It was as if vampirism carried with it a crampless case of rattlesnake PMS

It's been awhile since I read some Christopher Moore. OK, well that's not entirely true, since the last Moore book I read was Fool back in August. But that was a re-read. Before that...well, that wasn't that long ago either. I read Coyote Blue back in June. What can I say, I need a regular fix of the guy. So to feed that fix* I read Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story.

I had a couple reasons for picking up this particular book: I hadn't picked up any new Moore in awhile and I've read the sequel already. You Suck was actually the first Moore book I read and I didn't realize it was a sequel until I mentioned reading it in front of another Moore fan who was surprised (and I think a bit annoyed**) that I hadn't read the first book in the trilogy. Moore wrote this back in '95 but I like reading it now, during the Twilight frenzy, to see a new way vampires can be represented. Moore mostly sticks to traditional vampire lore (they can't go in the sunlight, can turn to mist) but the story is told with his expected humor.

The plot itself is fairly straight forward and predictable: a girl is transformed into a vampire and begins to learn the ropes of her new condition. She meets a human boy to help her out since she can't go out during the day (no sparkling!) and the 2 enter into a relationship. The vampire who turned her has been killing people around San Francisco and frames the murders on the couple. Evil must be vanquished, love prevails, etc, etc. The plot isn't the important part, the characters are. And they're wonderful. Jody, the newly turned vampire, is sweet, confused, cunning and vain. C. Thomas Flood, the aspiring author from Indiana as her boy toy is witty,  lovelorn and loyal. The Animals, the group Flood works with stocking groceries at a local market, are a riot. Cavuto and Rivera are the cops assigned to the string of murders who end up trying to figure out how to make sense of the supernatural things around them. (Open a rare book store and take up golfing are a couple options.) And of course there's my favorite character the "Emperor of San Francisco and Protector of Mexico". He's a homeless man who, along with his trusty Crusaders, Lazarus the golden retriever and Bummer the Boston terrier, who is truly concerned with the well-being of "his subjects" and is actually respected among many of the city's citizens.

Moore's humor is absurd, subversive, witty, sarcastic and dark, and if you're anything like me you got more excited with each adjective I listed out there. This isn't my favorite Moore book, it lacks some of the deeper themes that are present in some of his other books (Lamb, A Dirty Job, Fool), but it is a lot of fun. I plan on picking up a new copy of You Suck very soon and the third part of the trilogy Bite Me. This may not be my favorite of his works but I really want to see where the rest of the story goes. I don't remember much of You Suck but knowing there was a sequel meant I already knew how a lot of this book was going to turn out, which hurt some of the thrill in reading the ending. The story was still fantastic but I didn't spend the last chapters on the end of my seat wondering what was going to happen. So if you do read the series you may as well read it in order.   

Title quote from page 104

*Get it? Feed, fix, vampires. I slay me. Oh hey, there's another pun. I'm on a roll
**His annoyance was forgiven once he recommend Moore's Island of the Sequined Love Nun, which I will inevitably re-read and post on.

Moore, Christopher. Bloodsucking Fiends. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1995.

If Room wasn't our home, does that mean we don't have one?

I just finished reading Room by Emma Donoghue and before I start talking about the book I want to thank the book blogging community.  If I didn't have this blog and subsequently follow lots of other book bloggers, I don't think I'd know about this book and I'm certain I wouldn't have picked it up on my own. Actually as it stands I still didn't pick it up on my own (a friend gave it to me) but the point is by the time he gave me a copy I wanted to read it because of everything I'd heard about it from other bloggers. Apparently even without taking part in a challenge I've been able to move out of my normal reading comfort zone. Thanks all.

And with that, onto the book. If you haven't heard about it, Room is the story of Jack, a five year-old boy who's lived his entire life in a single room. The shed is the only reality he's ever know, the only world he's ever experienced as real. Jack's Ma was kidnapped long before Jack was born, and she's done all she can to make sure Jack grows up safe and well-adjusted in this prison. The story is told entirely from Jack's point of view, which in my opinion was both a pro and con to the book. From this narrator you experience a unique point of view as Jack describes Room and Outer Space. He has many times unintentionally funny and poignant and constantly grapples, as best as a 5 year old can, with the question of "What is reality?"

I'm going to try to keep this as spoiler free as I can but I'm not the best judge of a spoiler so proceed at your own caution.
The basic plot is as follows: young girl is kidnapped, held prisoner in a specially constructed garden shed/prison and repeatedly raped. She has a son named Jack after a couple years in the shed and Jack grows up knowing only this single Room and the items in it. After 5 years Ma plans an escape and the two are free. Now I could very easily see this plot as a fairly predictable thriller, written from Ma's point of view and stopping here. But there's a reason Donoghue's book was shortlisted for so many awards and that's because she doesn't take this easy route. Instead the story is told from Jack's point of view and the escape happens right in the middle of the story. I think literally at the 50% mark according to my Kindle. The second half of the story deals with how Jack deals with this new reality that is so different from the world he's known his entire life.

Pete over at What You Read wrote a review of Room and discussed how books have to earn their happy endings for the story to be worth it. While the characters certain went through enough in the first part of the book to "deserve" their happy ending, the reader would have been shafted. The more interesting part to me was when both Jack and his Ma have to learn to live and re-live in this new Outside world. This reintegration is both funny and heartbreaking. I can't say the ending is necessarily "happy" but it's peaceful.

I said Jack as narrator is both a pro and a con. I love having the story told from a child's point of view, however, I don't necessarily love a child's speech patterns.  Even a kid as precocious as Jack. Following a kid's grammar and syntax took some getting used to, at least for me. I wonder if this contributes to the fact that I liked the second half of the book better; by that time I was used to Jack's voice so I let it tell me the story instead of trying to figure out what he was talking about. That being said, using Jack as the narrator doesn't feel like a gimmick. The story Donoghue wrote couldn't have been told from an adult's point of view. It needs the simplicity and wonder that a child brings. The story could have easily been exploitative but Jack as the child doesn't see or fully understand all of the evil in the world or even in his situation.

This is a really wonderful book. I don't know that it's my favorite read of the year but it's certainly one of the better books I've read, and I'm very happy I got the chance to check it out. I absolutely recommend it to, well anyone really.

Title quote from location 2910.

Donoghue, Emma. Room. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. eBook.

You'd be surprised at how many days can go by without one of my friends mentioning aardvarks

After Speak and Sula I needed a funny book. Something simple before pressing onto Emma Donoghue's Room. Luckily enough I acquired an e-copy of The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs. This is only my second re-read of the year. Back when I was in college this book made the rounds with my friends. A friend* bought the book and ended up recommending it to a friend, who then told our other friend they had to read it and etc, etc. While my friends and I have different personal tastes we all share a similar sense of humor and this one worked for most people.

So A.J. decides after working at Entertainment Weekly and Esquire for so long he's filled his head is filled with pop culture trivia instead of real facts and his solution to fix this is to read the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica. This isn't going to give you any greater meaning into intelligence versus knowledge (though people argue the point with him several times) but it gives you the insight in what it would be like if your friend or loved one was reading this tome and decided to share all sorts of random facts at all times. Some of these tidbits stick with you. For example "Abalones are a type of snail with five assholes" (location 229). For whatever reason (probably because it's immature) I always remember this one. I've eaten abalone a couple times and while I don't always say this fact aloud, I think it every time.

This could very easily be a boring book. Honestly it sounds like a boring topic. Read about a guy who read the Encyclopedia Britannica. Not much excitement there. But he tells the story with humor, sometimes sharing the information he's learned about certain topics, sometimes trying to get onto TV game shows (Jeopardy, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?) and a lot of the time it's how his constant fact sharing annoys his friends and family. There is a bit of a sub-plot about A.J. and his wife trying to get pregnant but honestly, I enjoyed those detours less than the main story.

It's a fun story, it's light, you can finish it quickly and you might learn a fact or two. And so you can experience the humor, here are a couple quotes I highlighted (I love my Kindle)

Telling his father his plan:

"I'm going to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica"
A pause. "I hear that the Ps are excellent."

I feel like this is my attention span:

In some ways, it's the perfect book for someone like me...who has the attention span of a gnat on methamphetamines

Rap making it's way into the EB

Public Enemy and Wu-Tang Clan "were among the popular purveyors of rap during the 1980s and 1990s." Purveyors of rap?  Now that's got to be the whitest phrase I've ever heard."

A good how-to-be-a-know-it-all lesson

One secret to being a successful know-it-all is extreme confidence.

*This is the same friend that lent me Kitchen Confidential, The City and The City and numerous other books.

Title quote from location 223

Jacobs, A. J. The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. Simon & Schuester. 2004 eBook.

Page to Screen: Top Literary Adaptations

I'm now finished with my move and down in Long Island. Well, I'm finished with the actual moving part. Packing is still a work in progress. I used to live at the top of a 5th floor walk-up in Boston and amazingly my legs have been unhappy with me since I made them run up and down those stairs to move boxes. Go figure. The fact that I've been hobbling around yesterday and today means packing is going fairly slowly, but I got my "home office" set up so that's something. Anyway...

Another Tuesday, another Top Ten hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic: Top Ten Book to Movie Adaptations. I'll keep this lists to just movies I've seen AND books I've read. There are some great movies I've seen but never read the book (The Godfather), some books I've read but haven't seen the movie (Beloved) and some where I may have read the book and seen the movie but the movie was not anything to write home about (Pet Semetary)

1. The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein - I did not go into the first of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, excited for the movie. We were looking for something for the whole family to see and my brother picked the movie. I knew of the book but I'd never read it. And much to my surprise, I loved the movie. I went out and read the book and was very meh on it. So I decided to wait before I continued reading the trilogy until I saw the movie. I didn't want to ruin anything for myself. While I loved the movies (even going to the midnight showing of Return of the King) I couldn't make it through the books. I finished Two Towers and started RotK but couldn't make it through.

2. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - Another movie that I love. It's dark, it's violent, it's satirical and it stars Christian Bale. Again I figured "well I like the movie so much, I should read the book." While I don't agree with censorship, having read it I understand why Australia and NZ sell the book wrapped in plastic. The movie took the main purpose of the book, emphasised the ridiculousness and de-emphasised the cannibalism. The business card scene is my favorite part of the movie.

3. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris - This is a wonderful movie and deserves the accolades it has collected. The book is good and certainly entertaining, but this is another case where the movie surpasses the book, specifically Hopkins' performance as Hannibal Lecter.


4. A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare - The 1999 movie version with Kevin Kline, Christian Bale (oh hay, look who showed up on the list again) Anna Friel, Stanley Tucci and I could go on and on naming people in it. It's a light-hearted movie and while there are no Oscar-worthy performances, everyone seems comfortable with the language so you can focus on how much fun everyone is having.

5. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby - Sometimes I like both the book and the movie and High Fidelity is one of those times. Relationships and musical snobbery make for a great story with some wonderful characters. There are some changes between the 2 media (the movie takes place in Chicago while the book is in London, a couple characters are dropped from the movie) but the spirit and humor are consistent.

6. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl - I'm talking about the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie. I loved Roald Dahl's books as a kid. This movie used to terrify me, and I think with good reason. I remember thinking Violet Beauregard when she becomes the blueberry being especially scary. It has a quirky, slightly off center feel the whole time and, once I got over my fears, I found a very fun movie.

7. The Princess Bride by William Goldman - This has been a favorite movie of mine for a long time and when I found out it was based on a book I had to read it. Unlike my literary failures with 1 and 2 on this list, the book is just as fun as the movie. It has a slightly different flavor from the movie, with an extra subplot involving the narrator's dad only reading him "the good parts" of an old European novel satirizing excesses of the royalty. And the relationship between Buttercup and Wesley, while still based on love, is less idealized and involves much more bickering. Writing about this makes me want to go watch the movie now.

8. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton - Another case where a fun movie came out of an entertaining book. It's certainly not Shakespeare but it was a fun summer movie, especially since I love dinosaurs when I was little. So it's a bit cheesy and predictable. Who cares? The lawyer got eaten off the toilet by a T Rex.

9. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - I haven't seen the newest version that Tim Burton did so I'm referring to the 1951 Disney version. This has been my favorite of the Disney movies since I was little. Like some of the other movies I have on this list, it's an odd story with a lot of fun and beautiful visuals. And the Cheshire Cat is one of my favorite characters. I still think of crescent moons as "Cheshire Cat" moons.


10. The Green Mile by Stephen King - I'm a fan of King's horror stories but is always nice to see something different because he can do non-horror well. The Shawshank Redemption is a good example but since I haven't read the novella, I'll focus on The Green Mile. The movie and the book are both very similar and they both tell a touching story of forgiveness and redemption.

Hey, look at that! I made it to 10. I think this is only the second time I've managed that. Scary stories was my other success, if you're curious. Scary stories and movie adaptations, that's apparently where my interests lay.

Playing with Word Clouds/Colorful Pictures Are Pretty

I sometimes use Wordle at work to create word clouds for reports. People are amazingly impressed with word clouds and while they don't provide too much qualitative analysis, they are pretty to look at and apparently that's enough. I decided to play around with it and see what a word cloud of my blog's homepage looks like. Here's what I got. I kind of like these so there's a possibility you'll see them again.

If you'd like to see this cloud up close, just click on this link. It's interesting to see the words that come up often. Gives me an idea of what words I'm using too much. Must expand vocabulary.

I'm interested to see what other people's word clouds look like. Anyone else find words they're using far too often?

Boston Valentine

I want to take a quick break from book posts to say something about Boston. I've lived in Boston for just over 8 years and in that time I've complained about it.  A lot.  The T is awful, people drive like maniacs, the sports fans are crazy intense and have no discernible sense of humor when it comes to their teams,  it's expensive, and on and on.  But I didn't live here for 8 years because I was trapped here and now that I'm leaving I wanted to take the opportunity to list out the places in particular that I will miss in this city.

Coolidge Corner.  I lived in an apartment in Coolidge for 2 years, which is by far the longest I stayed in one place during my time in Boston (and Boston areas).  I would have stayed here longer if I could have.  I went from a 1000sq ft, brand new apartment with all the latest amenities into a 500sq ft, old apartment with nothing and I couldn't have been happier because it was in Coolidge. It has shops, restaurants, an old theater, a great bookstore, strange characters and wonderful events.  I never grew tired of it.  If the option comes up to move back to Boston, I want to be back here or not come back at all.

While I'm on the subject of Coolidge Corner I want to mention my favorite bookstore, The Brookline Booksmith. My pie in the sky, literary dream is to own a bookstore and this is the place I would want to run.  The place is certainly not large but they have a nice selection of new books (although they never carried any Fforde...) and the basement was all used ones.  They also held events, book signings, book clubs and the staff had great recommendations.  A little corner of the store was devoted to a random collection of things from the book related (journals, reading lights) to the random (Moses action figures).  It was my go-to gift buying store.  And they would do promotions with the theater across the street if their basement couldn't hold everyone.

The Coolidge Corner Theater is an old art deco style independent movie theater.  Because they were independent they didn't get the new movies right when they came out but they made up for this by showing lots of classic movies and hold events.  I mentioned in an earlier post that the theater showed Night of the Living Dead and then had a Zombie expert come to speak.  I missed that (sad) but I was there for: a screening of Indian Jones and the Ark of the Covenant: The Adaptation which was a shot for shot remake made by some kids between the ages of 12 - 18 (it took them awhile to film...) right after the movie came out, a midnight showing of Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog complete with people acting out both the movie and the musical commentary and the 1967 production of The Taming of the Shrew with members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company acting out parts of the Complete Works (abridged) before the show.  I also so normal movies there as well: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Adventureland, (500) Days of Summer. 

The Coolidge Corner Theater is my favorite theater in Boston but there are a couple more I want to point out: the Somerville Theater in Davis Sq serves beer and wine as well as playing fun movies (I saw Bruno there) and hosting concerts (I saw City and Colour and Lissie there).  The AMC in Harvard Sq is a normal movie theater for the most part but ever Saturday and all Halloween weekend they do midnight showings of Rocky Horror, complete with the Full Body Cast doing a pre-show and acting out the movie. 

I mentioned the Somerville Theater is a good place to see live acts but there are some other venues I went to over and over again.  Formally Avalon, House of Blues is my most often visited venue, because it's where a lot of the acts go.  I've seen Jimmy Eat World and the Dropkick Murphys a few times here as well as some other acts like Streetlight Manifesto and Ben Folds.  Paradise is walking distance from my apartment in Coolidge (another reason I loved it there) and was a much smaller venue which means it didn't matter where you stood, you had a good view.  I've seen Jakob Dylan, Rx Bandits, the Bouncing Souls and others there. The Orpheum has seats, which usually makes me sad (I like to be able to jump around during concerts) but the place is pretty small so you have a great view and such fun acts go here. I saw Jimmy Eat World (I see them a lot) and Eddie Izzard here.