Beautiful and very funny and strange -- what a wondrous ...
359272
Beautiful and very funny and strange -- what a wondrous prehistoric creature, the Greenland shark. It is also a swan song for the natural world, as we move further and further toward a mechanical, sterile world and destroy the environment and thus ourselves, but told lightly, in a sideways manner, not ideologically -- which is the best way. Highly recommend.
1077889
Brilliant.  Every entry is creative and intellectual in a different way.  The creatures described are not conventional fantasy monsters but more surreal and bizarre.  They are sometimes allegorical (but not preachy) and sometimes obscure (but not unapproachable).  More impressive is that every chapter is clever and original in a different way -- it's not just the same cute idea taken from different angles, but lots of different very original takes on the weirdest monsters imaginable.  Every chapter is a delight to read,
1121262
I tend to like weird things and this book I really love. It is so different from anything I have read. I have both books and intend to keep them on my coffee table for people to look at. Sometimes people look at you like what the heck, but after reading , they seem to start laughing. I recommend this book very much.
441718
This book is probably the most unique book that I've ever read.  It is a wonderful and magical tale of love, friendship, death and life.  The prose is so exquisitely written that it feels like a dream right from the first page.  Ms. Morgenstern's prose and her descriptions are fantastic.  There are a lot of descriptions, but never once did I find any of them to be overdone or unbelievable.  I think the most amazing thing about this book is the way that she weaves these very disparate characters into one story.  I'm sure I've never read a book with as many varied characters as this one has, and each one is so extraordinary and so realistic that I felt that I had an intimate knowledge of each and every one of them. I swear that each time I put the book down, I had to blink to come back to reality.  I was so taken in by this wonderful night circus and its many wondrous sights that it felt like I was there experiencing this amazing and magical circus.  This is a book like no other.  It is a marvelous creation and it lives up to all the hype surrounding it. I'm not sure that I can come back to reality with my choice of reading material after this one.  (Not for awhile anyway)  It left me shaken and wanting more and I am sure that there is no other book anywhere like this one.
387014
This book occupies that strange terrain which is both comical and heart-rending, making me think of the extremely dissimilar work Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. One minute the reader is laughing and the next minute wincing. I admired the author's ear for dialogue, and for capturing the desperation of attempting to maintain one's dignity when "playing for small stakes" -- one character's desperation to keep a favorite chair that has not been officially assigned to him is palpable. The author brilliantly uses the workplace as a vehicle for observations about gender relations, power struggles, and "the human condition" in general.
2905222
These amazing tales are consistently startling, weird, and mystical but enhanced by plentiful humor and frequent eroticism. All seem to have a common thread-they capture the way ordinary, but often vulnerable and likeable people, doing everyday things, think and behave under bizarre circumstances. Each yarn is unique and all share a haunting quality that may cause your own old sins to flash back. If you enjoy the art of story telling you will appreciate this superb and flawless collection. This is the first work I have seen from Lear. I predict these well crafted, riveting stories will attract acclaim and literary prizes.
  Robert A Mayers, author of "The War Man."
3756525
I wasn't quite sure what I was going to read when I started reading OUTLAW CIRCUS.  I figured that there would be clowns, bearded ladies, and elephants galore. Boy was I wrong!  Instead I was welcomed by a eclectic grouping of stories ranging from the Bizarre to the surreal.

The crowning jewel of the book is the final piece, aptly titled Outlaw Circus and co-written by Charie D. La Marr, which takes us on a whimsical ride into controlled insanity.  I absolutely loved it.  The following line from the book will give you an idea of what I mean:

"They rode for hours, the twins on their tied-together horses and the clown and the
wolf boy in a serape and a Mexican sombrero, sharing a donkey" (Outlaw Circus, 2014, p. 84)

Of all the stories in the collection "Mourning Becomes Bizarro" is probably my favorite. What we begin to believe is a somber story about the mourning of a dear friend, quickly takes a bizarre turn (as the title suggests) and blows your mind, thinking "what the hell did I just read?", but in a guilty and satisfying way.

As with any book that is published by JWK Fiction, this was a no brainer to read.  His eye for talent is unsurpassed. If you have read the book, or will be in the near future, I would love to hear about your favorite tale within!
2328974
This book is absurd, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Hunter's compendium of  wacky, strange, odd and downright weird things, happenings and people from history, Hunter's law-enforcement background, kitsch and Americana add up to a dizzying and delightful visit to the country beyond the borders of conventional logic. It's like calesthenics for your rational faculties.
491701
This is an utterly bizarre and tremendously enjoyable read. This novel follows a summer in the lives of professional idler Ebin Willoweed and his family: the perennially unhappy and tyrannical Grandmother Willoweed, the family servants, and Ebin's three children, including the daughter who is clearly the product of her mother's affair, as she is half black, and Ebin Willoweed is not. One might think that this forms the storyline, but it does not. Hattie Willoweed is completely accepted by family and community. Her mother's infidelity adds a layer to the already dysfunctional antics of the Willoweeds. The real story is miserable plague, which follows close on the heels of a flood. As villagers become horribly ill then committ suicide in fits of fury, it becomes clear that something strange is afflicting the town. Comyns recounts for us what happens to the undeniably bizarre Willoweeds in a bizarre set of circumstances. The consequences are bittersweet and surprising. I stayed up late reading this book- it really kept my attention, and I read it all in one sitting.
1147024
This was really different and very, very good. There is a level of ambiguous realism here, aside from all the fantastic theatrics, that feels like you are RIGHT THERE.

The first chapter, that takes you right to the thick of things, was incredibly bizarre. Starting right in the middle like that, I was completely baffled. Things were happening that made not a lick of sense. I simply could not believe my eyes. I kept re-reading passages, saying to myself "This isn't happening, this can't be real."

The second chapter backed up a bit to start off at the beginning, thank goodness. But it all ramped back up quickly enough. Wow, you have never read a book like THIS. This is truly a new perspective on virtually everything.

I honestly had a great time reading this. There is a lot of humor, not in a jokey way, but arising from the situation. It is pretty intelligent too. There are mysteries to figure out here.

I dearly love those dragons, and believe they are going to be playing a much larger role coming up. Also, despite appearances, I think that witch is not evil, but playing an awfully clever and dangerous game. I also suspect we are seeing different factions of demons.

I would really like to read more, a lot more. This book was published almost 3 years ago now. So where is that sequel?
4301667
I started to read this book skeptically, but from the first story found myself completely disarmed.  My favorite stories are "Retreat" and "Wild America," both gorgeously unexpected treatments of their subjects (in the first, sibling relationships, and in the second adolescent girls and sexual discovery).  Nothing I could say about the way Wells Tower goes into his stories could possibly prepare you for the surprising pleasures of his language.  He's always funny without sneering or being self-satisfied in his conclusions regarding this big messy thing, "American culture."  He's sly and humble.  But his sentences--the core of any literary enterprise as far as I'm concerned--are at the crux of his art.  Carefully wrought, they approximate the uniqueness and the varieties of personal experience.  And did I mention how funny he is?  Anyone who cares about word choice or a fresh eye trained on the observations he makes (in the tradition of Joy Williams or Richard Yates, say) will read them aloud more than once and chuckle.  Beautiful.
920044
Jill A. Davis somehow manages to write hysterically funny stories about the oddest people in a manner so smart and lucid that the reader is left chuckling with every page - while at the same time falling in love with the zany heroine of her latest book, Emily Rhode ('or Road' or 'Rowed' or even 'Rode', depending on the state of mind and at times acerbic patter of this marvelously created character).  This is a book that sparkles with witty prose, high and low humor, and surprisingly a sensitive degree of philosophy about the current condition of life we are all living.  The balance between funny and touching keeps the scales even, making the reader laugh at situations that in themselves are not at all funny - unless you have the perspective of Emily 'whatever'.

Emily is a trained lawyer whose career is put on hold with the sudden hyper-dramatic news of her mother Joanie's lump.  No, cancer isn't funny, but Joanie is such a wildly entertaining character that when Emily moves in to care for her, all goes slightly bizarre. We meet the father Jim who left the family when Emily was very young and for whom she has no concern, the spendthrift airhead sister Marjorie who treats the world like a shopping party, Rick the boyfriend of Emily to whom she cannot commit, Perry her gay therapeutic friend, and Paul her therapist whose sessions contain some of the most hilarious (and most insightful) moments in the book.  Divided into very short, titled 'chapters', Davis ably lets us get close to Emily by exploring her foibles and her perception of the world and her family by means of what could be stand-up comedy routines - until the sadness peaks through.  Marriage, therapy, death, fatal illnesses, fidelity, menial jobs for overeducated people, failed relationships - all are grist for Davis' keen mind and wit.

An example of Davis' writing:  'As she's lying there waiting for surgery, I imagine a cancerous Pac-Man - or Lady Pac-Man - running through her body eating up her healthy tissues, her life, expanding its mass and taking over.  Devouring the flesh that nurtured me, or longed to. I want to scream. And I'm mad that I'm of a generation that can best relate to parent's cancer to a video game.' And that is only a short tidbit of the superb writing by Jill A. Davis.  This is a smart book, exceedingly well written, and one of the most entertaining reads of the year! Now in paperback... Grady Harp, January 08
2878794
FOUNDLING is a delight - strange and gnarly, with a vaguely steampunk mentality.  The characters are incredibly vivid, physically and as personalities, and the worldbuilding is astonishingly deep.  Cornish takes a real delight in words - his language is fussy, prickly, onomateopoeic, as absorbing and tangled as his tale.

The twist in Cornish's world, the half-continent, is that it is on the eve of a technical revolution - but while ours was mechanical, theirs is biological.  It's an oddly believable theory, somewhere in between Dr Frankenstein and modern cloning techniques.  The result is both fantastic and ghastly - it's hard to call this world "magical" because the magic is so gruesome.

Rossamunde is small, and weak, and used to being bullied - in FOUNDLING, he must discover his courage.  It's hard to realistically transition a character from a meek beginning to a brave conclusion; Cornish does the job beautifully.  By the end, the reader sees in him a strength that has little to do with blustering and grandstanding; and has great hope for the man he will become.

The book reads like a fairy tale's evil twin.  Within the dreary, but safe, walls of his orphanage Rossamunde dreams of adventure - he idolizes the heroes who bravely sally forth to slay monsters and protect the realm.  But once he leaves the city, he discovers a very different reality.  The monsters are not all bad; and the heroes are not all good.  Which is not to say that there is any possibility of peace and cooperation between humans and the creatures who inhabit the wilds.  That would be too easy as well.

I thought often of Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy while reading FOUNDLING, and it's eerie, same-yet-different world.  I think Cornish's is better.  I look forward to finding out how the series evolves.
1630034
Hard to describe the weirdness and poetic magic of this book.  It seems very long and tedious.  Many little details and characters are developed slowly.  However, the magic is funny, mysterious and very poetic.  The magic and magicians are more subtle than many other such books.  Some of the magic is large in scale and even funny, but I really loved how spell casting was related to the power of the earth or the water or the trees.  I also liked how the plot lines eventually converge and you get a sense that it was all pre-determined.

The bad guy is very strange, very crazy, and also sorta funny. The revenge scene, where the bad guy finally gets it, its simply amazing. I got the sense that many things, seemingly by chance, came together in one incredible moment of power and destiny.  I had to re-read those pages a few times it was so beautiful.  Not many people have the ability to write like that.

The book is a combination of Tolkien, Alice in Wonderland, Charles Dickens, and maybe a little bit of Harry Potter.
Toss in some revisionist history as well. :D

Read it slowly, a little at a time. This is not candy, its a 5 course meal.

-Randy
2379095
There is a short author's note at the end of "The Divinity Student" where Michael Cisco describes his notion that the act of reading induces a trance-like state, and how his ambition was to produce a work that made one feel as if the words were being dreamt rather than read.
He succeeded. Brilliantly.
This work stands as a bizarre exploration of the surreal and macabre. The story, set in a time and place which are indeterminate, revolves around a divinity student who has been reanimated from death. He is given a mission to move to an old city and take up work as a "wordfinder". That is to say, one who finds and records words which exist but are not official components of language. They are unconsciously written and spoken but never recognized or defined. This develops into a deeper quest to recover the contents of the Book of Words, which had contained the diction of a powerful, pure, and divine language but has since been destroyed. To do this, he must employ strange, mystical techniques on the decomposing corpses of the book's original compilers and thus retrieve this knowledge. As more information is acquired, the divinity student drifts farther and farther from our world into supernaturalism, black magic, and ghoulish power.
The narrative proceeds with an entirely unique cadence as there is a disquietingly smooth flow from one bizarre event to another. The pace and candor, which are sleepy and strangely matter-of-fact, sharply contrast the content, which is immensely dark and bloated with odd, frightening events and with starkly hallucinatory sequences. The reader feels as if they are drifting effortlessly and naturally from one deranged moment to the next, much as they would in a dream. Imagine a lake with a floor made from a giant kaleidoscope that is backlit with powerful lamps and has a black octopus living in the center; or perhaps a priest with eyes painted over his closed eyelids who can induce visions by blowing formaldehyde onto your face.
The details are blurry and vague at best, and much of the plot must extrapolated from the weird collection of information presented. The characters are strange and mostly two dimensional, but this level of depiction, I believe, is necessary to support the foggy, half-real atmosphere of the writing. The prose is, at times, absolutely gorgeous.
I do not recommend this book to anyone interested in a gripping narrative full of strong, memorable characters. I do not recommend this book to anyone who seeks explanation and closure from a story. I do not recommend this book to anyone with a weak stomach.
I do recommend this to someone who is willing to experiment with this odd form of escapism and experience the unique sensation of dreaming through the pages. The images that Cisco evokes are bizarre, but also fascinating in their frightening and psychedelic un-wordliness.
And then, at some point, the book ends and you simply wake up.
3284087
I was required to read this novel for my English class.  I thought it was going to be another one of those boring books, but I was surprised to find it far from boring.  At first, the characters seem excessively weird and  there doesn't seem to be a point to the story.  However, if you have proir  knowlege to religion, you will probably enjoy this book. Among all the  absurd characters of Haze, Enoch, Hawks, and Mrs. Flood there is a point  that makes their stangeness make sense.  I loved this novel because it was  very different from other books that I have read before.  Not only does it  give you a challenge to discover what all the nonsense means, but it is  hilarious at certain times too. I had to laugh the time that Enoch dressed  up in a gorilla suit, the thought of him makes me laugh over and over.  I  highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in something out of  the ordinary that is full of wit, humor, and radical characters.
3958330
It's as if William Burrows put The Secret into a blender added a dash of Philip K. Dick and a splash of Murakami, hit blitz, drank it through his ears and laser-eyed it onto the page.

Open this book to anywhere and you are in for some serious literary titillation. The shorts are both proverbial and folklore-like, the poems are uncompromising, and the dialogues delightfully deviant.

This collection of the weird and the wonderful is thought provoking and there are lessons to be learnt from each piece. Of particular note-worthiness are: "Fire under the Ass" - an incredibly funny and frighteningly apt tale of those who can't sit still. Short poem "The Way of Things" is the way it is... and my favourite: "dialogue of the nihilist and the choatician" (from which the title of this review originates) is a glorious conversation of illusion shattering proportions.

Amidst all of K.D.'s writings is a profound sense of understanding that I found enjoyable to relate to. I will revisit this book numerous times again in the future whenever I want to be reminded of how wonderful literary wordplay can be when tackling some galaxy scaled pondering.