1. Three Bag's Full by Leonie Swann
A witty philosophical murder mystery with a charming twist: the crack detectives are sheep determined to discover who killed their beloved shepherd.
On a hillside near the cozy Irish village of Glennkill, the members of the flock gather around their shepherd, George, whose body lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George has cared for the sheep, reading them a plethora of books every night. The daily exposure to literature has made them far savvier about the workings of the human mind than your average sheep. Led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world), they set out to find George's killer.
The A-team of investigators includes Othello, the "bad-boy" black ram; Mopple the Whale, a merino who eats a lot and remembers everything; and Zora, a pensive black-faced ewe with a weakness for abysses. Joined by other members of the richly talented flock, they engage in nightlong discussions about the crime and wild metaphysical speculations, and they embark on reconnaissance missions into the village, where they encounter some likely suspects. There's Ham, the terrifying butcher; Rebecca, a village newcomer with a secret and a scheme; Gabriel, the shady shepherd of a very odd flock; and Father Will, a sinister priest. Along the way, the sheep confront their own all-too-human struggles with guilt, misdeeds, and unrequited love.
My review:
Who doesn't love sheep? They're cute, they're fluffy, and it turns out they're fantastic detectives!
....Ok, fine. They're okay detectives.
....Alright maybe they're actually pretty bad detectives. They sure do try though, and man is it a lot of fun to follow along. Leonie Swann does a great job of balancing wacky sheep hijinks with a compelling mystery and then wraps it all up with phenomenal descriptions of life in a small bucolic Irish town.
Looking for a book that walks a perfect line between philosophical and fluffy? Look no further, Three Bag's Full is the mystery for you.
2. River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.
Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.
This was a terrible plan.
Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.
My review:
Who doesn't love hipp
Look at this little face and just try to tell me you don't want to give it a hug!
Of course, they're also one of the most dangerous animals on the planet, so Congress maybe should have thought of that before proposing an American hippo ranching plan in the late 1900s. We all make mistakes sometimes right?
It doesn't matter that it's set in the swamps of Louisiana, River of Teeth is a gun-slinging western adventure of the highest order. There's a dashing hero set on revenge, his rag tag crew (who may also have some plans vis-a-vis revenge), a lawman on their tail, and a mysterious villain dead set on destroying them all... Sarah Gailey takes a classic adventure set up and turns it on its head with unexpected twists, a diverse cast of characters, and of course, lots and lots of hippos.
3. Fool by Christopher Moore
Fool—the bawdy and outrageous New York Times bestseller from the unstoppable Christopher Moore—is a hilarious new take on William Shakespeare's King Lear...as seen through the eyes of the foolish liege's clownish jester, Pocket. A rousing tale of "gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity," Fool joins Moore's own Lamb, Fluke, The Stupidest Angel, and You Suck! as modern masterworks of satiric wit and sublimely twisted genius, prompting Carl Hiassen to declare Christopher Moore "a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word."
My review:
I consider Christopher Moore one of my guilty pleasure authors. I probably shouldn't enjoy reading his books as much as I do because, tragically, he's not exactly the greatest at writing female characters. I am enough of a sucker for his sense of humor to overlook a lot of his transgressions though, and a book with Christopher Moore absurdism layered on top of Shakespeare madness? Well that is right up my alley. It's witty. It's sarcastic. It's a love story written to Shakespeare's more preposterous plot twists. And yes, the summary is correct, it's very very vulgar.
4. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
FROM THE AUTHOR:
This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn't me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I'm not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:
Pictures
Words
Stories about things that happened to me
Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
Eight billion dollars*
Stories about dogs
The secret to eternal happiness*
*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!
My review:
Hyperbole and a Half is a collection of vignettes about the author's childhood and adolescence. Because it's comprised of color coded short stories, it's an easy book to read in bits and pieces. Of course, I loved it so much I burned through it in one night, so that's also a good way to read it. Allie Brosh's art style is truly strange and so just very expressive that it's hard not to dive immediately into the next chapter. Really, this woman can express more with three lines and a triangle than most can with pages of exposition. Usually when people say 'you'll laugh out loud' they're exaggerating, but I genuinely laughed so hard I cried when I read this book. Hyperbole and a Half is an experience, and I cannot recommend it enough.
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5. Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster—another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.
1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader . . . which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years.
The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It's their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.
My review:
It's Scooby Doo all grown up, ya'll.
I have never been a huge fan of the 'take a childhood piece of media and make it dark and gritty' gimmick. To me it always seems that more is lost with those adaptations than is gained. The exception to that rule, however, is Meddling Kids. You want all the wacky hijinks, oversized villains, and dei ex machina of a classic Scooby Doo episode? Don't worry, Meddling Kids has them in spades (I mean, Zoinx River Valley? Come on). Do you also want a genuine exploration of the myriad of ways childhood trauma can manifest throughout early adulthood? Well that's in there too. Meddling Kids is a fascinating blend of silly and terrifying; corny and introspective. It's a mix of elements that shouldn't work, but are woven together so skillfully you can't help but enjoy the discordance.
6. The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs
From the bestselling author of The Know-It-All comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible. Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.
The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.
Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for The Know-It-All. His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.
Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first century brain. Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, The Year of Living Biblically is part Cliff's Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.
My review:
Do you remember being in school and having a friend who would posit off-the-wall questions like 'I wonder what would happen if you ate 4 packs of Mentos and then drank a bottle of coke'? Well, A. J. Jacobs is the guy who asks that question... and then does it to find out. And then writes about it.
The Year of Living Biblically is A. J. Jacob's second installment in a growing series of 'what would happen if...' books, and it's one of my favorites. In his quest to follow all the Bible's commandments, Jacob's delves into questions such as 'What place does the Bible have in modern day life?', 'Why are some rules followed nowadays and some ignored?', and, of course, 'What would happen if I followed these commands to the letter?'. Jacob's approaches the world with such curiousity and wonderment, it's impossible not to find yourself swept up in his journey. I highly recommend The Year of Living Biblically as well as any other A. J. Jacobs book.
7. Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown
The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail.
To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he's making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.
But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot's madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.
Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure's adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story—with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.
My review:
You may recognize this book from my Top 10 Survival Fiction Books You May Have Missed list. If not, go ahead and check out that rec list as well!
Cinnamon and Gunpowder is One Thousand and One Nights with pirates and food porn. What's not to love?
Oh man do I wish there was a cookbook that came with this. Eli Brown writes so lovingly about the importance of food, cooking, and breaking bread that you're immediately inspired to plan a dinner party and break out the pots and pans. Or, if you have the same culinary skills I do, order takeout and FaceTime your bros. I don't want anyone to leave thinking this book is just an ode to all things epicurean though. Wrapped around detailed descriptions of meals is the heartfelt story of a man ripped out of his element and forced to confront both his past and his assumptions about the world around him.
8. World War Z by Max Brooks
We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the apocalyptic years.
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
My review:
Alright, if the first thing you think of when you hear World War Z is a blockbuster movie with Brad Pitt, I'm going to need you to forget everything you know and start with a clean slate. The movie was advertised as being based on the book, but there is so little in common between the two they could have named the movie something else entirely and no one would have made the connection. I could spend paragraphs outlining my issues with changing everything in a book for a movie adaptation, but for everyone's sake we'll leave it at 'I have feelings on the matter' and move on.
To me, World War Z is a zombie book that isn't actually about zombies. Sure they're there (and there's plenty of close encounters to keep you on the edge of your seat), but at its core World War Z is a book about information; how information spreads (like a virus), how information or lack thereof causes people to act, how, why, and when information should be preserved. As strange as it sounds, WWZ is a love story about the global dissemination of information. But, like, with flesh eating monsters thrown in. Depending on your feelings about horror adjacent material and the current state of our world this may be pushing the limit of 'escapist read'. I would say though, if your immediate reaction to the cover was 'eww zombies', maybe give World War Z a second look. There is more there than meets the eye.
9. Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma
Presents the story of the new kid in town; little Yotsuba, a green-haired and
My review:
You may be wondering, why is a children's series on a rec list for adults? The answer is because as adults we need to grab joy wherever we can find it, and I have never come across a series that packs so much zest for life and unadulterated joy into such a small package. This series is a plateful of brownies, no obligations, and a comfy couch in paper form.
Although there is a vague overarching narrative as the series progresses, each book is comprised of a series of small vignettes centering around Yotsuba, the titular character, as she explores the world around her. Yotsuba's enthusiasm for every idea, item, and experience that cross her path is infectious. I can pretty much guarantee that by the end of book one you'll have a smile on your face. It's cute, it's funny, and it will make you appreciate the wonderment with which children can embrace the world. I give this entire series a 10 out of 10.
10. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong
Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements.
An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move.
Mysterious, smooth-talking power players who lurk behind the scenes.
A young woman from the trailer park.
And her very smelly cat.
Together, they will decide the future of mankind.
Get ready for a world in which anyone can have the powers of a god or the fame of a pop star, in which human achievement soars to new heights while its depravity plunges to the blackest depths. A world in which at least one cat smells like a seafood shop's dumpster on a hot summer day.
This is the world in which Zoey Ashe finds herself, navigating a futuristic city in which one can find elements of the fantastic, nightmarish, and ridiculous on any street corner. Her only trusted advisor is the aforementioned cat, but even in the future, cats cannot give advice. At least not any that you'd want to follow.
Will Zoey figure it all out in time? Or maybe the better question is, will you? After all, the future is coming sooner than you think.
My review:
David Wong is a very slick author. The diction of this work is compelling, the futuristic world he builds is both novel and chillingly believable, and the plot sucks you in from page one. My favorite element of the book though, is that in a world where people have tech supported superhuman abilities, enough money to buy and sell souls, and access to an omnipresent surveillance network, the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of one very vulnerable young woman. It's her compassion - not the machinations of the powerful people around her - that will determine the future of mankind. And if you're anything like me, you will fall in love with Zoey Ashe.
This book is not for everyone. It's dark, it's gritty, it's violent, and it's filled with truly terrible people. But man, if it isn't a no holds barred roller coaster ride of a read.
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