Something to Make Book Lovers Smile

 

Rosy Is My Relative by Gerald Durrell

 

First Line: Unaware that doom was overtaking him, Adrian Rookwhistle, in his shirt sleeves, was occupied in making faces at himself in his looking-glass.

 

Adrian Rookwhistle is a young man who's led an extremely quiet, circumscribed life, and his thirst for adventure is slaked when his uncle dies and leaves him an elephant named Rosy. Rosy is affectionate, but she eats a lot and has a penchant for drunken binges whenever she's in the vicinity of a pub. Adrian can't keep her, so he devises a plan to take her to the coast to find a circus to take her in even though his uncle's will forbade him to do that. 

What Adrian didn't realize is just how much of an adventure his trip with Rosy would be-- and that he'd be facing a prison term by the end. 

 

~

 

Gerald Durrell's cautionary tale for those who get what they wish for was the perfect book to read in order to raise my spirits. Durrell swore that the whole thing actually happened and that he merely clarified and embellished, but I really don't care one way or the other. The entire story played out on the movie screen of my mind, and I found myself laughing many times as I turned the pages. I'm even smiling as I type this review.

 

Adrian has a tough time steering Rosy clear of pubs on the way down to the coast, and they also come a cropper when meeting up with a local hunt club, a country house ball, and the stage at a seaside theater. Durrell's Dickens-esque names for his characters give this story the required light and charming touch that it needs, and he includes several turns of phrase that kept me laughing. You want examples, you say? Here are two. "Lady Fenneltree had "eyes like those of a particularly maladjusted python." "He bristled and quivered like a small, alert terrier at a rabbit hole."

If you're in need of something light, fun, filled with a lovable elephant and other brilliant cartoon-like characters, as well as a legal trial that will have you laughing with glee, pick up a copy of Rosy Is My Relative. I can feel her trunk tapping me on my shoulder now.

Rosy Is My Relative by Gerald Durrell

eISBN: 9781504042628

Open Road Integrated Media © 2016

Originally published in 1968.

eBook, 234 pages

 

Humor, Standalone

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon.

Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime by Steve Hockensmith

First Line (from Introduction): Reading this collection, you might get the impression that I don't like Christmas.

Once you begin reading these nine short stories, you will know that first line simply is not true. Steve Hockensmith loves Christmas, he loves writing about crime, and when he can combine the two, it's magic.

Sometimes when I see a book cover or a title, I just know that I'm going to love the book, and this is what happened to me with Naughty. The nine stories run the gamut of yuletide criminal activity, and you'll be hard pressed not to read the entire collection with a smile on your face.

"Fruitcake" is a grin-inducing tale about the love-crazed shenanigans of an old woman in a nursing home. A young woman hired as an elf in a shopping mall tells us how "I Killed Santa Claus." The guy in the office that we all love to hate has an interesting experience with his "Secret Santa." In "Humbug" we learn that Scrooge is dead. A gift wrapper in the mall decides to get even with a "Naughty" lecher. In perhaps the most touching of the tales, a little girl and her even younger brother find a gift in their mother's closet in "Hidden Gifts." There's a plot against Santa in "Red Christmas," and two dim-witted burglars attempt to rob a church on Christmas Eve in "Naiveté." The last tale, "Special Delivery," about a trucker trying to deliver a shipment of Cabbage Patch dolls in time for Christmas, struck a special chord with me, since I worked retail during that particular toy craze. Occasionally characters from one tale will appear in another, and you'll greet them with a smile and a "Hey, I know you!"

These stories are little marvels that induce smiles, laughs, tender feelings, personal memories-- everything that the holiday season is about. It's a bonus for all crime fiction fans that they also contain a little murder and mayhem. I urge you all to read these short stories, and-- when you do-- read every bit of them: acknowledgements, notes, dedications... every single solitary scrap. You see, Steve Hockensmith sprinkles joy and laughter throughout the entire collection, and I wouldn't want you to miss a single comma, dot, or dash.

Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime by Steve Hockensmith

ISBN: 9781477421857

CreateSpace © 2012

Paperback, 212 pages

Humor, Short Stories

Rating: A+

Source: Downloaded as an eBook from Amazon. 

Redneck Haiku by Mary K. Witte

Title: Redneck Haiku
Author: Mary K. Witte
ISBN: 1891661299
Publisher: Santa Monica Press, 2003
Paperback, 112 pages
Genre: Poetry, Humor
Rating: B-
Source: purchased from Amazon.

Japanese haiku is one of my favorite forms of poetry, each haiku consisting of three lines and seventeen syllables. In this small volume, Witte covers just about every aspect of the redneck lifestyle. One that made me smile was:

Wanda's new wind chime
made of kitchen utensils
she seldom uses.

It does an excellent job of describing me! As the pages turned, I'm afraid that it became a bit of a one-trick pony for me. Redneck humor can be very silly and funny, but it can pall quickly if you're not careful.

Would I buy Witte's second volume of redneck haiku? No, but I did enjoy reading this one.

Buy from Amazon.
Buy from The Book Depository.
Buy from an Indie Bookseller.

The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles, Edited by Jeff Martin

Title: The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles
Editor: Jeff Martin
ISBN: 9781933368900, Soft Skull Press, 2008
Genre: Humor
Rating: B-

First Line: "I am Sssshhhearssshh!"


I've been in retail more years than I care to remember, so I received this book from a fellow Paperback Swap member with a great deal of interest. How many essays in this book about retail experiences would strike a chord in me? The answer is: about a third.

Granted, retail is one of those occupations that can stretch credulity some days. Hospital emergency rooms, policemen, firemen and other emergency services pros don't own the monopoly on strange encounters of the human kind. Anyone who deals with the public knows the perils of full moons and the first of the month. Opportunities are ripe for looking at a co-worker and saying, "We should write a book." It's that very thing that editor Jeff Martin tries to cover with his selection of essays in The Customer Is Always Wrong, and the results are rather uneven.

The low point of the book for me was Anita Liberty's essay entitled "No Good Deed...." For the life of me I don't know if the piece was honestly supposed to be funny and completely missed the boat, or if there was a layer of irony and sarcasm woven through the lines and I'm the one left standing at the pier.

The high points of the book were the essays written by James Wagner ("Other Things in Mind") and Elaine Viets ("Minimum-Wage Drama"). For me, those two essays spoke the truth of my own experience. Wagner brings up the phrase "the customer is always right," correctly pointing out that this is

...a theory drummed up by an owner who didn't have to deal with the day-to-day public, who only had to take in their money and then spend it on cars, stocks, and vacations, the likes of which the people who did deal with the public would never see.

For anyone not familiar with Elaine Viets, she is the author of the Dead End Job mystery series. She's gone out and worked each of the jobs covered in her series, so she's been on more than one front line. Some of her observations are short and to the point: "The first rule of retail is that everyone wants to check out at once" and "Working retail is like going to the theater-- except you get paid to watch the show. Also, your feet hurt."

Although the choice of essays in the book is uneven, the book is more than worth reading for Wagner and Viets alone. If you've ever been on the other side of the counter, the book will have you reliving some of your own "glory days". If you've never worked on the other side of the counter, you should read this book. Unless you're totally self-absorbed, you'll learn a thing or two.

Working retail is often thankless, and you can be subject to tremendous mood swings. But in amongst the days that make you worry about your sanity are the ones that make you smile, make you laugh, and make you put on your comfy shoes and head in to another day with the Public. Because....Steinbeck rules! (Right, Elaine?)

Who Cut the Cheese? by Jim Dawson

Title: Who Cut the Cheese? A Cultural History of the Fart
Author: Jim Dawson
ISBN: 9781580080118, Ten Speed Press, 1999
Genre: Non-Fiction, Humor
Rating: C

First Line: First of all, let me say that a fart is puny, transitory, and evanescent.

I have to admit that I got this book from another Paperback Swap member as a joke gift for my husband, and I didn't read it-- Denis did. This marks Denis's first review here at Kittling: Books.

Who Cut the Cheese? is a compilation of stories and facts about farting. When Denis began to read it, he did find the book amusing, but after getting about halfway through, I noticed that he wasn't picking up the book with any great joy.

I asked him if he liked the book. He said, "I did at first, but now it's really beginning to drag." I asked him if he really wanted to finish reading it. He finally admitted that he didn't. What was his succinct opinion of this book?

"I live it. I don't have to read about it!"

Hmmm...perhaps I should get him to do more one-line reviews. What do you think?

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

Title: The Uncommon Reader
Author: Alan Bennett
ISBN: 9781846681332, Profile Books, 2008
Genre: Fiction, Humor
Rating: A+

First Line: At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber.

This little 121-page novella is a comic jewel in which Alan Bennett speculates what might happen if a very well-known person were to read a book...and actually enjoy the experience.

If Queen Elizabeth II hadn't chased her Corgis 'round the back of Windsor Castle and stumbled across the bookmobile parked outside the kitchens, none of this would've happened. But the Corgis did, and she did, and the Queen checked out a book-- just to be polite. Who'da thunk she'd actually read it and go back for another?

Books did not defer. All readers were equal, and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night, when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognized with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognized.

Turning such a world figure into a reading fiend is a stroke of comic genius as the reader rides along in the state carriage while Her Majesty learns how to wave and read at the same time or watches the servants learn to cope with a formerly punctual monarch who now wants to wait until she's finished the chapter she's reading.

The Uncommon Reader isn't all fun and games. On a deeper level, Bennett shows how the world opens up to anyone who chooses to read for both enlightenment and enjoyment. Whether we realize it or not, reading transforms us.

Read it for the humor. Read it because you're a fan of the royals. Read it because of the truths it contains. For whatever the reason...

...read it!

REVIEW: Happiness™

Title: Happiness™
Author: Will Ferguson
ISBN: 1841952338/Canongate Books, Ltd.
Protagonist: Edwin de Valu, low-level editor for Panderic Press
Setting: present-day, an unnamed city that's the publishing center of the US
Fiction/Standalone
Rating: A-

First Line: Grand Avenue cuts through the very heart of the city, from 71st Street all the way to the harbourfront, and although it is eight lanes wide, with a treed boulevarde running down the middle, the Avenue feels claustrophobic and narrow.

Edwin de Valu, a low-level editor for Panderic Press, is usually stuck editing the self help books for the publishing house's catalog. He's also responsible for slogging through his fair share of the slush pile--all the unsolicited manuscripts that come to Panderic daily. Just before a meeting with the chief editor, Edwin takes a look at a gargantuan thousand-page typewritten manuscript. Not finding a self-addressed, stamped envelope in which to put the form letter turndown, he simply dumps the manuscript in the trash. At the meeting, he's told that the very foundation stone of their self-help catalogue, "Mr. Ethics" himself, has been arrested for income tax evasion (and for burying IRS agents in his backyard). Edwin is given the task of finding a self-help book to replace Mr. E's, and the only thing he can come up with is the monster he threw in the wastebasket. After all, there may be a way he can prune it down to 300 pages. He has no idea what he's about to unleash upon the country.

Canadian Will Ferguson credits a book publicist with the idea for his first novel. The publicist said, "I'll tell you one thing. If anyone ever wrote a self-help book that actually worked, we'd all be in trouble." I have to admit that I read the entire book with one particular friend in mind: one who openly expresses a loathing for self-help books. (They're not favorites of mine either.) By page 27, I knew I was hooked: Panderic publishes the "Chicken Broth" series of books, and book #217 is titled Chicken Broth for Your Fallen Arches. The chief editor of Panderic gathers awed looks and hushed whispers: he spent six years as a fact-checker for Tom Clancy.

Ferguson's thoughts on how a country could collapse if given a self-help book that actually works are funny and also very thought-provoking when carried through to the idea of what happiness really means. Although it bogged down a bit after the book was published and became a runaway success, I still found it a hilarious satire on the world of publishing and the human condition. A big Thank You to Jena for mentioning this book on her blog!