50 Book Blog: Sex! Satan! Taco Party!

Okay, quick and dirty. I've been sitting on this post for a while, and I just keep adding books to it. So I'm going to blow through each review as fast as possible and still try to get across my prevailing sentiment for each title. Ready? Set? Go!



Sweetheart, a murder/crime/mystery/thriller by Chelsea Cain
I don't read much in the way of thriller/mystery novels, and this proved a good foray into the genre. The closest thing to a beach read I've had all year, Sweetheart is like an episode of CSI, but with some actual personality.

Perfume, a novel of awesomeness by Peter Suskind
This book quickly made its way into The Top 5 within the first few pages.  Set in the late 18th century, the language is playfully dense, as if taking the piss with Dickens -- Suskind obviously had a ton of fun crafting the entire thing, and I followed suit in my reading. Imagine if Chuck Palahniuk had as solid of a grasp on language and character as he does on storytelling -- that's Perfume.

I'm With Stupid, a likely candidate for Major Motion Picture status, by Elaine Szewczyk
Full disclosure: I can't be fully objective about this book, because Elaine is a very good friend of mine. Also, as much of a send-up of the genre it is, Stupid's still chick-lit, a brand of fiction I never read. That said, what a fun read. Cute and identifiable characters, a zero-to-sixty storyline, and rib-jabbing jokes left and right from a girl who I know first-hand to be a real comedienne.

I, Lucifer, a novel by Declan Gunn...I mean Glen Duncan
One of the funniest and most irreverant and...erm...pondersome (?) novels I've ever read. Narrated by Satan himself, taking human form in 21st Century London, this novel is incredibly and inimitibly clever -- it is the literary embodiment of the adjective "devilishly." Get ready for some otherwordly indulgence. NOTE: I just IMDB'd the title to discover that 007 himself, Daniel Craig, is slated to play Satan in the film adaptation. Though I would have gone for Jude Law, I certainly cannot argue with this choice.

Body & Soul, a novel by Frank Conroy
A true portrait of an artist as a young man, Conroy's novel is a gorgeous depiction of the lift of a born-with-It classical pianist in mid-20th-century New York City. The author describes music in ways that truly spoke to me as an enthusiast, and gives equally powerful and loving treatment to Manhattan, as well as each of his characters. Though it took me for-freaking-ever to read (it's only about 500 pages, but it feels epic in scope), I truly loved this book the entire way through.

My Custom Van, essays by Michael Ian Black
Alright, I don't know if you'd think he's funny, but while reading this book I fell victim to side-clutching laughs for the first time in...hell, I don't know how long. Former writer of MTV's "The State," as well as "Viva Variety" and "Stella," and a frequent talking head on VH1's "I Love the ___" series, Michael Ian Black has a sick, sick, hilariously sick sense of humor that explodes off the page and buries under a thick cloud of irreverence his essayist contemporaries like David Sedaris. The story "Taco Party," by the way, almost knocked me off my chair.

Lolita, novel written by Vladimir Nobokov (read by Jeremy Irons)
My first audio book experience, this was probably not the right place to start. I had a tough time following the story through the language, and found myself often distracted by Mr. Irons' beautiful (and sometimes aptly creepy) reading of Nobokov's masterpiece. That said (I seem to be saying a lot of "that" in this post), Lolita remains one of the most gorgeously told stories I've ever encountered, and as distracting as Mr. Irons often was, the distraction never outweighed the Oscar-worthy oratory performance demonstrated in this reading. It's so good, you sometimes forget you're reading a story about statuatory rape.

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BTW: This brings me up to 22 books for 2008. Pathetically, I'm on target to hit 50% of my 50-book goal this year. But I DID read a lot of, erm...uh...text on the web? Magazines? Twitter posts? Lyrics on my iTouch? Ah, screw it. I'll just do better next year, I swear.