Blurb for the back cover:
“Downright funny and a blast to read”

Laurie Notaro strikes again in her sixth memoir/essay book, The Idiot Girl and The Flaming Tantrum of Death. This time around she explores the horrors of cruise ships, what to do in case a high-risk sex offender moves in two doors down, and laser hair removal. She is funny but there are a couple stories that are more on the sad, serious side such as when her dog dies or when she leaves from Phoenix and heads up to Oregon. These provide a nice balance to the book because without them it would start to feel too much like a humor book. Sure, it’s funny. But the balance between the stories gives the overall book depth and emotion.

Having been a fan since I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies), her books have always been ones that I look forward to being released months before they come out. Notaro’s books are not ones that I would recommend reading in public unless you like people giving you weird looks. A roommate once told me to stop giggling like a girl while I was reading one of her books. On that note, even though I love her books, then tend to attract a female audience. Male readers shouldn’t be put off by her book. Her books are still downright funny and a blast to read.

Be sure to check out her website and other books.

Blurb for the back cover:
“Like a train wreck that just keeps getting worse and you can’t look away from”

Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! is the heartwarming story of Marv Pushkin who wakes up on day to find his beloved SUV overturned and on top of him with his leg firmly planted under the car’s axle. It’s a good thing that the car landed that way too. You see, the axle is acting like a tourniquet and is preventing major blood loss from the nub that was his foot but was eaten by a bear. Thankfully, he always keeps a supply of various pills to kill pain, cure depression (you would be depressed too if you had lost a foot), and fix erectile dysfunction on him at all times. When Marv thinks that things couldn’t get any worse, they naturally do but he tries to keep his upbeat and positive attitude. Marv is a powerful business man, a supervisor, a natural leader. Once he gets out he will fire his subordinates, after all it is their fault he was is in this mess. All he wanted was a nice team building retreat and maybe for his wife to get eaten by a bear instead of him.

HABIEM is one of those books where you hate the protagonist. He has no redeeming quality and secretly the reason I kept reading was because I wanted this book to end badly and see him not get rescued because that is what he deserves. But having said that, I enjoyed this book. It’s like a train wreck that just keeps getting worse and you can’t look away from. Intertwined throughout his harrowing tale of being slowly eating is flashbacks relieving how he got himself in to this situation which adds some incite in to the mental state of Marv. Switching between flashbacks and the present, the reader gets glimpses of Marv’s personality then gets treated to his situation becoming worse.

The writing style in this book is different from traditional novels. It’s told as if Marv Pushkin was telling you the story of his life. At times it feels like being trapped in an elevator with him. Instead of reading a book it can feel like reading an internet blog with the occasional poor sentence structure.

I came across this book while wondering around the small press section of Powells (my new favorite section?). Mykle Hansen has written other books that I will now be forced to track down.

Blurb for the back cover:
“A humorous look in to something nobody cares about”

Believe it or not there are scripts written for porn films. Personally, I’m in the “or not” category, but Eric Spitznagel in his book Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter enters the seedy porn industry as such a writer in an effort to pay the bills until his real scriptwriting career takes off. Along the way he meets some interesting people in the industry such as the producer who wants to make porn versions of Kurosawa films. Then there is the producer who keeps telling Eric he wants a twenty page script but not with too much dialog.

This isn’t a story about porn. This is a story about being out of place and trying to figure out how one fits in in a strange place.

Fast Forward was funny and a quick read. It’s a humorous look in to something nobody cares about. More importantly this book isn’t offensive. To those who are not particularly fond of the porn industry, this book is not full of depictions of graphic, gratuitous, dirty paragraphs describing erotic material.

Eric Spitznagel also writers for the Believer.

I think I’ve found a new fetish. Literary Tattoos.

Blurb for the back cover:
“It’s about sex and having it”

I bought My Horizontal Life at the same time I purchased The Year of Yes . I think Amazon was like “People who bought this book bought this one as well” and I was like “OK.” Needless to say, both books sat on my shelf for the longest time until I realized that Chelsea Handler has her own late night TV show and it’s kinda funny. (Sadly, The Year of Yes remains unread still.)

My Horizontal Life tells the tales of Chelsea’s adventures with men. From midgets and strippers to guys who don’t speak English and guys who perform on cruise ships, Chelsea it seems has met all types of guys. As with most memoir fiction, the book is divided into short story chapters and makes it an easy book to pick up and read in short durations. But this is not the sort of book you should read in public places like a library, classroom, or any place where laughing will cause people to turn and look at you funny. This book will make you laugh, or at the very least, giggle.

Reading this book felt like I was reading an extended edition of one of those celebrity tabloids that you see along the checkout lines. All this book about is Chelsea’s adventures in having sex and there is no redeeming quality after that. Sure, at the end the idea does enter her mind that maybe sleeping around isn’t the best thing to do and maybe she wants a real boyfriend now. But it kind of ends on that note because building a solid relationship is not what this book is about. It’s about sex and having it.

It’s a fun read. Something to read along the pool side this summer. Chelsea’s second book Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea which came out a couple months ago. I will probably pick it up at some point because Chelsea Handler is a damn funny person.

Blurb for the back cover:
"There is a lack of closer"

Keeping with my theme of religious fiction/satire, I finally got around to reading God Is Dead by Ron Currie Jr. Oddly enough, I was anticipating this book before it was released and somehow I managed to overlook it every time I went to the bookstore. Now that it is newly released in paperback (even though I still picked up a hardbound), I am sad that I waited so long to read this book.

The premise for the book is the God took human form of a woman in Sudan in an attempt to find a lost human boy and apologize for all the trouble and for being completely powerless to do anything helpful about it. But taking mortal form has its drawbacks, such as death. And so, after God passes away, the world declines.

The book is made up of short stories that share the overall theme that ask the question “what if God had died?” In these stories we see preachers who once had purpose but now are faced with the struggle of their meaningless lives; a group of boys who lose everything and search for some way to make it better; wars, not being fought over religion anymore, are fought over psychological ideals; and a dog who ate from God’s corpse speaks (literally) and tells his story of what happened to him and how he tried to make the world better with his new found knowledge.

As always I am a sucker for short stories. I found God Is Dead to be an interesting collection with each story dealing with the loss of God in a different way. My only complaint is that often the stories felt like the ended too soon and that they had so much more to say. The characters were interesting enough that I cared what happened to them. But when the story was over that is the last I saw of them. There is a lack of closer often which is probably intentional. It’s like those books I read when I was younger that would have a great plot but completely forget to include an ending and it was up to me to use my imagination (Fahrenheit 451, I’m looking at you). Books like these do leave a lasting impression but it is one of annoyance.

Either way, I highly recommend this book. You can also go bug Ron Currie Jr at his web site .

Blurb for the back cover:
"felt 30 pages longer than it needed to be"

It was a conversation with a friend about genital mutilation that led to me reading this book. In particular the opening chapter in which Timothy has a dream about the time he was circumcised as a teenager only to end up holding an in-dream conversation with Saint Peter. Clearly this is going to be a rather odd book.

This is the first book I’ve read by Gore Vidal who apparently one of those writers who is held in high regard. Live From Golgotha is the tale of Timothy who later becomes Saint Timothy as he recalls his time spent with Saint Peter in an effort to preserve the New Testament from being erased from history. It all start with the in-dream conversation where St. Peter tells him that the greatest story ever told is being untold and erased from history, from tapes, by an unknown hacker. Now it is up to Timothy to retell what happened in order to save the story. It should be noted that this book was published back when floppy disks were still pretty neat and computer hackers were a real threat to everyone. 1992 was weird. But speaking of weird, Timothy starts getting visitors from the future when a Sony television is delivered to his house (back in like 98 A.D.) and he is getting offers to host a live broadcast of the Crucifixion by a mysterious man from the future.

The book itself was a little slow at times and I had to struggle to get it finished. It’s not that I didn’t like it but it felt 30 pages longer than it needed to be. Mixed in to the plot are clever little satirical pokes at culture scattered throughout the story like Timothy’s wife’s disdain over how their newly delivered TV is essentially rotting their brain. The big twist at the ending, however hard it was to get through the middle, was well worth those 30 pages and saved the book from being a rather confusing story with a happy ending and made it a rather confusing story with an ending that fits perfectly.

While reading this book I couldn’t help but think of Christopher Moore ‘s Lamb: The Gosple According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal , which is a fantastic novel, and what influence this book may have had on it if any. I’m also curious if there are any other books out there similar to Live From Golgotha and Lamb . Any ideas?

Self proclaimed idiot girl Laurie Notaro was at Powells the other night to promote her new book The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections of Revenge, Germophobia, and Laser Hair Removal (long title, I know). This is her sixth memoir/essay book following her first attempt at fiction with There’s a Slight Chance I Might Be Going to Hell .

Like the last time I saw her, she is hilarious. This time around she read only one chapter from her new book and jumped right in to the questions. But as she was reading it took her a while to hit her strive as she kept getting sidetracked and wondered off on little tangents about the story. This wasn’t a bad thing. The tangents may not have fit in the context of a book, but they were still funny and enjoyable. The audience participation part of the reading appears to be Notaro’s favorite part and lasted for over an hour. To entice the audience, she brought complimentary products from the Trump hotel in Chicago where she stayed the night before. If a person asked a question they got Revitalizing Facial Soap or a Sewing Kit. When she ran out of Trump branded products, there were Hershey’s Chocolate Twizzlers for everyone!

This time around I had to pick up two copies of her book. One for me and one for my Mom (who has “borrowed” my other copies of Notaro’s books). So in addition to being a good son who gives his Mom books, Laurio Notaro signed my Mom’s copy of the book giving her glowing praise for raising such a good son. I am sure that somehow being endorsed as a “good son” by a New York Times Bestselling author can somehow come in handy in the future. This isn’t the first time. Sue Grafton also praised me for being a good son after I stood in line for two hours waiting for her to sign a book for my Mom. I now think it will be my personal goal to be endorsed by as many bestselling authors as possible and give the books to my Mom. Who’s number one right now? Janet Evanovich with Fearless Fourteen ? Perfect. Now all I need is her to come sign in Portland.

Anyway, review of Notaro’s new book will be up once I finish reading it.