, and was afraid I'd be in for the same sort of book. What I didn't realize at all was how incredibly funny The Wednesday Wars is. I listened to quite a bit of it on my commute to work, and narrator Joel Johnstone not only has a pitch-perfect reading sounding like a middle school boy, he also brings out the humor in every situation (I will never think of cream puffs in exactly the same way again...).

Though the book is set in 1967-68, and the Vietnam War and politics are mentioned, what is the center of the book is not these historical events, but Holling's growth as an individual. Holling struck me as a typical teenager in his developing empathy, on the one hand seeing how an interaction affected both an adult and his schoolmate and, not too long later, telling his teacher he didn't think she had any problems to speak of. Because of this, even in a first-person narration we get to know several other characters well as Holling comes to understand them better. The only character that seemed rather one-dimensional to me was his father who is, frankly, a jerk. I'm so glad I finally got around to reading this, and will definitely be moving the companion book Okay for Now on my TBR list.

Midnight in Austenland

by Shannon Hale
New York : Bloomsbury USA, 2012.

Charlotte Kinder is not heroine material. She's a divorced mother of two who reads Agatha Christie novels, and after her husband had an affair and left her, her heart's pretty numb. But after she breaks out of her mystery fix to read Jane Austen, she decides to go off to Austenland in which can act like one of Austen's beloved heroines for two weeks while being romanced by a dashing gentlemen - all in Regency-appropriate behavior (and capped with a ball).

Shannon Hale may be better known for her teen fantasy books, but her chick lit is just as much fun. In this book, as in Austenland, she proves how much of an Austen fan she is, even while providing a fun, modern story in its own right. Unbelievable at times? Oh sure, but I didn't really care in the end. I didn't remember much of what happened in the first book in the series, but Midnight in Austenland stands just fine on its own. I especially enjoyed the clear references to Northanger Abbey and laughed out loud at Charlotte's "Inner Thoughts" talking back to her.

Hoot

by Carl Hiaasen
narrated by Chad Lowe
[New York] : Listening Library, c2002.

Roy, the new kid at Coconut Grove, Florida, has unfortunately attracted the notice of the local bully, Dana Matherson. When Dana is strangling him on the school bus, Roy has a good look out the window and sees a boy, running barefoot. Intrigued, he makes it his goal to find out about the running boy. Meanwhile, Curly, the foreman at a Mother Paula's pancake construction site, has been having difficulty with starting construction due to some creative vandalism.

To really tell you the meat of the story, I'm afraid I'd have to give away about the first half of it, so I'm going to leave my summary at that. I will add merely that one of the themes is the environment, and Roy's struggle of whether he should get involved in protesting - and how. His parents tell him that, when his heart and his head are telling him two different things, he needs to do his best to reconcile it and decide what actions to take. Not overtly preachy, though how much you enjoy the book will definitely be affected by your own take on environmental matters.

Spying Girls Don't Do Normal

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
by Ally Carter
New York : Hyperion Paperbacks, 2007 (orig. pub. 2006).

**some spoilers follow**

Cammie goes to the Gallagher Academy, which everyone thinks is a snobby prep school. In reality, it's a spy school. Besides normal classes, Cammie and her friends Bex and Liz learn several different languages, disguise, and how to avoid a tail. Then, she goes out on a school project and meets a cute boy - and her friends decide to make him their extracurricular activity. Is he trying to infiltrate their school, or just a normal guy? Commence background checks, stakeouts, and laughs!

This is the first book of the Gallagher Girls series, which I've been meaning to read for awhile. The plot moves right along, while Cammie throws in some one liners about her school and her life (I am still waiting to learn how to kill a man with a piece of uncooked spaghetti). Other than Cammie, who is narrating, the characters fell a little flat. Liz is a stereotypical nerd. Macey had some potential as the bad girl who's out of the loop in spy school, but there was more of a sudden switch in her behavior rather than any development. Josh seems a little contradictory to me, and I got the idea that Cammie liked the idea of being a normal girl than him specifically. Still, the idea of her having to hide her identity and school from him makes for a unique situation that I think teens can still identify with, as many feel that they are hiding their true selves from others. A story with a lot of potential; I will certainly read the next book in the series.

F in Exams - A in Humor!

F in Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers
by Richard Benson
San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 2011.

Looking for something quick and light before the end-of-semester or other seasonal craziness? This book is sure to put a smile on your face, collecting the "best totally wrong test answers," as the subtitle advertises.

The layout is well thought out. The chapters are organized by subject, such as Chemistry, Math, and English. Each page has two questions and answers; the answers are in different handwriting fonts and different colors. Sometimes the humor was more evident if you actually knew the correct answer, but it's not always necessary. The answers are goofy, logical, or smart-alecky, but I was laughing out loud for the 30 minutes or so it took me to page through this book.

Wyrd Sisters

by Terry Pratchett
New York : HarperTorch, 2001 (orig. pub. 1988).

When the King of Lancre is killed by the Duke, and the King's heir is taken away, the three witches - Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax, and Magrat Garlick - find themselves reluctantly pulled into affairs of the Kingdom. Their cardinal rule, "Never get involved," is going to be severely tested.

If you've read any Discworld books, you know the general idea of what to expect: over-the-top silliness, but a point in that humor that makes you think about something perhaps more than a Serious Novel can. What I've read, I've read entirely out of order - this one is book six in the series at a whole (the earliest book I've read to date), and book two in the mini-series about the witches (I've already read book 6). One thing I've really enjoyed about the witches series are the - sometimes extremely strong - nods to Shakespeare. In this one, it was mostly Macbeth, though there were some definite references to other plays, and at least one sonnet. The character of Hwel and most of what we see him write cracked me up. I really enjoyed this foray into Discworld, and might just try to read some more in order...

Heartless

by Gail Carriger
New York : Orbit, 2011.

As this is the fourth book in a series, there will necessarily be ***spoilers*** for earlier titles in the series. I highly recommend starting with Soulless, and catching up from there. :)

Lady Alexia Maccon nee Tarabotti receives a rather strange, somewhat garbled, message from a ghost near poltergeist stage (ie., not very lucid): the queen is threatened. The last time the Queen of England was nearly assassinated implicated the former pack of her husband, Lord Maccon. Alexia is eight months pregnant, but she won't let a little thing like waddling get in her way, so she dives headlong into an investigation. Meanwhile, her husband and a few co-conspirators have a rather unorthodox proposition regarding the unborn child, in a move to end the vampire assassination attempts on the baby - and, as an unfortunate side-effect, Alexia.

This fourth book was as witty and clever and ridiculous as ever. If you've read the other books - and I do recommend you read them in order, as there is both plot and character development along the way - you know the sort of story to expect at this point. I enjoyed learning some of the back stories of the characters as Alexia delves into the past of her husband and his former and current werewolf packs. My reaction to the book is a bit ambivalent, primarily because knowing what to expect was both its strength and weakness. I knew exactly what I was in for, and I still didn't entirely engage with the story, not being quite in the mood for this brand of silliness when I was reading. I will, of course, still gobble up the sequel as soon as it comes out.

Mrs. Ames

by E.F. Benson
New York: Bloomsbury, 2010 (originally printed in 1912).

In the small English town of Riseborough, Mrs. Ames holds sway over the fashions and practices of the populace. What has her neighbors abuzz this time? She's invited a husband or a wife to a dinner party, separate from their partner. But things go greatly awry when both her husband and her son begin to have an interest in one of the singly-invited women, Mrs. Evans.

This is the sort of gentle read that those who appreciate the characters and interactions of a story like Cranford may enjoy. There's not a lot of plot action outside of the day to day life of middle aged married people, which sounds boring, but really isn't. The delivery of the thoughts of the Althams, the Ames', and more of the characters, amused me and made me laugh aloud at times; their interactions were gossipy and politely insulting and true.

E.F. Benson is perhaps better known for his Mapp and Lucia series. I enjoyed the humor of Mrs. Ames enough to make me want to read his other books as well.