The Book Pirate

Gregory Maguire. You might know him from such Broadway plays such as Wicked. If you’re a fan a books, you might have read his two follow-up OZ books or his take on fairy tales (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister or Mirror Mirror). I’m not well versed in the works of Maguire. What I do know is that I would categorize all of his stories as fantasy stories and generally not my cup of tea. However, The Next Queen of Heaven appears to be a vast departure from his typical work and is set in modern times (well, if you still consider 1999 to be “modern”) and centers around a dysfunctional family.

The novel centers around the dysfunctional Scales family after the highly-religious mother, Leonitina, gets bumped in the head with a Catholic statuette and starts speaking in tongues and it’s up to the rebellious daughter, Tabitha, to hold the family together and survive the Christmas season. Along the way there are elderly nuns, rival churches, gay choir leaders, pregnancies, and a flying baby Jesus.

To sum up this book: Fantastic.

I love how outrageous Maguire made this story. It reminds me a little of Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel (you know, without the zombies). The story is set up that it follows many different, distinctive characters that have their own stories that all end up coming together at the end. I love stories that do that. I thought that the story was perfectly paced and balanced and most of all hilarious. It you have the opportunity, you should definitely check out this book.

Note: This book is distributed by Concord Free Press who believe in the Haley Joel Osment method of paying-it-forward. They give away books if you promise to donated something to someone. You pay with karma. Awesome?

After residing in Portland for close to 4 1/2 years now, you’d think that SOMEBODY would have told me about the cute little bookshop along Hawthorne called Murder By The Book.

It’s a bookshop that is exclusively tailored toward the mystery-lover demographic. When I entered earlier today, while finishing up some last minute Christmas shopping for myself, the kind ladies who worked there immediately offered me cookies and cider. And no, this wasn’t some sample used as a ploy to get me to spend $4 in some attached cafe. This was actual cookies and cider that were free out of the goodness of their murder-loving hearts. This is a pleasant surprise, I said to myself while munching on a star shaped cookie and perusing the noir section. Perhaps it was the cider, perhaps it was that I wasn’t paying attention, but as luck would have it I bumped in to a little table piled with presents. The sign on the table stated that these presents were a collection of books that you could purchase and not know what they were. Because I love presents and a good mystery, I bought two of these bundles. You love a good mystery too, right?

I thought so. I bought two of these. One for me, one for you. You can have it. I practically insist. So I am holding a contest. You can enter in the following ways:

1) You can get one entry by leaving a comment and telling me one of your favorite mystery books
2) You can get another by tweeting about this contest (You can use this link http://tr.im/I85e). Send me an @thebookpirate to let me know.
3) Lastly, you can get another by posting about this on your blog

That’s a possibility of 3 entries. On December 31st I will draw a winner and send you one of the bundles the books (still wrapped). You can even pick out which bundle you would like.

Also, MBTB has a blog which you should totally check out.

Patrick Wensink’s Sex Dungeon For Sale! is his collection of eleven short stories that are not your traditional short story. These stories have titles like “Chicken Soup for the Kidnapper’s Soul” and “The Many Lives of James Brown’s Capes”. One of the main draw of this collection is that the stories could be considered a little odd. In “Wash, Rinse, Repeat”, dishwashers are killing their operators with it’s new Kill setting and slowly transforming in to a Romeo and Juliet-esq tale.

My favorite story of the bunch is “Pandemic Jones” which also happens to be the longest story in the book coming in at a lengthy 18 pages. It’s a heartwarming love story about two people who met at pharmaceuticals company and work together to spread viruses all over the world. What I liked about this one is that the added length gives the reader time to get to know the characters while the other stories are brief and the characters do not really stand out. With some of the other stories characters play second fiddle to the oddity of the story. “Sex Dungeon For Sale!”, the book’s title story, is only 2 pages long and that kills me. I love the title of the book, and the idea of a real estate agent trying to sell a house with a built in sex dungeon seems really, really funny to me.

In the end, the stories were either hit-or-miss. I really liked some of them but the shorter ones didn’t leave any room for character development and could have benefited from being expanded upon. This is an odd collection of stories and if that is your thing then be sure to check out Sex Dungeon For Sale!. You can check out a sampling of his book on his web site.

Bust out your Crayola 120ct Crayons! It’s time for a coloring contest.

Patrick Wensink, author of Sex Dungeon For Sale!, is hosting a coloring contest where you can win fabulous prizes. And by fabulous prizes I mean a selection of Wensink’s favorite books of 2009. You can win signed copies of 4 books (Help! A Bear is Eating Me! [my review] and Fool are included, autographed BW). Oddly enough, he does not include a copy of his own book, Sex Dungeon For Sale. Perhaps Patrick does not think that highly of himself or maybe he is simply trying to save on postage. Regardless, you should totally enter.

Here’s how it works. Download and print the coloring page that you fancy. Each page is based off of a story from SD4S (My Son Thinks He’s French, Jesus Toast, Chicken Soup for the Kidnapper’s Soul). Color it in either by hand or digitally, then e-mail it to patrickwensink@gmail.com with your name, address and phone number. The deadline is December 14th. You can check out his rather random web site for more details if you still feel ill informed about this contest.