Hey, kids! Welcome back to The Book Report. The Mythoi Book I: Birth Trade Paper-Back comes out this month (just in case you missed the official press release), and I strongly urge you to pick up a copy.

In a strange bit of cross-promotion, yours truly can be found acting in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedie of King Lear at Shakespeare Orange County this month. Of course, what that meant for me is for the past few weeks I’ve had to sit through the telling of this terrific, tragic tale just about every night, and so I needed something to read to lighten things up a bit.
What more appropriate way to do that than by giving Christopher Moore’s parody of King Lear, Fool (pub. 2009), a reread.

“A Fool and his money are soon popular“
For those unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s tragedy, allow me to recap:
The old King Lear of Britain is ready to retire and wants to pass along control of his kingdom to his heirs. In order to prevent future strife between the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall (each of whom are married Lear’s older daughters, Goneril and Regan), Lear decides to divide his kingdom into three parts, each portion going to a daughter. His trick, however, is that the size and value of each portion is determined by asking his daughters which of them loves him the most.
Goneril and Regan spew honey out of their mouths, but Lear’s youngest and favorite daughter, Cordelia, doesn’t play along. She says,

Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty:

Lear, in his pride, does not take this response well. He disowns Cordelia and divides her portion between Cornwall and Albany and gives them the keys to the kingdom, though he shall still “retain the name of king”. It soon becomes clear, however, that the honey coming from the mouths of Goneril and Regan mask the vitriol in their hearts. Lear soon finds himself rejected by his older daughters, turned out into a storm with a fool, a possible madman, and a knight in disguise as his only company. His heartbreak tugs at his sanity as the storm tugs at his health.
Cordelia returns with an army, looking to set the wrong things right, and finds her father wandering feverish and delirious. In typical tragic form, by the end of the play practically everyone ends up dead, and those who survive cautioning,

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

“It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.“
In Christopher Moore’s novel, the story of Lear is re-imagined, and told through the eyes of Lear’s Fool, named Pocket. The tale through Pocket’s eyes becomes what Publishers Weekly rightly calls “a buffet of tragedy, comedy, and medieval porn action.” Moore deviates from his source material a bit in order turn the tragedy into such a ribald comedy, changing the ending and borrowing heavily from a couple other Shakespeare plays in the process. But in addition to the utterly hilarious (and vulgar) wit coming from the fool, Moore cleverly imagines scenes to fill in certain gaps in Shakespeare’s play.
Too many details may spoil the fun (and there is a lot of fun to be had), but I will say the book worked wonderfully well at keeping me smiling by the end of each rehearsal. Shakespeare purists who don’t recognize parody as the sincerest form of flattery and people who don’t appreciate a good dick or fart joke will probably not enjoy the book that much. But for the rest of you, I encourage you to pick up the book and give it a read. It’s sure to tickle the whole way through, and I lost count of the moments when I burst out into audible laughter.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Happy Holidays, kids! It’s Akatzen here with a special holiday edition of The Book Report, and two books I’d like to talk about.

In addition to the warm, fluffy feelings people often get around the holidays, there is a lot of humbug too. Charles Dickens recognized this and wrote one of the most memorable Christmas tales in history.
No, this book report is not about Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but it is about finding the delight amidst all the humbuggery this season (and humbuggery is not what you are thinking, so get your mind out of the gutter. Oh hell, who am I kidding? The image I’m getting in my head right now is actually pretty funny).

Both books I’d like to mention follow a similar theme, beyond even the obvious Christmas one. The theme they have in common: Zombies.
Yeah, you read that right. (What do you expect? My favorite two Christmas movies are The Ref and Die Hard)

The first book is by literary funny man Christopher Moore, The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror.

“Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.”

The premise of the book is simple (and awesome!). In the small town of Pine Cove (setting of quite a few of Moore’s books), a young boy witnesses the death of a man dressed as Santa Claus. Profoundly disturbed, the boy prays for Santa to be resurrected. An angel named Raziel (last seen in Moore’s book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal), given the task of answering a single Christmas prayer, answers the boy’s request perhaps a little too literally and soon the town is being ravaged by the undead. Let the holiday hysteria ensue!

Appropriately enough, Christopher Moore wrote the introduction to my next holiday offering, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies: A Book of Zombie Christmas Carols, by Michael P. Spradlin (and illustrated by Jeff Weigel).
With the prevalence of Zombie Literature hitting the market in recent years (such as The Walking Dead graphic novels, The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), all pointing to the imminent zombie apocalypse, it’s comforting to know that our holiday traditions will persevere, even if the lyrics need to be updated to fit the unsettling times. A few of my favorites: “Deck the Halls with Parts of Wally”, “Have Yourself a Medulla Oblongata”, and “Zombie Claus is Coming to Town”.
Spradlin’s book is reassuring proof that even when civilization goes down the tubes, civilization’s holidays will continue on, bringing hope and cheer to whoever is left alive to enjoy it.