Tag Archives: humor

Pancakes in Paris, by Craig Carlson****

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pancakesinparisThe American dream has become harder for ordinary people to attain, but Carlson is living proof that it can happen; yet some of us may need to go somewhere else to find it. In his upbeat, congenial memoir, “the pancake guy” chronicles his journey, from the kid of a wretchedly dysfunctional home—and I don’t use the term lightly—to the owner of Breakfast in America, his own restaurant franchise in France. This title was a bright spot in my reading lineup last month, and it can be a bright spot in yours too. Thank you to Sourcebooks and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received free in exchange for an honest review.

Is this a thing that any kid in America could have done? Not so much. Carlson has a rare blend of  intelligence, organization, and social skills; above and beyond all else, he possesses unstoppable determination, clear focus, and a work ethic that never flags for one tiny minute until he discovers he is close to working himself to death. Those lacking talent and determination may never reach the end of the rainbow as this author has done; that much is clear. But oh, what fun to share the ride with him!

Given his family’s expectations for him, or lack thereof, it’s amazing he finished high school, and his acquisition of a college education is more remarkable still. But it is his junior year at a state college in Connecticut that plants the seed that will sprout and grow into a way of life; he is invited to spend his school year in Paris. Once he’s there, the tumblers click, and he knows that he has found his people.

As Carlson’s story unspools, he debunks stereotypes believed by many Americans, and a few of them are ones I believed too until I read this memoir. Carlson delivers setting in a way much more immediate than any number of Google searches can provide, but it’s his insights regarding French culture, law, and society that make his memoir so captivating. The prose is lean and occasionally hilarious. He plucks choice, juicy vignettes from his journey all along the way, and this makes us feel as if we are riding quietly on his shoulder taking it all in as he goes.

If you’ve never been to France and don’t intend to, you can still enjoy this book. If you don’t like pancakes or any aspect of the traditional American breakfast, it doesn’t matter. Carlson is enormously entertaining, and so his story stands on its own merits. I am furthermore delighted to see that the only recipe that is inserted into his narrative is actually a joke. A small collection of actual recipes is inserted at the end, and although I never, ever, ever do this, I intend to try one of them out tonight! But even if you skip the recipe section entirely, you should read this memoir. It’s too much fun to miss. The best news of all is that it’s available for purchase right now.

Get it, and read it!

A Killer’s Guide to Good Works, by Shelley Costa*****

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akillersguidetogoodShelley Costa is a writer to remember. Her dazzlingly dark humor and her ability to spin a tight original story that builds irresistibly caught my eye with her first Val Cameron mystery, Practical Sins for Cold Climates. I began checking in with Henery Press regularly when I logged onto Net Galley, and my stalking paid off big time. Thanks go to Henery and also to Net Galley, from whom I received a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

In this second Val Cameron mystery, our protagonist is back in the big city where she belongs. She is looking forward to lunch with her best friend Adrian, who promises to show her something rare and wonderful, but when she reaches Adrian’s office, her friend has been murdered and the artifact is gone. Val’s loss is our gain, as Costa unfurls another outstanding mystery. This title is available to the public September 20, 2016.

Adrian had been looking forward to having her brother visit, and she had wanted Val to meet him. The brother, a monk on vacation from his usual life in an abbey, is the other primary character in this story. Val had already let Adrian know that she didn’t care for religion, for churches, for clergy…and she was absolutely not, positively not going to meet Adrian’s brother. No, no, and no.

That’s not how it works out.

Costa is a smart writer and she never wastes a word. The humor here is undoubtedly dark for the cozy mystery set, and so the reviews that are written by the cozy folk don’t reflect her writing ability. Those that want a house pet or caterer to solve a mystery will be disappointed every time they read Costa.  To my way of thinking, that’s more a matter of the wrong target audience than a reflection on Costa, who is razor sharp and wickedly hilarious.

Highly recommended.

The Grand Tour, by Adam O’Fallon Price*****

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thegrandtourDoctors tell us that laughter improves our health. Now and then, I go in search of laughter in my favorite medium, between the covers of a good book. Thank you to Net Galley and Doubleday Publishers for this DRC. Not only is The Grand Tour achingly funny, it’s also strong fiction. It is available to the public August 9, 2016, and you ought to read it.

Our story centers around two protagonists in equal measure. Richard Lazar is an author who has written one lukewarm release after another, drunken, cynical, and utterly thoughtless of anyone other than himself. He’s lost his family and his health can’t be far behind, a “smoking Yugo of a body” constantly drenched in alcoholic beverages. Suddenly and unexpectedly, his most recent novel has become a blockbuster. A tender, idealistic young man, a fan club of one named Vance, our second protagonist, quits his job at the Pizza Boy, desperate to get away from home and spend time with the writer he idolizes. He becomes Richard’s roadie, dragging him out of one bar after another, conveying him across the western USA to speaking engagements and book-signings.

His Portland book signing takes him to a fictitious bookstore, a thinly disguised version of Powell’s City of Books, one of my favorite places. Richard manages to disgrace himself there, and it won’t be the last time he does so.

The journey through Las Vegas is the most resonant and brilliantly described I have yet seen in literature; each your heart out, Hunter Thompson.

Often literature billed as dark humor turns out to be merely dark, and I was delighted to discover otherwise here. I laughed out loud in a number of places. At the same time, the author does a tidy job of developing both main characters in much greater depth than I had anticipated. Hoping for a romp, albeit a grim one, I wound up holding my sides at the same time I absorbed a fine novel. It is excellent surprises such as this one that keep me reading galleys by new writers. This one is smart and wickedly clever. Of particular satisfaction was the denouement involving Vance’s character.

All told, it’s a savagely funny read. It comes out today, and you should get it and read it.

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, by Jenny Lawson****

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furiouslyhappyJenny Lawson is well known as The Blogess (the blogger that came up with Beyonce, the metal chicken). She won awards for her previous memoir, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.  The only DRC I saw for this title was for readers in UK and Australia, so I waited till I could scoop it cheaply and bought it digitally. Those that read my reviews often know I almost never do this. For the $3 it cost on an Amazon Prime daily deal, it was worth it to me.

Lawson is one of a handful of authors that talks candidly and often very humorously about her own struggle with mental illness and autoimmune disorders. Her capacity to create imaginary scenarios totally out of left field is her greatest strength, second only to the ability—sometimes—to find a way to laugh at the nest of spiders that occasionally takes over her brain. And sometimes she is painfully candid. Try this one on:

 

“Sometimes being crazy is a demon. And sometimes the demon is me…And some of us just carry around our tiny demon as he wreaks havoc in our mind, tearing open old dusty trunks of bad memories and leaving the remnants spread everywhere. Wearing the skins of people we’ve hurt. Wearing the skins of people we’ve loved. And sometimes, when it’s worst, wearing our own skins.”

 

She rants about the well intentioned but ignorant advice she’s received from clueless amateurs. At various times she’s been told to shake it off, to stop eating gluten, and to let Jesus into her heart in order to experience a full and immediate cure.

Sure.

Her musings about flying, which her fame requires her to do a great deal of, though she is afraid both of flying and of leaving home, are brilliant. This reviewer crowed out loud from glee at Lawson’s suggestion that flight attendants be permitted “to whack one person per flight with a piñata stick for being the stupidest damn person on the plane.”

My favorite section is the one in which she details the horrors of remodeling in a way that makes me howl. And goodness knows we all need to do that.

Lawson inserts women’s reproductive anatomy into almost any sort of discussion, and whereas I applaud the feminist spirit that demands the word “vagina” no longer be treated like a dirty word, I confess it was a bit much for me. But then, I am probably older than you are; this may be a generational thing. And there may also be plenty of women from the Boomer generation that think her use of the word is great.

Now and then there’s an odd moment in which I stop reading and stare at the text. What? Did she proof read this, and did her editors? There are occasional remarks that strike me as racially insensitive. She spins a thread about the wild things in the out of doors, and cautions us that since bears don’t play, we should shoot one first and ask questions later. Assuming said bear is in one’s back yard or trying to fit through a window of one’s home, I can see the point, but it came out of left field and made me wonder. Really? Just shoot bears? And the thread further spins itself into a bison-and-Native-Americans discussion in which she assures us that it’s not great to have bison in one’s yard, but it would be awesome to keep a lot of Native Americans out there. My e-reader says, “?!?”

But then she drops and is off onto another stream-of-consciousness spiel before I can fully digest what’s been said. She does it a couple of other times also. And it occurs to me that she has perhaps the ultimate excuse, having said up front that she has known for most of her life that she is “not right” in the head, but I still wonder that her editors didn’t look at that and say, “Umm…Jenny? This part right here…?” There are no overt racial slams or this review would have a lot of empty stars, but there are small moments where I wonder if she understands how others may read what she’s said.

Many of her entries if not all of them are drawn from her blog, and it’s possible that if you’ve read her blog faithfully, you won’t want to pay for this book. As for me, I found it worth the three bucks to be able to get everything at once in a well organized format—known as a book—that I could read comfortably. I confess I would not have paid full jacket price for it now that I get most books free and also have less money to spend on them than when I was working, but for others it may well be worth it.

On the whole, this is a courageous and often eloquent, fall-down-funny memoir, and with the small reservations mentioned above, I recommend it to you.

Salvation Lake, by G.M. Ford*****

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salvationlakeFord is the rightful heir to the late great Donald Westlake, a writer of monstrously amusing mysteries full of quirky sidekicks and kick-ass, zesty dialogue. There’s nobody like him in Seattle or anywhere else. I gobbled up the DRC when it became available via Net Galley and publishers Thomas and Mercer,  so I read this free in exchange for an honest review. But I’ll tell you a secret: if I’d had to, I’d have paid for this one had it been necessary. And so should you. It’s for sale today, and you can get it digitally at a bargain rate.

But back to our story.  We open at a bar called the Eastlake Zoo. The band of misfits to which detective Leo Waterman is tied through bonds of family history and quixotic affection are rocking the house in “well-lubricated amiability”. In fact, there’s a story being told right as we begin, and if it doesn’t hook you, check your pulse, because you’re probably dead. Here:

“Red Lopez was a spitter. When Red told a story, it was best to get yourself alee of

something waterproof, lest you end up looking like you’d been run through the

Elephant Car Wash.

‘So we was comin’ down Yesler,’ Red gushed. “Me and George and Ralphie.’

Everyone had found cover, except the guy they called Frenchie, who was so tanked

he  probably  thought it was raining inside the Eastlake Zoo…”

 

Right?

As it happens, Waterman, who’s inherited his old man’s ill-gotten wealth, has been lying low and enjoying the good life, but now his late father’s hideously distinctive overcoat has been found on a corpse, and  Timothy Eagen of the Seattle Police Department want to talk to Leo. Now.  There’s bad blood between them:

“…he hated my big ass the way Ahab hated that whale…Eagen was a skinny little turd with a salt-and-pepper comb-over pasted across his pate like a sleeping hamster.”

Since SPD has been under the eye of the Feds lately, Eagen can’t give full rein to his attack-Chihuahua impulses. SPD needs to provide “the kind [of law enforcement] that doesn’t look like Ferguson, Missouri or Staten Island, New York.” So Waterman doesn’t get shaken down or tossed into a cell, but his curiosity is piqued, and since he has no paying job and time on his hands, he finds himself checking into a few things. One thing leads to another.

What relationship does the victim, known as the Preacher, have to Mount Zion Industries, whose pamphlet is found among his effects? Before we know it, Leo is off and running, checking out Salvation Lake, located at the end of Redemption Road. Events tumble one upon the next, and I found that instead of reading in my bed that evening, as is my usual bedtime custom, I was reading on it, bolt upright and clicking the kindle to go a little faster please.

Waterman may have come into money midway through life, but his perspective is a working class perspective. His take on the city’s thousands of homeless denizens and the relationship that cops have to those in need strike a sure clear note that must surely resonate with anyone that’s been paying any attention at all.

Meanwhile, Salvation Lake is written with warp speed pacing, sharp insight, authority, and the kind of wit that can only come from a writer that has tremendous heart.

Don’t miss it. Get it now.

Radio Girls, by Sarah-Jane Stratford*****

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radiogirlsFearless women change history.

Radio Girls is a fictionalized account of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the remarkable women that shaped it. As we near the centennial of women’s right to vote in the USA and the UK, Stratford’s riveting historical fiction could not be better timed. I received my copy free and in advance thanks to Net Galley and Berkley Press in exchange for this honest review. I am overjoyed to be able to recommend this new release unequivocally. You have to read it.

Maisie Musgrave is born in Canada and raised in New York City. Tossed out of the nest without a parachute by unloving family, she makes her way to Britain, the place her heritage began. She wanders into the BBC half-starved and looking for an honest way to pay for her room and board, hoping in the meanwhile to meet a man she can marry for financial security.

At the BBC she meets supervisor Hilda Matheson, who fears nothing:  “Give that woman an inch and she takes the entire British Isles,” a colleague remarks.

Under the firm and commanding wing of Matheson, Maisie’s confidence and talent grow daily. It’s a very good thing, because over the course of time, more will be demanded of her than secretarial skills and errand-running.  My busy fingers marked one clever, articulate passage after another to share with you, but to enjoy Stratford’s fresh, humorous word-smithery, you really need the book itself.

Occasional historical figures drop in—Lady Astor, who was a moving force in the development of the BBC and a champion of women; Virginia Woolf, early feminist writer and crusader. Yet Stratford metes out these references in small enough batches that it’s clear she isn’t relying on them to hold her story together; rather, they are the cherry on the sundae.

Setting of time and place, pacing, and a million twists and turns in plot make this a good read, but it’s the character development that makes it a great one. I found myself wanting to talk to Maisie and cheering her on when she broke through to higher ground personally and professionally. I feared for her when she veered into dangerous waters and nearly wept with relief each time she was able to extricate herself and move forward. There isn’t a slow moment or an inconsistent one, and the protagonist is just the character women need to see right now as we move forward too.

How much of this is based on truth and how much made up for the sake of a great story? Read the author’s notes; she spills it all.

All told, Sarah-Jane Stratford’s historical feminist tale is perfect for today’s modern feminists—and those that love us.

This book is available to the public Tuesday, June 14. Change the screen and order a copy for yourself now. You won’t want to miss it!

 

The Fat Artist and Other Stories, by Benjamin Hale*****

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Happy release day! Today this title and another winner, Everyone Brave is Forgiven,  hit the shelves. I don’t reblog all titles upon release; only the ones I really like. Don’t let the cover scare you away, because once I had gotten into the title story, I understood why this was exactly the right cover art. Happy reading!

seattlebookmama's avatarSeattle Book Mama

thefatartistI like short stories. My Goodreads library tells me I have munched my way through 89 collections and anthologies; yet I can tell you that there is nothing even remotely similar to what Hale offers here. Thanks go to Simon and Schuster and Net Galley for permitting me to view the DRC for the purpose of an honest review. You should get a copy May 17, 2016 when it is released, so that when it is immediately banned by various school boards you will know what they’re screaming about.

The ribbon that binds these brilliant, bizarre tales is that each of them features a social outlier as a protagonist. We start with the airline flight from hell in “Don’t Worry Baby”; you have doubtless flown at least once on a flight with a small child whose mother you long to smack upside the head for her dreadful parenting skills, but…

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Britt-Marie Was Here, by Fredrik Backman*****

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BrittmariewashereOh hey, today is Seattle Book Mama’s second birthday! Break open a bottle of sparkling water and toast my humble blog. I’ve done a lot of reading, and so much more is to come.

Britt-Marie is starting a new life after 40 years of marriage, and while she is driving with no destination in particular other than not-home, her car breaks down in a little burg called—wait for it—Borg. While  it’s being repaired, she becomes enmeshed in the life of this small, down-at-the-heels, economically depressed town. It sounds like a lot of stories, but oh, it isn’t. And I was really lucky to score this, a new one favorite, free of charge from Net Galley and Atria Books, in exchange for a fair review.

The beginning didn’t grab me. I incorrectly suspected that there was only one central point to the narrative and we were being hit over the head with it far more than was necessary. But I was fooled, because Backman is a sneaky-smart writer with a wicked sense of humor and a surprisingly philosophical bent. I was amazed at the depths this seemingly simple tale plumbed.

I don’t want to give you too much, and I could easily do it, having once again been carried away with my notes, which number over 300 in my kindle. I kept finding moments that were hilarious, or fascinating, or that just made me think. But here are some broad contours to start: Britt-Marie has lived at home all her life, first with her mother and later with husband Kent, who moved into her flat when they married, and so she has not even changed residence over the course of her life. When she was young she took classes and worked up a resume, but each time she got close to finding employment, Kent persuaded her that she was needed more at home, and so she has never had a job. Not once.

So after decades of marriage she decided not to notice the perfume on his shirt collar when she did the laundry, even though she herself does not wear scent of any kind. But when the woman phoned her home to tell her that her husband had had a heart attack, it became too obvious, too humiliating, and once she knew he was going to recover she tossed some things in a bag and got herself gone.

Now she wants a job, because she is afraid that otherwise she will die alone and no one will miss her. When you don’t show up for work, people notice, and she doesn’t want to pass from the Earth unnoticed and unmourned.

In the beginning some of the most hilarious passages involve socially clumsy, rude, or outrageous things that Britt-Marie does or says without intending harm. She’s clueless, but the further into the story we delve, the more we see more. We see that she is angry, too; she’s afraid of her own anger.

Although she has been taught through lifelong experience that her own needs should come last and that others should occupy the limelight, the residents of Borg, many of whom have plenty of quirks of their own, teach her that she has more value than she had previously realized.

They like her.

As the story progresses, all sorts of unforeseen twists and turns present themselves, and our formerly obnoxious protagonist turns out to have a tremendous amount of heart. I was watching to see whether the plot would become cloying or formulaic, but it never happened. And although the ending seemed a tiny bit contrived, at the same time I liked what it represented.

To learn more, you have to get the book and read it. And here there is great news: this book is available to the public, just released May 3, 2016. Highly recommended to all readers that are female or have women in their lives that mean anything at all to them. Seriously.

The Kaminsky Cure, by Christopher New***

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thekaminskycureThe Kaminsky Cure is a satire of Nazi Germany previously published and now offered anew in digital format. Thanks go to Open Road Integrated Media and Net Galley for the invitation to read and review, and for the DRC, which I received free of charge. This title is available to purchase now.

Who would have thought it possible to satirize such a terrible time and have it come out in anything other than terrible taste? But New carries it off, using a pre-school aged child in a mixed family—with one Jewish parent and one Anglo parent—as his narrator. Several times the precocious tot points out aspects of his own narrative that are actually impossible, as for example when the child tells us exactly what is contained in something written and then blandly points out that he cannot read yet. It just makes it funnier.

The appealing thing about this novel is that it brings up the reality which should be obvious to any thinking person that has paid any attention to this particular time and place: most Germans as well as Austrians were entirely in favor of Hitler’s takeover, and although there were Jewish families, many of them in fact, that wanted out of Nazi-occupied Europe as quickly as they could go, there were others that had never embraced their culture and had converted to Christianity in some cases generations earlier; and such is the case with our protagonist’s family, which wants only to pass itself off as Aryan so that it can join in the party. Young Martin, the protagonist’s older brother, longs to become a member of the fearsome SS, Hitler’s storm-troopers. Ah, the uniforms! The ferocity! The authority!

Our toddler-narrator, meanwhile, observes his own family with platonic remove, contemplating which members have violated one edict or another and should therefore be turned in to the authorities. After all, that’s one of the things he has learned in school. Children are the future, and it’s up to them to weed out those older folk that fail to comply with important social changes.

It’s what Hitler would want him to do.

There’s one twist and then another, but overall I found that the story’s momentum lost steam as it progressed, because there was really just one joke here, and it could only be played so many ways before it became repetitious. Nevertheless, it’s wholly original, and when faced with an event as horrific as the Holocaust, one either has to laugh or cry.

And amazingly, New has created a way to help us laugh, at least for a little while.

Waterloo, Waterloo, by Teresa Waugh*****

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waterloo waterlooI would have reviewed this title sooner, but I was laughing too hard! Thank you, Endeavor Press, for the complimentary DRC, which I received directly from the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Waugh’s clever, sly satire still has me snickering. Those with a rudimentary knowledge of European history should not let this one slide by unread. Laughter is good for you, and as long as you know the broad contours regarding Napoleon’s life, loves, and battles, I defy you to read this novel without chortling.

To start with, we have Jack and Peggy on a cruise together off the coast of Greece and through the Corinth Canal; the year is 1974. Jack is retired from the British Navy, and has saved for a long time in order to be able to visit great historic sites. His recent marriage to the glamorous Peggy, a divorcee considerably younger than himself, is the icing on the cake. He’s waited a very long time to see the sites of great historical events; later, he will recreate those of Napoleon with thousands of toy soldiers stored in the garage at home.

History bores Peggy, but she loves shopping whenever the ship docks. Spending money is the thing she loves best…not unlike the Empress Josephine, wife of the French legend Napoleon. In fact, Jack and Peggy have even named their only child Josephine.

I’ve read various other reviews that complain about the dysfunctional relationships within the protagonist’s family, and the shallow character development. I want to personally find each and every one of those clueless reviewers and—metaphorically only, of course—smack them upside the head. It’s not supposed to be about character development, get it? Read the title! Although the story itself is a sharp, satirical romp, you need some background knowledge or it will sail right over your head. You won’t understand the allegory without a frame of reference! If you know nothing about Napoleon, you won’t understand the humor.

None of it.

Once I latched onto what the author was doing, I was eager to see how far he would carry it, and to what extent Jack’s life would mirror that of Napoleon. At the end, as soon as I stopped sniggering, I could only shake my head in admiration. The basic contours are there, but one doesn’t have to be a scholar specializing in French history to enjoy the book; you just need the basics regarding Napoleon’s reign and fall.

Smart, smart satire, well worth your time and money…if you have a working knowledge of European history.