Summer Reading Picks from Prozac Monologues -- June 17, 2010

The following is my opinion. Strongly-held, but my opinion. Feel free to have your own. That's what comments are for.
I asked friends for their input in two categories: lovable loonies and alternate worlds -- fiction, unless they could make a very compelling case otherwise. Now I have a new reading list, too.
Lovable Loonies
We begin with lovable loonies. My all-time number one favorite book, perfect for beach, book club, hospital bed, you name it, is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. You know, there were other gospels that didn't make the original cut. I don't think this one would have, either. Nevertheless, it had me at this sentence: The first time I saw the man who would save the world, he was sitting near the central well in Nazareth with a lizard hanging out of his mouth. It seems Joshua (Jesus) was entertaining his little brother, who kept smashing the lizard's head with a rock, whereupon the future savior of the world would put it in his mouth, bring it back to life, and hand it back to his little brother. Practice for later. This gospel fills in the missing years of Jesus' life and explains the invention of cappuccino, judo and grace. A loonier evangelist you could not find. So that's number one.
Another Christopher Moore pick, though out of season, is The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror. It reintroduces a character from Lamb. And boy, is he stupid. The lovable loony is the sheriff's wife, a former actress who played a Xena-type warrior and never quite got out of character. In a sub-plot and nod to O'Henry, she quits her meds to save up for her husband's Christmas present, a bong, while the sheriff/husband/recovering druggie plants an acre of pot to buy her a sword.
Actually, the whole purpose of this blog piece is to get more people to read my second favorite book, Lucky Dog by Mark Barrowcliffe -- a talking dog named Reg who helps a helpless loser win at poker -- the helpless loser being the only one who can understand what Reg is saying, of course. After first meeting him, Dave goes on meds. So Reg gives Dave the silent treatment, because his feelings are hurt . Notice the running theme, meds. This is a Prozac Monologues list, after all. Eventually Dave misses Reg's conversation, quits his meds and figures out that Reg gives him an advantage at the gaming table. It's all about smell. You've got the mob, a rich old lady, a love interest, the world from a dog's point of smell and redemption. What more could you want for summer reading?
A friend reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut -- whom I already started rereading a few months ago. Vonnegut makes reference to his lovable loony, Eliot Rosewater in a couple of books. Rosewater gets his own book in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Maybe he has a touch of psychosis. Maybe he is a hopeless idealist. Maybe he just needs to say no. But he is indeed lovable and a volunteer fireman. Bonus loony: Kilgore Trout.
Crossover Category -- Lovable Loonies in Alternate Worlds
I just started The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Yes, I spelled his name correctly. Another friend, a bookophile who knows loony recommends it. It is the first of Fforde's loony alternate reality series, starring Special Operative Thursday Next, a literary detective who is chasing down the evil Acheron Hades who has stolen... It's a Lost in Austen/Inkheart kind of alternate reality, blurring the boundaries between the world of normals and the many worlds of books. But today I am going back to the library to check out the original Jane Eyre. Okay, okay -- I've never gotten around to it, just seen the movie version. What with Fforde bending time and plot, I can tell I will miss stuff if I don't know the original.
Alternate Worlds
Chabon provides another alternate world in a tale of two Jewish adventurerers, Gentlemen of the Road. Set in 10th century Khazaria, two con men/bodyguards/swashbucklers star in a dime store novel with elegant prose, inadvertently fighting for justice and the rightful heir to the Khazarian throne.
Not all alternate worlds are fantastical. Like Gentlemen of the Road, books set in real times and places can sweep you up so that you leave your own world and enter the author's. The day my mother left her third husband, the good stepfather, separating hers and theirs from his, I postponed going crazy by moving to China via Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. Seventy years after it won a Pulitzer Prize, Oprah made it a Book Club pick.
Rounding out our alternate world category, Ellis Peters takes us to a Benedictine monastery in twelfth century England, in the midst of a civil war. Cadfael is a second career monk, a crusader turned herbalist and forensic scientist detective. The series starts with A Morbid Taste for Bones and goes on for nineteen more volumes -- God bless Ellis Peters. This series has also been filmed, with Derek Jacobi as Cadfael.
Nonfiction Anyway
Douglas Adams and Hebrew poetry have both inspired me through the years. If they tell you three, then they add a fourth. I told you I had two categories. So here is a third -- compelling nonfiction. These two are on my own to read list:
The first is friend-recommended The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It is a tragic story of the clash between two cultures, that of the Hmong and that of Western medicine. The parents say Baby Lia Lee's soul is outside her body, captured by an evil spirit. She needs a shaman. The doctors say she has epilepsy. She needs medication. The doctors win. The results are not good. I haven't been reading biographies of people who live with mental illness lately. But I might make an exception for this one.
The second and last is Invictus: Nelson Mandela and The Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin. This edition has pictures from the movie. The original edition is titled Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. Combine the typical sports narrative structure: loser team triumphs, with that incredible, grace-filled moment in human history: oppressed people triumph and don't wreck vengeance on the oppressors.
Memoirs, Anyone?
So there are more than enough books to fill out my local library's summer reading club requirements. I'm thinking of an autumn post with a list of mental illness memoirs: Kay Jamison, Elizabeth Wurtzel, etc. Recommendations?
What are you reading this summer? Enjoy.
book jackets by amazon.com
illustration of popcorn by digitalart used by permission