#7 - Lamb by Christopher Moore

#7 - Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

Mankind, I suppose, is designed to run on—to be motivated by—temptation. If progress is a virtue then this is our greatest gift. (For what is curiosity if not intellectual temptation? And what progress is there without curiosity?) - Levi bar Alphaeus, aka Biff.

After a long, long, long time reading this novel, I have finally completed my seventh book of the year. Given that I should at the very least be at 12 by now, my ability to reach fifty two books on the year is rapidly approaching a rather unfriendly level: unlikely at best. No less, given that I finally have completed this novel, the question isn't "how likely is it that I will reach my goal of 52 books in a year?" but this: what did I think of book #7?

Given that I had recently completed another novel by Christopher Moore (A Dirty Job in fact), I knew I was a fan of his writing. He has a talent for both making humor that is entirely organic and emotion that isn't saccharine in any way, and given the subject matter of Lamb, I could hardly wait to see how he would accomplish these goals. What is Lamb about you ask? It's the story of Jesus' best friend named Biff and the 30 years of life that the existing gospels do not cover. The story begins with an Angel named Raziel being tasked to collect Biff and to get him to write his own gospel, as it is now time for the earlier part of Christ's life to be told.

The story is incredibly interesting and nearly constantly funny, with Biff being one of the single best characters I've ever read. His loyalty and levity in nearly every situation is uncanny, and incredible traits for a character. Moore sets Biff and Jesus' relationship up as any normal best friend relationship would be - lots of lewdness, jabs, sarcasm (see, Biff invented sarcasm and irony...probably why I love the guy so much), and punches exchanged, but all in good fun. Their relationship is the backbone of the entire book, and the best sections work because of Moore's incredible ability to bring this unlikely pair to life.

The story takes you from the beginning, where Biff and Joshua (Jesus' name in Hebrew) first meet as Joshua is performing minor miracles involving a recently deceased lizard, all the way to the end with the crown of thorns, the cross, and the whole nine as Biff schemes to save his best friend up until the end. With that said, the beginning and the end are nothing without the journey, and this is one that is well worth reading, giving us new views on the apostles, Biff and Joshua's saga to meet up with the three wise men for the purposes of tutelage, and the creation of an incredible amount of things (besides the aforementioned sarcasm and irony, Biff is directly involved with the invention of the modern version of coffee, the thought that the world is round, pencils, and on top of that we get to see how the concept of Easter came into fruition - it's a classic and worth reading the book for that single aspect).

Really, it's the ultimate coming of age tale, as we get to see Joshua's gradual acceptance of the fact that he is the Messiah and everything that turns him into such a singuarly selfless human being. The mere fact that his best friend is quite often the most selfish human being on the planet is more of Biff's precious irony, and gives us a wondrous yin and yang relationship between the two. It's a remarkably funny tale, albeit one obviously tinged with copious amounts of sadness (the final hundred pages or so are quite somber...obviously) and raunch (Biff is very, very obsessed with the opposite sex).

As long as you can deal with a story with quite a bit of raunch and don't mind a pinch (just a smidge) of what some would consider minor amounts of blasphemy, you should enjoy this story thoroughly. I think this book is a must read if only to see the section of the book where Joshua first tries coffee and goes on a mass blessing/healing rampage. It sounds entertaning, but Moore is such a talented comic writer, it transcends the conceptual limitation (what little there is) and is one of the funniest bits I've ever seen in print.

After reading this, I know this for sure. Christopher Moore is one of the funniest writers I've ever read. Not only that, but he has a rare gift of taking massively outlandish concepts and grounding them in a realism that makes the story not only believable but incredibly genuine. Although I may have liked A Dirty Job slightly more, Lamb is not to be missed.

Also, one final note: my copy of the book looks exactly like the Bible. Reading it in public seemed to give people this esteem in who I was, even earning me a couple of nods while reading at local coffee shops. Sorry to disappoint folks, but I was actually reading something you'd think was absolutely horrible and mostly sacrilege towards the real Bible. My bad!

Literary Rush

So continuing on my reading tear, I recently finished two Sci-Fi ish books that were very solid and quite spectacular respectively.

The former book was Cory Doctorow's (of blog extraordinare Boing Boing fame) Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It was a quality book which conceptually was a ten, but in actuality turned out to be more of an 8 or so. It was a story based in the somewhat distant future, a time when all disease, death, and poverty have been eradicated.

Quick aside about one of the concepts Doctorow created in this book. Value based economies of today have been replaced by a kind of merit based economy which is given the name Whuffie. This concept is probably the most interesting one found within the book, as it proposes the idea that what a person has and can get (not to mention overal appearance and apparent condition) is based entirely around this Whuffie. For example, if your Whuffie is low, it means respect for you is low, or even if you have a lot of it, it could be coming from sources that have low Whuffie in their own right, thus making it low also. If your Whuffie is low and you try and stay in a hotel, you would likely get a room that has a tiny bed and almost no space to relax in. If you have high Whuffie, you'll likely be staying in a suite of some sort. That's enough of that for now.

Anyways, the plot of the book follows the protagonist Julius as he tries to uncover the mystery behind his death, while trying to save his beloved Liberty Square rides in Disney World (now a veritable post-modern day Mecca for the Internet obsessed and the culturally preoccupied) from the evil Debra and her team of Ad-Hocs. These people may or may not be plotting to remove the old school charm from the rides and replace them with impersonal (yet intriguing and well liked) aspects, and may or may not have killed Julius to help them accomplish that. He is joined by his best friend Keep On Truckin' Dan and his girlfriend Lil in their attempt to save the honor of the Magic Kingdom.

It's a rather bizarre book that once again, is great conceptually, but falls short due to a couple of reasons: occasionally scattershot narrative and despicable characters. Julius is an amusing and definitely interesting protagonist, but due to where his character arc takes him, he is awfully hard to like. His girlfriend Lil and virtually everyone else in the story are also very hard to like, as they more often than not choose the opposite of what you the reader would typically want them to do. The one character who is seemingly redeemable (Dan) is dampened a bit by the fact that his primary arc is his attempt to get his Whuffie back up so he can kill himself while back on top. Odd stuff.

The narrative as I said is rather scattershot, with it being difficult to follow at times and dissipating entirely for occasional 2 to 3 page tangents which do very little to progress the storyline. They can be interesting details to the characters lives, especially our peek into Julius' previous marriage, but at the same time it did feel as if the time could be used more effectively.

Yet even with those downfalls, the book is a joy to read even with the bummer characters because they are very funny in their own self depricating way. Also, Doctorow pulls off some of the more bizarre concepts that I've read, including believably having characters smoke crack as a social drug, akin to alcohol or smoking today. This type of strange humor really make the pages fly by, even when the plot may be stalling. I'd say I recommend it, but with reservations. If you like your humor a little on the odd side and you dig interesting views of the future, this book is definitely for you.

The other book I just completed (and by just I mean just 3 hours ago) was John Scalzi's novel The Android's Dream. Sadly, I received this book the previous Christmas, and I just now finished it. It is truly sad that it took me that long to read it, as this was an excellent book. It juggled a wide variety of characters in an intricate plot involving interplanetary politics, revenge plots, religous zealots, a variety of Aliens, a new sentient race, and one really awesome former soldier/hacker and current "bearer of bad news" for Alien races.

I recently saw the movie Enchanted (excellent by the way) and noticed on its IMDB page that it had something like eight different genres listed for it. Dream manages to tie even more than that into one extremely entertaining and exhilirating novel. It was probably the fastest 400 page read I've ever experienced.

I would go into more detail about this one, but I'd prefer it if the readers of this page would just pick this one up at the library or your local bookseller to read on your own. It's definitely an experience I recommend for anyone, as it is very entertaining. If you do pick it up, try not be thrown off by the first two chapters. Just because they involve an assassination by way of gas (the type that comes from your insides instead of the type that comes from tanks and vials held by villains) does not mean the rest of the book will be like that whatsoever.

I have to admit, the entire time reading this book, I kept thinking "man, I bet this would make an awesome movie." I don't believe there are any plans to turn it into a film, but if any book has called for it, this one definitely would. I would say if it reminds me of anything, it reminds me of a more political and obviously based in the future James Bond novel as written by Douglas Adams. How does that not seem cool?

Turns out Mr. Scalzi writes a fairly entertaining blog as well, which is entitled Whatever. I recommend checking it out here. The Christmas post is very entertaining, and something I'm sure many people would understand.

Scalzi and Doctorow actually have ties to each other, and as you will possibly see Scalzi's second post directly quotes a post Doctorow made on Boing Boing, and he also thanked him in the front of Dream. I have an amazing ability to constantly read books that are similar to each other or seem to have ties to each other without really attempting to do this. It's uncanny.

Last bit here, up next I have A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, which is a story about how a young widow and father becomes the Angel of Death. This book comes with the Brian Charbonneau stamp of approval, and he claimed to laugh throughout it. I'm 40 pages in and have smiled a good amount, having been robbed of my ability to laugh by the dreaded Dentist. Damn you Dentist...damn you! No less, the saga continues. Cannot quit this reading addiction!