Finally, a modern relationship book for the modern relationship.

What Do We Do Now? is an R-rated, utterly honest Q&A book culled from the best and funniest questions posed by Keith and the Girl devotees, including:

• My boyfriend joined the military and is being shipped off for an unknown amount of time. I’m young and I want to move on. Am I a bad person?
• Why does my boyfriend always adjust himself in public?
• My wife dresses like a slut. How do I make her stop?
• My boyfriend’s number one friend on MySpace is his ex. Should I be concerned?

With he-said, she-said advice that is both raw and honest, What Do We Do Now? is sure to appeal to the podcast’s legion of fans, and attract a brand-new audience tired of the tried-and-not-so-true relationship manuals.

I’m not gonna lie.  If you are easily offended or the slightest bit prudish, don’t read this book.  But if you can look at life with a sense of humor and aren’t afraid of some cuss words and frank talk about sex and relationships, then you should pick up this book. I’ve been listening to Keith and the Girl’s podcasts for almost a year and the chemistry that makes them so good in audio and on-screen makes them just as good on paper. They tackle topics that range from handling money and household issues to inner and outer beauty to sex and kink to marriage, in-laws, and kids. There’s no conventional wisdom here, just straight talk, simple answers, and plenty of laughs.

Other reviews:

Ashley’s Library: What Do We Do Now? – Keith and the Girl

Page count: 256 | Approximate word count: 64,000

2009: Soul Catcher (Michael C. White)
2008: Twilight (Stephenie Meyer)
2007: Full House (Janet Evanovich)
2006: Judgement in Death (J.D. Robb)
2005: The Sigma Protocol (Robert Ludlum)

Used in these Challenges: The Four Month Challenge; Countdown Challenge 2010; 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; 2010 Pub Challenge; New Author Challenge 2010; Pages Read Challenge Season 2; TwentyTen Challenge;

The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally—well, to be accurate, artificially—business is booming at the local blues bar. Trouble is, those lonely slide-guitar notes have also attracted a colossal sea beast named Steve with, shall we say, a thing for explosive oil tanker trucks. Suddenly, morose Pine Cove turns libidinous and is hit by a mysterious crime wave, and a beleaguered constable has to fight off his own gonzo appetites to find out what’s wrong and what, if anything, to do about it.

This was my favorite of the three Pine Cove books.  Here we get what Moore does best — a colorful cast of characters mired in an extremely unusual situation.  In this case, there’s a mysterious sea beast in town, making the newly un-drugged residents of Pine Cove somewhat… amorous. Constable Theo Crowe knows *something* is going on, but he’s not too sure what.  All he knows is that he doesn’t believe housewife Bess Leander killed herself, and it’s up to him to find out who really killed her. The only one who really has an idea of what is going on is mostly-out-of-her-mind ex-B-movie-queen Molly Michon, and who’s going to believe her? This is the Moore I first enjoyed with A Dirty Job.

Audiobook length: 8 hrs 45 min | Word count: 80,680

2009: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)
2008: One Mississippi (Mark Childress)
2007: Deal Breaker (Harlan Coben)
2006: Witness in Death (J.D. Robb)
2005: Ceremony in Death (J.D. Robb)

Used in these Challenges: The Four Month Challenge; 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; Audiobook Challenge; TwentyTen Challenge;

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years — except Biff, the Messiah’s best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior’s pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there’s no one who loves Josh more — except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala — and Biff isn’t about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.

I thought this was pretty good, and not nearly as sacrilegious as I thought it might be. When we meet Joshua (Jesus) at a young age he is already quite aware of who he is and who his father is, amusing his younger brother by bringing dead lizards back to life (his ability to reanimate is a recurring theme). Biff is quite likeable, if misguided at times, and is thoroughly devoted to Josh — something that is readily apparent by the end of the story.  There’s no big surprise about how it ends, but the middle is wholly original. Josh and Biff’s journey to find the three wise men who witnessed his birth has a touch of The Christmas Carol in it, as Josh learns something new about himself with each adventure. This is definitely one of Moore’s stronger novels.

Other reviews:

an adventure in reading: BOOK: Lamb by Christopher Moore
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Look At That Book: Review: Lamb – Christopher Moore
A Hoyden’s Look at Literature: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff

Page count: 444 | Word count: 148,137

2009: Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (Diana Gabaldon)
2008: Lord John and the Private Matter (Diana Gabaldon)
2007: No Second Chance (Harlan Coben)
2006: Lost Innocents (Patricia MacDonald)
2005: 3rd Degree (James Patterson)

Used in these Challenges: Countdown Challenge 2010; 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; Reading From My Shelves Project; Pages Read Challenge Season 2; TwentyTen Challenge;

Book #133 was Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore.  The back of the book reads:

Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley Dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching back, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her.

Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that’s where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door…and proceeds to rock Tommy’s life — and afterlife — in ways he never thought possible.

Now this is the Christopher Moore I initially raved about.  This is light and irreverent and a lot of fun. The main characters are likeable and the supporting cast strong.  The "Animals", Tommy’s fellow night-shifters at the Safeway, seemed like precursors to the "Nerd Herd" on Chuck. Moore explores some of the little talked about side effects of becoming a vampire, like having to quit your job and figuring out what to do when your car gets towed and you can’t retrieve it in the daytime. Then again, it’s hard to beat the perks of perfect skin and superhuman strength.  This is the first book of a series, and we’ll definitely be listening to You Suck sometime this year.

Other reviews:

Christopher Moore: Bloodsucking Fiends – Book Review
REVIEW: Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story by Christopher Moore
Ace and Hoser Blook: Bloodsucking Fiends

Audiobook length: 9hrs 18min | Approximate word count: 76,000

2007: Side Effects (Michael Palmer)

Used in these Challenges: none

Take a wonderfully crazed excursion into the demented heart of a tropical paradise—a world of cargo cults, cannibals, mad scientists, ninjas, and talking fruit bats. Our bumbling hero is Tucker Case, a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy’s body, who makes a living as a pilot for the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation. But when he demolishes his boss’s pink plane during a drunken airborne liaison, Tuck must run for his life from Mary Jean’s goons. Now there’s only one employment opportunity left for him: piloting shady secret missions for an unscrupulous medical missionary and a sexy blond high priestess on the remotest of Micronesian hells. Here is a brazen, ingenious, irreverent, and wickedly funny novel from a modern master of the outrageous.

This was better than the last few Christopher Moore books we’ve listened to.  In this book, we meet Tucker Case, who also appears in Moore’s later book, The Stupidest Angel.  Tucker gets himself in a bit of trouble when he takes a drunken joyride in one of his employers jets with a beautiful lady.  About $2 million in damages later, Tucker’s lost his pilot’s license.  When he’s approached by some supposed missionaries wanting to hire him to pilot their jet back and forth from their Micronesian island and Japan, it’s an offer he can’t refuse (at least, not if he wants to fly again).  Unfortunately, when Tuck gets to the island, it doesn’t take long for him to realize that everything isn’t as it seems.  People are getting hurt in the name of cash, and Tuck can’t be a part of it.  He really has to step outside of himself and take on some major challenges to save these innocent island people.  Tuck isn’t a particularly likable character at first (really, he’s a screw-up), but by the end of the book he’s grown into someone who can be proud of himself.  Even if he did steal a 747.

Other reviews:

Christopher Moore – Island of the Sequined Love Nun
Ace and Hoser Blook: Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Audiobook length: 11hrs 39min | Word count: 106,804

2007: Geek Love (Katherine Dunn)

Used in these Challenges: none

Fred is not your ordinary mermaid. She’s not blonde. She’s not buxom. And she’s definitely not perky. In fact, Fred can be downright cranky. And it doesn’t help matters that her hair is blue.

While volunteering at the New England Aquarium, Fred learns that there are weird levels of toxins in the local seawater. A gorgeous marine biologist wants her help investigating. So does her merperson ruler, the High Prince of the Black Sea. You’d think it would be easy for a mermaid to get to the bottom of things. Think again.

This was a quick fun read, but it suffers from one glaring problem – Fred is basically Betsy (of the Undead series) with fins and without the love for shoes. If you’ve read any of that series, it’s really difficult to read this without Betsy’s voice in your head. Despite the voice problems, Fred is a unique character, a half human and half mermaid who works in the only natural choice for a hybrid mermaid – at an aquarium. When she has to figure out who is polluting Boston Harbor (and therefore, oceans everywhere), she ends up with not one, but two love interests.  It’s their interactions that will keep you reading.

Other reviews:
Bitten by Books » Sleeping With The Fishes by MaryJanice Davidson
ReadingAdventures: Sleeping with the Fishes by Mary Janice Davidson

Page count: 304 | Word count: 39,957

2007: True Evil (Greg Iles)

Used in these Challenges: Random Reading Challenge; Countdown Challenge 2010;

From master of subversive humor Christopher Moore comes a quirky, irreverent novel of love, myth, metaphysics, outlaw biking, angst, and outrageous redemption.

As a boy, he was Samson Hunts Alone — until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love — in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid — and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam…and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.

I have to admit that despite my love for A Dirty Job, I’m not a big fan of Moore’s earlier works. Not only are some characters reused (which I don’t really have a problem with — nothing wrong with recurring characters!), he uses some of the same stereotypes in every book, it seems.  There’s always a mostly-high surfer dude. There’s always a cantankerous (and probably homely) old lady. And of course, the earnest (if sometimes misguided) main character.  I think what really rubbed me wrong in this book was Coyote himself.  I know he is supposed to be a "trickster" spirit, but I found him more mean-spirited than anything.  Especially when he steals Sam’s car, sells it, and gambles away his bank account.  I think you’re supposed to find his naiveté endearing, but I didn’t.  I’ll keep reading (or rather, listening) to Moore’s books, but mostly because they’re what my husband wants to hear.

Other reviews:

What Cheesy Reads: Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore
Books & other thoughts: Coyote Blue
Puss Reboots: Did I Think of That?

Audio length: 10 hrs 20 min | Approximate word count: 80,000

2007: Birds of a Feather (Jacqueline Winspear)
2006: The Body Farm (Patricia Cornwell)

Used in these Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009;

Dear Reader,

The temperature’s on "sizzle" again in Beaumont, South Carolina, where peach trees are in season and ripe for the picking. So is its newest entrepreneur, Annie Fortenberry, who has inherited her grandmother’s B&B (and its eccentric handyman Erdle Thorney). According to a local psychic she also inherited a spirit from its glory days as a brothel-not the kind of publicity the Peach Tree Bed & Breakfast needs if it’s hosting millionaire Max Holt’s upcoming wedding! If rumors of a naughty, prank-playing ghost aren’t stressful enough, a mysterious man has arrived with an eye on Annie and her master suite. Wes Bridges is all leather and denim, sporting a two-day beard, straddling a Harley, and sending the B&B’s testosterone level through the roof. Annie’s cool demeanor may be dropping as fast as Wes’s jeans, but leave it to her missing ex-husband to dampen the passion! Turns out someone has done him in, and all evidence points to Annie! Wrapped up in a murder plot, Annie must find the killer, save her own neck, and get back to where she was-wrapped up in Wes’s strong loving arms…

We guarantee that you’re going to have as much fun reading Full Bloom as we had writing it! (Even if we were surprised by the ending!) And you won’t want to miss the hair-raising shenanigans when Fleas, the hound dog, meets the most cantankerous, snooty, bad-tempered, twenty-two pound orange cat….

Janet and Charlotte

I’ve been a fan of this series, but I have to say that I was a little disappointed to find that Jamie and Max weren’t the main characters in this adventure.  Instead, we get Annie, the owner of the B & B where their wedding is being held, her mysterious tenant, Wes, and Annie’s missing husband buried in the backyard.  It still had all the zaniness that you would expect from Evanovich, and a pretty good red herring that led to me not having a clue who the real bad guy was. There’s one book left in this series, and I’ll definitely be reading it.

Other reviews:
ReadingAdventures: Full Bloom by Janet Evanovich & Charlotte Hughes
Full Bloom << Jo’s Bookshelf

Page count: 344 | Word count: 78,427

2008: Foul Play (Janet Evanovich)
2007: Lifeguard (James Patterson)
2006: A Place Called Wiregrass (Michael Morris)

Used in these Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009; Countdown Challenge 2010;

In Christopher Moore’s ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O’Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor façade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.

I thought this was just okay.  I found it somewhat meandering and really slow to get to the point.  Much like in The Stupidest Angel, the best part of the book is when the final action begins. I’m not feeling real great about these early books of Moore’s, and I’m glad he improved as he went along.

Other reviews:

Musings of a Bookish Kitty: Review of Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore
Ace and Hoser Blook: Practical Demonkeeping

Audiobook length: 7hrs 30min | Word count: 70,764

2008: The Dirty Secrets Club (Meg Gardiner)
2007: Fantasy Lover (Sherrilyn Kenyon)
2006: Final Target (Iris Johansen)

Used in these Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009;

Just why do humpback whales sing? That’s the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.

Trouble is, Nate’s beginning to wonder if he hasn’t spent just a little too much time in the sun. ‘Cause no one else on his team saw a thing — not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (né Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot — and his research facility is trashed — Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.

By turns witty, irreverent, fascinating, puzzling, and surprising, Fluke is Christopher Moore at his outrageous best.

This is my third Christopher Moore book, and I liked it almost as much as A Dirty Job (and much, much more than The Stupidest Angel).  This had a lot of Moore’s trademark humor, but it also had a bit of a serious side as he tackled the issue of whale conservation.  In that way, it reminded me a lot of a Carl Hiaasen. At the beginning, it was a little difficult to keep the supporting characters straight, especially the women, but it all shakes out as the story goes on. We listened to the audio production, which really brought the book to life.  The delivery of Kona’s parts had us laughing many times. Moore continues to be our favorite author for long car trips.

Audiobook length: 9hrs 46min | Word count: 97,777

2008: The Face of a Stranger (Anne Perry)
2007: Love and War (John Jakes)
2006: Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
2005: Hornet Flight (Ken Follett)

Used in these Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009;