Bookpusher

Dear god. My new goal in life is to hit every one of these before I die.

A compendium of beautiful libraries.

Funny that I should read this novel a month or so after seeing the film Superbad, as both are coming-of-age stories that are aimed squarely at adults. I won’t compare the two beyond that, though, as it would be unfair to both. Superbad and “I Love You, Beth Cooper” are both spectacularly funny, just in different ways.

The is a fun, farsical novel is the story of the graduation night of one Denis Cooverman, uber-nerd and head of the debate team, who proclaims his undying love for the school’s head cheerleader in front of his entire class during his valedictory speech. To the surprise of Denis and his movie-quote-spouting and possibly gay best friend Rich, Beth Cooper and her two friends show up at Denis’ party, but not for the reasons he was hoping for; it seems that Beth Cooper already has a boyfriend in the military who didn’t take kindly to Denis’ proclamation. This leads into an all-night adventure that revisits all the standard high-school landmark cliches – the out-of-control post-graduation party, the abandoned high school gymnasium, and the parents’ place by the lake.

This is also an amazingly funny book, even though there’s a bit too much tough-guy-beating-up-on-nerd action, and author Larry Doyle packs jokes in every page as well as wonderfully nailing the absurdity and the terror of adolescence. Every chapter opens with a quote from a teen film and a drawing of Denis by illustrator Evan Dorkin – the images change as the night goes on, so as our hero gets drenched in flop sweat, escapes getting mauled by members of the U.S. military, gets plastered on imported beer, suffers a champagne cork in the eye, encounters a swarm of mosquitoes, and falls into a serving table full of chips and salsa, the portrait changes accordingly.

Brilliant work of literature? Not quite. Fun book that will take you back to the days of Spanish Club and Homecoming dances? Absolutely.

Austin Grossman’s novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible, makes you think things are going the campy superhero route with the meglomaniacal title, which almost begs to be spoken aloud with a defiant fist thrust in the air, but in truth the book is an inventive and absorbing story about the inner lives of supertypes in a supertypes world, told from two points of view: Doctor Impossible, the Lex Luthor/Doctor Doom-style evil genius who escapes from prison and hatches yet another plan to rule the world, and the newly-minted hero Fatale, a female cyborg who is recruited to the world’s greatest – and most dysfunctional – superteam when the earth’s mightiest hero, CoreFire, goes missing.

Doctor Impossible is the most interesting character of the two (villains usually are) and we find out his reasons for being a world-conquerer when we find out about his humble origins as a frustrated grad student looking for social acceptance. Fatale, the cyborg with no memory of her previous life, gives us a outsider’s view of the Champions superteam and the conflicting personalities and infighting that happens in the absence of the alpha hero.

Anyone who has a stack of old Silver Age comics in the basement will immediately recognize the tropes Grossman uses here, and it’s fun picking out the Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman analogues in his fully-delevoped universe, as well as the scene where the heroes meet the villain in his lair, guarded by giant robots spitting laser beams. But Grossman’s focus is always on character, and he speaks in his villan’s voice so well that by the end of the novel you’ll find yourself almost rooting for Doctor Impossible to unlock the secrets of the zeta beam and, indeed, finally succeed in taking over the world.

Trust me, you’ll like it. I’ve already seen the pilot, so my TiVo will be recording “How I Met Your Mother”. I’m a little scared about Enrique Iglesias and Mandy Moore as guest stars, as that takes away from about character and writing, but the show hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

My wife and I will be doing one of those 3-D imaging things for Baby Bookpusher this evening. I’m excited.

Crazy school week for me, so apologies for the silence.

However, I have been reading two books on the sly: Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman and Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. Both are quite good so far but for completely different reasons, as one deals with costumed superheroes and supervillains and the other deals with vampires and a mind-reading waitress in northern Louisiana. Reviews forthcoming.

Fantasy author Robert Jordan died today, according to his website. I originally spied the news over on metafilter.

For a while there in the early to mid-90s, I was absolutely rabid about his books. I bribed friends to read him, evangelized his Wheel of Time series to total strangers, and was convinced he was the second coming of J.R.R. Tolkien. Even though I eventually lost interest due to the length and lack of inertia in the series, I proudly own the first six novels which hold up wonderfully against any other fantasy series you could possibly name. Hell, one of the reasons for discovering Usenet on my AOL account around 1993 or so was to comb through the posts on rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan for hours upon hours, unraveling theories and conspiracies and making my first timid internet posts.

Thanks, Mr. Jordan, for bringing hours of reading pleasure into my life. And thanks for continuing to write while battling illness.

The dean of the Kansas City blogger community passed away this week.

I’ve never personally met Greg Beck; I only knew him through his blog, Death’s Door. I was a loyal reader for years. It was filled with stories, situations, and experiences that could have filled a dozen lifetimes – screamingly funny, joyously obscene, and in all ways larger than life.

Greg was a completely and wholly unique voice in the blogger community, and we will never see his like ’round these parts again. And we’re all the lesser for it.

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Sometimes I don’t need a book to be a Work of Penetrating, Soul-Scouring Art. Sometimes I just need a book to be there for me, to take me away from work and school and everyday stress. Sometimes I need a book to tell me a story that’s not completely unbelievable, yet something that I can put down at a moment’s notice and resume later without having to feel guilty because I forgot what was going on. Oh yeah: funny doesn’t hurt, either.

Sometimes I need an author like Christopher Moore. His latest, “You Suck,” is a smart, witty, and hysterically funny novel about vampires. It’s actually a sequel to a previous book, but you don’t need to read it to know what’s going on here. It’s got your hero, who is a slightly goofy writer-type who has just got turned into a vampire by his sex-goddess vampire girlfriend, herself a former minion to a thousand-year-old dude who, as the story begins, is encased in a strong coating of bronze, like a pair of baby shoes. The bronzing was the responsibility of a group of supermarket stocker friends of the hero, who spend their time, when they’re not fighting creatures of the night, getting stoned and bowling with frozen turkeys down the produce isle, knocking over two-liters of Diet Coke. The group of stoner friends have sold all the art objects belonging to the ancient vampire on eBay and have come back from a weekend in Vegas with a stretch Hummer and their very own hooker, who has painted herself blue from top to (ahem) bottom in order to market herself to fans of the Blue Man Group, which just encourages all sorts of lewd Smurf jokes.

It’s that kind of book.

There is a plot, but I won’t bore you with it; just know that the whole thing is readable, fun, and well worth your time. Especially to someone like me who played far, far too many White Wolf role-playing games in the 1990s.

Facing a tough decision in the next few weeks. The fall semester of grad school is in full swing, my wife is due to give birth to our first child in just a handful of months, and perhaps most importantly, I need to think about what tv shows we program into the TiVo. (Helpful grid of television goodness here.)

With Heroes and Chuck, NBC has pretty much locked up Monday evenings for me. This increases the likelihood we’ll give Journeyman a shot, which comes on afterward and sounds like a more serious version of Quantum Leap, but we’ve heard little buzz about it. How I Met Your Mother will have to be be watched live and Aliens in America might have to wait until later on in the season. K-Ville on Fox sounds intriguing, but I can’t take any drama that stars Anthony Anderson seriously.

Tuesdays: House and CW’s Reaper are on opposite each other, which merely increases the chances Reaper will be overlooked, moved around the schedule, buried, put on hiatus, and eventually canceled. Nothing goes up against Hugh Laurie and survives; this is what doomed Veronica Mars.

Wednesday: Tyra Banks’ ANTM versus Kid Nation on CBS. Which overly exploitive reality show do we go with? Both, of course. Critical darling Pushing Daisies, on at the same time, will have to go by the wayside. Private Practice at eight will likewise be gleefully ignored unless Bionic Woman completely tanks – I hope it doesn’t as the wife is crazy excited by this show. Even if it’s merely okay, you can never go wrong with a show about superpowered girls kicking butt. Then Dirty Sexy Money at nine because Peter Krause is made of awesome.

Thursday is Survivor and Grey’s Anatomy. Friday? Moonlight: all you have to say is that Jason Dohring plays an ancient  vampire and I’m there, however I have a nagging suspicion that this show will suck.

Weekends are for catching up and recovery.

Am I missing anything? Any shows out there that I should be watching?