The Serpent of Venice

I read my first Christopher Moore novel in the 90s when I picked up a remaindered copy of Coyote Blue for cheap. I loved it, but for some reason or another it was more than a decade until I picked up another one of his novels. Lately I've been slowly reading his other books, including his most recent work,  The Serpent of Venice, which I was lucky enough to get a review copy of.

Serpent of Venice is a sequel to the novel Fool.  Fool was a parody of King Lear, starring Pocket, Lear's fool. This book also stars Pocket, and as the title suggests is (partly) a parody of The Merchant of Venice. It's also a parody of Othello with a dash of Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" thrown in.

Being a Shakespearean parody, the book is fairly bawdy and uses a good bit of  archaic language. Being a Christopher Moore novel, there is a lot of humor. There is also some fool on dragon sex, for the sort of people who get turned on by that sort of thing.

I don't think this is Moore's best book, but it's good, and it's funny enough that I laughed out loud at several points. It's well worth reading.

Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Abberant

I really want to try to update this blog more often, so I'm going to do something I normally wouldn't--review a book that will probably get me into trouble. No, I don't think reviewing Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant is going to cause NSA thugs to kick my door down, but there is a strong chance that it will lead to my being harassed.

I'm not going to mention this person by name, because he may be an odious, little troll, but he does know how to find mentions of his name on the Internet.  I will mention that he runs "Lake Fossil Press"--hence the title of this anthology.  You can find his name by googling his press, and you can find anything you want about him by googling his name.

If you've done that, you've probably discovered that this"writer" and "editor" can't write or edit worth shit. He also likes to harass people. In this anthology, a lot of the people he harasses have gotten together to show that they can write better than him, put together a better anthology than he can, and sell more copies of their book than he's sold of all his books put together.

In doing so, they have put together a pretty good anthology. There are quite a few stories with thinly veiled versions of the troll in them.  My absolute favorite of those stories, and probably the anthology in general, was “Apartment B,” by Stinky Cat, which had me laughing out loud the whole time I was reading it. Jerrod Balzer's “Nat Poopcone vs. the Beast of Fossil Lake” was also very funny and weird. “What’s Your Beef?” by Mark Orr was also a good story of this type, though less of a humor story and more a tale of a gruesome demise.

Besides the stories with parodies of the troll, there are also quite a few regular works as well. There are two extracts from longer Ramsey Campbell works, which I now want to read. There is a cool weird fiction piece called “The Ziggurat of Skulls” by Joshua Dobson. There's a good fantasy story called “The Dank” by Doug Blakeslee. There are quite a few horror stores--too many to mention, really.

Overall, this is a good, diverse collection. It's well worth shelling out $2.99 to get this on your ereader.

Shatnerquest

It's been nearly a year since I reviewed Jeff Burk's Shatnerquake, and since he has a sequel out, it's time to review it. Shatnerquest isn't really a sequel in the sense that it continues the story of the previous book, and William Shatner isn't the main character in this as he was in Shatnerquake. This is a very odd sort of sequel that could almost not be a sequel if it wasn't for some passing references to the previous book in one of the scenes that Shatner appears in.

This book starts out at a Magic: The Gathering tournament at a media convention in Pennsylvania. Just as one of our heroes is about to lay some card-based smack down on a really obnoxious Klingon, the world ends. Giant flaming boulders rain down from the sky, and our three heroes and their cat are seemingly the only survivors. The heroes head home, only to discover that their hometown is being destroyed by Godzilla, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, and various other giant monsters. With nothing better to do, they head across country to save William Shatner.

Along the way, the have some weird adventures. Their obnoxious Klingon enemy returns as the head of a Klingon white supremacist biker gang. They meet a cult of cannibalistic James Kirk worshipers. There are zombie Borg, a gas station-attendant Dalek, and a steampunk town. Also, as anyone who has seen the book's cover can guess, Shatner has grown to gigantic size and become Shatzilla.

This was a really fun and funny bizarro romp. I liked it even more than the first one. I just hope that Jeff Burk realizes that no one takes duologies seriously, so he must now write a third Shatner book to make it a trilogy.

Little Death

I was lucky enough to get a copy of Thomas Kriebaum's Little Death from Library Thing's early reviewer program. It's a shortish graphic novel told in what is, I believe, called a "pantomime strip" format, i.e. with no dialogue.

The book contains fourteen multi-page stories and a few single panel ones. They all feature Little Death who is a toddler-sized skeleton dressed in a Blues Brothers-type suit. The stories center around him touching people and making them die. They are generally very funny, though I admit I'm still not sure exactly what the point was of number six.

If you're interested in lighthearted comics about a mini-grim reaper that are done in the style of older Mad Magazine comics, then this is the book for you. I enjoyed it, anyway.

The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction

I've met the Drunken Comic Book Monkeys twice, and each time I did, I bought a book from them. They run a local small press, and show up at the local HorrorFind convention and at some of the events at the York Emporium. This time, since I was at the Emporium's Sci-Fi Saturday, I picked up the Monkey's Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction, which is a sequel to their previous book, Scary Tales of Scariness.

Since I've only met them twice, I have no idea if the Drunken Comic Book Monkies are as drunken, clueless, and obnoxious in real life as there counterparts are in the stories that make up this book, but I doubt it. The plots of all the stories revolve around how Brian Chris, the aforementioned Monkeys, keep getting in and out of  trouble while being as obnoxious, idiotic, and drunken as possible. This leads to a lot of funny stuff.

They meet clones. They get shrunk. They battle robots. They go to the Earth's core and to the moon. They meet an invisible fan. They travel to an alternate reality. They find a time machine. They take part in parodies of The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Island of Doctor Moreau. They drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of chicken wings.

These are a bunch of absurd science fiction stories. While I wouldn't rank it with the works of Douglas Adams, it's a good choice for fans of science fiction and humor.

Bizarro Fiction Month Day 12: Night of the Assholes

The original Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite horror movies, so when I heard of Kevin L. Donihe's bizarro parody,  Night of the Assholes, I knew I'd have to read it, so it is going to be my review for day 12 of Bizarro Fiction Month.

Basically this book is a zombie novel. Only instead of people who are bitten by zombies and turning into zombies, people who are assholes to assholes turn into assholes.  All of this is done while more or less following the plot of Night of the Living Dead.

It all starts of with Barbara and her brother taking a trip. In this version, Barbara's brother is a Hare Krishna, and they're going to the mall instead of the cemetery.  AS you would expect, the brother is soon turned into an asshole, and Barbara runs. She ends up in the old farmhouse and soon meets Todd, the black guy who begins to board up every door and window in the place. They soon meet the various other characters from the movie: the young couple and the  (non-supernatural) asshole couple whose daughter has been turned. If you've seen the movie, you more or less know much of what is going to happen.

The book has a lot of funny moments. My favorite has to be when Barbara fist goes upstairs in the farmhouse and finds a note that reads, "THERE SHOULD BE A BLOODY SKELETON HERE. SORRY." I really loved the heck out of this book.

Bizarro Fiction Month Day 4: Jimmy Plush: Teddy Bear Detective

It's day 4 of Bizarro Fiction week here an the blog, and once again, I'm posting a review of a piece of bizarro fiction written by an author who I'll be reviewing again sometime later this month. This time, it's Garret Cook, whose Archelon Ranch I'll be reviewing sometime before the month ends. This time though, I'm taking a look at Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective.

Back when I was a kid, I used to love detective stories. These days, I don't read them so much except, for some cross genre stuff, like the Dresden Files. This makes  Jimmy Plush a good choice for me, because it is a bizarro detective short story collection (or at least an episodic novella posing as one). It's a good story, too. There's a lot of humor in it, even on the copyright page, which includes imaginary 50s era pulp magazine appearances for the stories.

The book is about a teddy bear detective named Jimmy Plush who used to be a human being named Hatbox. The two switched bodies in exchange for the original Jimmy Plush covering the original Hatbox's gambling debts.  Of course, the original Plush is actually evil and becomes the new Plush's archnemesis.

The whole world of this book is strange. It's full of criminal furries, living versions of normally inanimate objects, giants, martians, zuvembies, and that kind of thing.  The stories tell the story of how Jimmy plush battles various weirdos and like a Fu Machu-wannabe crime boss, who isn't really Chinese, or another crime boss who is a living Kewpie Doll, or a mad scientist with an army of zuvembies.

This book is funny enough that I actually laughed out loud several times while reading it.

The Spy Who Drank Blood by Gordon Linzer

The Spy Who Drank Blood is an interesting fantasy/horror/mystery type book from the mid-80s. As you can probably guess from the title, it's about a secret agent who is also a vampire. Since the book is from the 80s, it isn't one of those lame sparkly vampires, or a tragic, brooding antihero, or the love interest of some woman who secretly battles the forces of darkness. Being the protagonist means he isn't a crazed monster either, but he is more interesting than these pathetic vampires that infest the genre today.

Blood, as the hero is called, is a vampire mostly in the traditional mold; he drinks blood, casts no reflection, can turn into mist or a bat or a wolf, can control certain animals, has hypnotic eyes, and can't cross running water.  He works for a secret government agency called the Office.

His boss's daughter is a reporter for a supermarket tabloid and is in Florida investigating skunk ape sightings. She gets kidnapped by some domestic terrorists, and then kidnapped from them by the skunk ape. Blood gets sent in to sort the whole thing out.

This book combines action, humor, horror, and a little science fiction very well.  If you can dis up a copy of this out-of-print book, you should do so.

The Coming of Bill, by P. G. Wodehouse

One of things I really like about LibraryThing is that it enabled me to discover that there was an Overlook Press edition of a P. G. Wodehouse novel I didn't already own: The Coming of Bill. It's not his best book, but it isn't his worst by any means.

It's very different from his usual style. The back cover describes it as "The nearest Wodehouse ever came to writing a serious story," which is essentially true. Two characters die in the story. A couple gets together, gets married, has a baby, nearly gets divorced, and the gets back together again. In many ways, it's a sort of social commentary.

That's not to say that it isn't funny, because it is funny. There were several places where I laughed out loud. There are several of Wodehouse's standard character types: a butler (in this case Keggs who appeared in several other Wodehouse books), a meddling aunt, a boxer, and a business tycoon. This book has much to recommend it.

It's not quite as funny as some of Wodehouse's better known works, but it still is funny. The story is more serious than is typical for Wodehouse, but not detrimentally so. Really, The Coming of Bill deserves four and a halfyo-yos.

Hal Spacejock, by Simon Haynes

The only bad thing I have to say about Hal Spacejock is that it's going to cost me $18 to pick up the second volume in the series. I'll still do it though, because this was a great book.

It's very funny. I laughed out loud several times while reading (so it's probably a good thing I didn't bring it with me to read at the doctor's office the other day, because who knows what they would have thought). It's also a great adventure story with lots of action and adventure and explosions, and a few fires, and some radioactive gunk, and a lots of other cool stuff. I'm going to go ahead and say that I agree with Tom Holt's blurb on the front cover; This is better that Red Dwarf.

Sure, the main character's kind of a jerk and a total incompetent, but that's okay, because he's a lovable incompetent jerk. Hal Spacejock kind of like Homer Simpson in space, only funnier and way more macho. I give this book the full five yo-yos.

Cool email & cool snail mail

I got two interesting things today. I got my package from joining the Hal Spacejock support crew, and found an autographed copy of the first Hal Spacejock book inside. :) Thanks, Simon. It's now next on my reading list after I finish Eragon.

Also, I just preordered a copy of the Ask a Ninja DVD, and recieved the coolest order confirmation ever:

Dear Nathan,

You have chosen to risk life and limb to pre-order the Ask A Ninja Volume 1 DVD. You have earned Film Baby's eternal respect for your obvious bravery.

A messenger just tip-toe'd over to the Ninja's office and whispered to him in his sweetest voice that you'd REALLY like one of his DVDs. He said to tell you that he'll send it to you, and he looks forward to killing you soon. And then he killed the messenger.

Provided the Ninja doesn't kill US first, we'll ship your DVD the moment it arrives at our warehouse. We'll send you another email to WARN you that a NINJA is on its way to your house. You'll be hearing from us again shortly. Until then, perhaps you'd like to browse our catalog of ALL INDEPENDENT films, docs, shorts, instructional videos, and features. Browse here:
www.filmbaby.com

Thanks for supporting independent entertainment!

Your new friends at Film Baby

It looks like it'll be a cool DVD, and even without seeing it yet, I recommend buying it. It's only $20 + shipping, so go here and get it, and maybe the Ninja will kill you soon.

Hal Spacejock Support Crew

I always like trying to get free stuff, and the Hal Spacejock books actually look interesting. Unfortunately they don't seem to be available in the US (okay, Amazon has used copies, buy $25 for the first one and $18 for the second is a bit more than I want to pay). Anyway, without further ado I present the meme:


I joined Hal Spacejock's Support Crew

I didn't pay anything,
I didn't sign anything,
and I didn't read the fine print.
Just like Hal!

No space pilot can exist in a vacuum (hah!), and behind every successful pilot there's a talented and dedicated support crew.

Hal Spacejock is one of the least successful space pilots in the history of the galaxy, and a worldwide support crew is needed just to get him off the ground.

Join now for free Hal Spacejock goodies!
| Join the team | - - - - - - - - - | Hal who? |

Hal Spacejock ... Après moi le wreckage

Seer's Digest, by Michael "Mookie" Terracciano

Okay, so I got a copy of Dominic Deegan One and a Half yesterday, aka Seer's Digest. If you read my review of Crystal Clear, you know I've been waiting for this one.

There's no point in going into how great a series I think Dominic Deegan is. If you want to hear about that, read the review of Crystal Clear or the review of the web comic. For now, I'll say that it's a damn great web comic. It's one of the few web comics I read that I'm pretty sure I'll keep reading as long as it's still being written. I can't say the same for the other comics else I've reviewed. Yes, I still read Dr. McNinja and the InqTales stuff, but there's another I've given up on.

I don't even read Sorcery 101 anymore, because the writing (which was never all that great) just keeps going downhill. After the "action" in the last story ended, the Kell Hound spent 15 pages explaining to a newly made werewolf what it's like being a werewolf. 15 pages of people talking with no jokes and the only action being reviving a friendly vampire. whoopdie do. At three pages a week that equals five weeks of not a damn thing happening. She just really needs to work on her pacing, and dialogue, and spelling, and grammar (and stop ranting like a petulant child when someone dares to criticize her).

Anyway, to get back on track, Seer's Digest is great. This contains all the Dominic Deegan stories from the beginning through chapter nine. There's also some neat little filler artwork placed in to fill up what would otherwise be blank spaces. There's a cool afterword by Mookie, and a brief bio of him. The last page tells us that volume two is coming soon, and it can't come soon enough for me. The only real downside to this volume is that since it's self published, you won't find it at Amazon and your local bookstore probably won't have it either. That's not much of a problem since you can order it direct from Mookie for a measly $23. Go on, do it now, because Seer's Digest gets a full five yo-yos.

Yummy!

I had another quick read yesterday: a. Lee Martinez's Gil's All Fright Diner. It's a strange little books with a vampire, a werewolf, some ghosts, some ghouls, some zombies, the Necronomicon, and a horny teenager.

It's a pretty darn good book. There were several places where I actually laughed out loud while reading it--usually that only happens with Wodehouse, Pratchett, and Adams. I thought having the villain be a teenage witch who manipulates people with sex appeal as much as magic was a very good (and funny) idea. The two main characters, Duke (the werewolf) and Earl (the vampire), are very interesting characters, though I find their almost constant bickering somewhat grating. Also, I think that use of the Necronomicon, even in a comedy like this, is getting way too cliched. Still, this is a very good book.

While I don't think this is quite as good as say Terry Pratchett's Discworld, it's pretty damn good. If you like comic fantasy (or horror, you should read this. I give Gil's All Fright Diner four yo-yos.

A new ALbum

Well, I finally received the copy of Weird Al's Straight Outta Lynwood. I'm writing this as I listen to, so here are my thoughts on the tracks:

1 White & Nerdy –I've actually heard this one already, because the video for it premiered online last week. Still, I really like it. Like most of the parodies on this CD, I don't know the original (“Ridin'” by Chamillionaire) at all. Still, it is funny. It hits just about every nerd joke imaginable.

2 Pancreas –It's educational (I guess). I'm not very thrilled with this one. I just don't think it's all that funny. The style seems to be an amalgam of assorted old-timey styles. I think.

3 Canadian Idiot—Making fun of Canadians is always fun, though not as much fun as mocking the French. This parody of Green Day's “American Idiot” is more of a parody of America's Canada bashing. It's pretty good.

4 I'll Sue Ya—This is a funny original about our litigious society.

5 Polkarama!—Before I listened to this, I wanted to say, “Al, you've done about a zillion of these dumb polka medleys. Give it a rest already.” Listening to it really didn't change my mind. It doesn't help that I don't know any of the songs Al uses.

6 Virus Alert—This is pretty funny. It's about an evil “Stinky Cheese” virus that does all kinds of silly things, like forwarding your porn collection to your grandma and creating a hole in the fabric of space/time.

7 Confessions Part III—This is a parody of Usher's “Confessions Part II.” I don't know that one either. I really have to listen to more popular music. This one is pretty funny, too. These confessions are extremely silly and bizarre, like I “Really like to dress up like Shirley Temple and spank myself with a hockey stick.”

8 Weasel Stomping Day—I saw the video for this one on Cartoon Network's Robot chicken the day before the album was released. It's pretty funny, and it has a nice tune, but it promotes cruelty to animals. I know it's a joke—and a pretty funny one at that—but still, don't stomp on weasels, kiddies.

9 Close But No Cigar—This has a nice tune too. Thematically, it reminds me of Al's “Good Enough For Now.” It's pretty funny, but it's an awful lot like something he's done before. P. S. Mama Cass didn't actually choke to death on a sandwich;that's just an urban legend.

10 Do I Creep you Out—This is a parody of “Do I Make You Proud” by Taylor Hicks. This is a song about a pretty creepy stalker type, like in Al's previous song, “Melonie.” Again, it's good, but not terribly original.

11 Trapped In The Drive-Thru—This is a parody of “Trapped in the Closet” by R. Kelly. After about the first three minutes, I felt like screaming, “Please Dear Lord, Let it End!” Then it kept going on for another seven minutes.

12 Don't Download This Song—This one has been available for download for weeks. It's a good song, though.

This isn't just a regular CD: it's a DualDisc. That means there's a DVD on the other side. So here's my take on the DVD side:

It has the complete album in 5.1 Surround Sound, PCM Stereo, and Instrumental/Karaoke. Since I don't have Surround Sound or stereo, I took a quick listen to the Instrumentals. It uses some nice background pictures of a young Al.

There are also videos for all of the original songs on the album. As I mentioned, I've seen the videos for “Don't Download This Song” and “Weasel Stomping Day.” I liked them both, especially “Weasel Stomping Day.” The video for “I'll Sue Ya” is even better than the song, because the animated Al just looks so darn angry. “Close But No Cigar” features a cat and was animated by the creator of Ren '& Stimpy, which really says a lot. I didn't really like the song “Pancreas” all that much, but the video was OK. It used a lot of really weird stock footage. “Virus Alert” was freaky as heck, and featured a brief cameo by Dubya. I loved it!

Finally, there's a documentary called “Al In The Studio.” It's pretty standard making-of type video. I can't really think of anything else to say about it.

I loved the videos. I thought the songs were a mixed bag. Some I liked. Some I knew I'd like once I listened to them a few more times. Some I know I'll never listen to again (the polka). Add it all up, and this is a pretty good album. I give Straight Outta Lynwood four yo-yos. Expect a review of Hello Radio: The Songs of They Might Be Giants later today.

Worst Book Ever

No, I'm not reviewing The Eye of Argon. I'm reviewing the worst book by my favorite writer: P. G. Wodehouse's Not George Washington. Of course, Wodehouse can't take all the blame for this one; it was coauthored by Herbert Westbrook.

Wodehouse's books are usually very funny. They're full of clever wordplay, convoluted plots, and and lovable characters. Not George Washington doesn't have any of that. I only laughed once while reading the thing, and that was in the next-to-last chapter. The wordplay is not even remotely clever, in fact it's almost non-existent. The plot is slightly convoluted, but nowhere up to the usual Wodehouse standards. Quite frankly, I almost hated the main character, James Cloyster, because he's boring and a scoundrel. Trying to marry one woman when you're engaged to another is not the sort of behavior one expects from a Wodehousian hero.

This really isn't a good book at all. At best it's painfully mediocre. I can only recommend it to Wodehouse enthusiasts who want to collect copies of all of his works. Everyone else should steer clear. I can only give Not George Washington 3 yo-yos, and that's being generous.

A little Recklessness can be a good thing

I've finished reading another P. G. Wodehouse book, Jill the Reckless. This is a much, much nicer edition than the version of Love Among the Chickens I reviewed a little while ago. That's not very surprising, since Love was a cheap edition put out by a vanity press or POD or something. Jill, on the other hand is a beautiful collector's edition put out by Overlook Press. (For some reason Amazon doesn't have a copy of the nice cover, so I'm including a picture of it that I downloaded from the publisher.)

Besides having a nice cover, the book is well put together, and surprisingly cheap (less than $20 for a hardcover). I definitely want to get more of the Overlook editions of Wodehouse, but unfortunately, all the other editions they have are of books I already own in other editions, so I'll have to wait. They are planning to republish all of Wodehouse's works, but they're currently doing it at a rate of two books per year, which means that by the time they're finished I'll be in my sixties or seventies.

Jill the Reckless is the story of Jill Mariner, a head strong young girl, who heads to America and becomes a chorus girl after she is dumped by her rich fiancee. As is always the case in Wodehouse stories, she meets the true love of her life and things end happily. It's a great book, and it's definitely one of the best Wodehouse books I've read outside of his Jeeves and Blandings series. I give it 5 yo-yos.

Up next, in fact quite possibly later tonight, I'll be reviewing Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

Weirdness

I've been fond of the music of Weird Al Yankovic ever since I was a kid. I was also a fan of his short lived 1997 Saturday morning show, The Weird Al Show. Of course, I wasn't a kid then--I was 22 when in premiered--but I still had a fondness for Saturday morning TV and for Al. Which is a good thing, because it was a great show.

Now it's available on a 3 disc DVD set containing all 13 episodes. The show is similar to Pee Wee's Playhouse, though I don't like comparing Al to Pee Wee, since Al's never been caught spanking the monkey in a porno movie theater.

The basic plot is like this: Al is a TV show host who lives in a cave with his pet hamster. He has all sorts of wacky friends, like The Hooded Avenger and Val Brentwood - Gal Spy. In each episode, Al learns a valuable lesson with the help of these (and other) friends. He also watches TV a lot, with short parodies substituting for TV shows (the Fred Huggins show stuff is hilarious). He makes really gross foods, and Harvey the Wonder Hamster does the occasional death-defying stunt. He has a cartoon called Fat Man about an overweight, and rather dim witted, superhero and his hyper-intelligent hamster sidekick.

About the only thing that dates show are the musical guests. He had one just about every few episodes, but unfortunately they were bands designed to appeal to kids, and as such bands often do, they have largely faded into obscurity. The only one I still remember is Hanson, and the only thing I remember about them is that I though they were one of those lame-ass boy bands who were designed primarily to separate prepubescent girls from their money.

The has-been bands don't really detract from the series. The only thing is annoying is the fact that they've included all the show breaks (the WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK stuff), which gets old after the first episode. Despite that, I still give The Weird Al Show 4.5 yo-yos.




Note 10/06/06: I eventually listened to the commentary on the shows. It was very informative, but got a bit racy in points. I wouldn't recommend letting young children listen to the commentary. Not that I expect they'd want to.

Are We Clear On This?

Well, I finally received my copy of Crystal Clear: Dominic Deegan Volume One from Amazon.

Dominic Deegan is my favorite web comic, and this book contains its first 100 strips. It runs up until the one where Luna decides to be Dominic's Assistant. We meet several important characters in the book: Dominic, Sparks, Siggy, Luna, Stunt, and Bumper. Really, it's a great book with strips from a truly excellent comic. (For my review of Dominic Deegan, see here.)

I've got to give it 5 yo-yos, but I don't actually recommend buying it. Mookie has created a Dominic Deegan One and a Half with the first nine chapters of Dominic Deegan--this book has the first 3. So far, he's only sold it at OTAKON, but I expect it'll be available from the Seer's Catalogue sometime next month (after Mookie completes his move to Texas).

Buck Buck Buck Buck Buck

I am a big fan of P. G. Wodehouse, and not surprisingly, I loved Love Among the Chickens. Unfortunately, this particular edition leaves something to be desired.

It's published by IndyPublish.com, which judging by their website, is a vanity press. Of course, Love Among the Chickens, is out of copyright here in the US, so anybody can publish a new edition if they want to. I just wish they'd put a little effort into it. This edition is seems to be culled from the Project Gutenberg version and they . They did remove all the introductory legal bits Gutenberg adds, but unfortunately that seems to be all the editing that went into it. Project Gutenberg distributes most of their books in plain text formats--ASCII in this case. That means they can't show things like italics . Instead they use backslashes to represent it--like /this/. Unfortunately, whoever edited this book was too lazy or stupid to replace the back slashes with italics. This was extremely annoying.

The actual story is terrific and very funny. This was the first story, and only novel, featuring that classic Wodehouse dreamer and schemer, Ukridge. In this book, Ukridge tries to make money by starting a chicken farm, despite the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about chickens or agriculture. The book is narrated by Ukridge's writer friend, Garnet, who gets lugged into the scheme. Garnet falls in love with a neighbor of the farm, and has some comic misadventures while wooing her.

It's not Wodehouse's best book, but it's not his worst book either. Really, even Wodehouse's worst book would still be pretty damn good. Still, I can't recommend this edition. There are several others available (as I said it is out of copyright). I wish I had bought one of the others, as some are actually cheaper. I just hope their better edited. While the story itself is great, I can only give this edition 4 yo-yos because of the poor editing.