I Evoke Brow 35: In Honor of Beezer’s Successor, Stanley Cup Champion Mike Richter

Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman

Flippant and darkly humorous. Evocative of Hiassen, Christopher Moore, and Douglas Adams–where Hiaasen uses animals and wildmen or Adams has fun with aliens, the better to point out humanity’s foibles, Moore and Gaiman invoke magic (or gods, if you don’t categorize gods as such). Anansi Boys’s main character, Fat Charlie is strongly reminiscent of Adams’s Arthur Dent or the protagonist of Moore’s A Dirty Job (name escapes me at the moment–was he another Charlie?) Not as rich and layered as his awesome–in both the archaic and current senses of the word–American Gods, it’s more of a light read (which puts it even closer to the above authors.) The twists are pretty heavy handed but the plot skips along nicely.

Not great but very good. It passed the “I’m going to ignore other needs–including sleep–until I finish the last chunk of this book” test, always a good sign. 7/10

Restating Thomas Kuhn (Sort Of)

I love this quote:

• Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

• Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

• Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt