Suck It Up

So I'm at the library and find a new YA book about...vampires. What are the odds I'm even going to pick it up? Very very low...however, there was something I couldn't resist about the yellow smiley face with fangs and a straw:

And the story was the same way, after I got past the currently popular misspelling of a cliche ("butt naked," a phonetic version of "buck naked"), the first few bad jokes, and the brief history of vampires in this fictional universe, in which there aren't many "Loner" vampires and all the "Leaguer" (as in the IV League) vampires follow strict rules, including their own version of the modern-day vampire's diet: "if you can get your groceries from the local blood co-op, why waste your nights trapping and sapping?" Lestat only kills the evil-doer, the Cullens only drink from animals, and now Brian Meehl has invented Morning McCobb, a smaller, younger, and seemingly non-blood-thirsty version of a vampire who drinks "Blood Lite" and calls himself "bloodlust-challenged."

One of the fun parts of the story is that Morning wants to be a superhero. He tries on names: "Super-Vamp? Leaguer-Man? Creature of the Right? and then "Blood Lite-Year." His League assignment is to "come out" as a vampire and show the human world how harmless he can be. The ultimate test of his harmlessness is, as the League leader says, to show humans he can be trusted around their daughters. This is hard, because he falls for the daughter of his publicist. At first, neither of them can trust the other, but finally she tells him that it doesn't have to end "with you trying to drink me like a six-ounce Coke," and love prevails.

The title pretty much describes the book, in this case. There's a joke, an attitude, and before you know it, you've devoured the whole thing like the delicious little piece of book-candy it is. It's just right to ease your mood into the carelessness of summer. What other kinds of things are you doing to try to slow down and switch gears?

Christopher Moore

The peak of Christopher Moore's career was when he wrote Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal and Fluke: Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings. His previous novels, despite their amusing titles (Island of the Sequined Love Nun, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove), just lead up to those two. (But take note: they are prerequisites for full enjoyment of The Stupidist Angel, which is just about worth doing a little bit of background work to enjoy.) I liked A Dirty Job, which was almost as clever as Lamb and Fluke, but I didn't much care for You Suck. That may be because I'm so tired of vampire stories; everyone's trying to top The Vampire Lestat, and it not only can't be done, it's not worth doing.

Our former housemate Miriam, a former Missouri synod Lutheran and preacher's kid, sent us a hardback copy of Lamb when it first came out with this instruction written on the flyleaf: "If you observe Lent that is when I recommend you read this." We read it as soon as we got it, of course, and chortled happily all the way through at the way it's told:

Then he put his hand on my head and I suddenly felt better, stronger.
"Don't try your Son of God mumbo jumbo on me, you're still a wuss."
"If it be so, so be it. So it shall be written."
Well it is now, Josh. It's written now. (It's strange, the word "wuss" is the same in my ancient Aramaic tongue as it is in this language. Like the word waited for me these two thousand years so I could write it down here. Strange.)

Most of the novel is a description of how the Messiah (Joshua, or Josh) and his best friend Levi who was called Biff spent the thirty years between the nativity story and the telling of the parables. And as a bonus, at the end of the novel, you find out what the H. stands for in Jesus H. Christ.

The first half of Fluke seems like a fairly normal mystery story in which the characters try to find out why one of the whales they have been watching has "Bite Me" written on its tail. They start to find out on p. 119, part two of the novel, which begins a story so unlikely that I can't even outline it here for fear of spoiling your pleasure. Suffice it to say that Christopher Moore is no Jack McDevitt--if he outlines a plot that is too incredible to flesh out, he'll do it anyway. The results are hilarious and reveal the secrets of the universe.

That is, if you think the secrets of the universe can be revealed in a moment of revelation like in the movie Independence Day when the President says "there's no Area 51. There's no recovered spaceship." and the defense minister says "Uh...excuse me, Mr. President. That's not entirely accurate."