Sad Monsters by Frank Lesser (2011)

Loved, loved, loved, loved this adorable collection of short, humorous pieces on monsters subtitled: Growling on the Outside, Crying on the Inside.  

I especially loved it because I had just skimmed John Moe's awful book: Dear Luke, We Need to Talk, which is every bit as unfunny as his work on the radio show Wits. Sad Monsters, however, is everything that book wanted to be.  

This collection is filled with short vignettes that perfectly live up to their titles and premises, such as Missed Possessions (Missed Connections for succubi), His Fangs Just Aren't That Into You, Giant Ape Class-Action Lawsuit, and The Passive-Aggressive Monster in the Closet.  

SO so so clever and funny, and presented in a charming variety of different forms, from diaries to letters to court transcriptions, accompanied by adorable illustrations by Willie Real. Oh, and I can't forget the notes from The Roommate of Dorian Gray.  Fabulous!  So many funny funny lines.  LOVE.

The Vacationers by Emma Straub (2014)

Started reading this in a digital ARC, but it didn't grab me immediately.  It did in book form, though.  I really liked her book Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures and it stayed with me quite a bit.  This one will as well.  Although when I started it, I was like, ooh white people problems, it did draw me in.  

The characters:  a couple whose husband just cheated on his wife and got fired from his job, her best friend and his husband, their grown son and his girlfriend, and their daughter who is off to college in the fall.  They all stay in a house on Mallorca.  Marvelous character and relationship writing; I loved the depictions of both Franny (the cheated-upon wife) and Sylvia (the daughter, who has her first crush and is crushed).  Just spot-on.

And a quote I loved: 

"Yes, it was true that Franny had gotten thicker in the last decade, but that was what happened unless you were a high-functioning psychotic, and she had other things to think about."  (p. 29)

Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (2014)

I love Roz Chast, and this memoir of dealing with her parents' aging and eventual death is poignant, sad, truthful and surprisingly funny.  

She had a mixed relationship with her parents growing up, and dealing with her parents' eventual dependence on her is honestly and touchingly told.  

Very, very much enjoyed.  

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying by Carol Leifer (2014)

Subtitled: Lessons from a Life in Comedy, I'm totally considering this for my all-time favorite business books.  (Along with Good Boss, Bad Boss and Creating Magic.)

It's a bit of a mix--memoir, comedic essay and some good solid business sense mixed in. Fascinating look at her career, the challenges she's faced and her useful advice, including her great advice to always say hi to people and be kind to everyone.  Also, this quote really hit home for me personally:

"Still I wish I knew then what I know now, and I hope you'll benefit from knowing now what I didn't know then. Whatever workplace you're in, always aim to please the captain. It matters, even if the first mate is ecstatic with your performance, because it's the captain who ultimately decides who stays onboard. If, like I did, you sense that the one person in charge isn't thrilled with what you're doing [spoiler: it was Lorne Michaels], ask for feedback and figure out how to correct your course. Because flying under the radar is a passive tactic that will eventually get you tossed off the ship."

Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick (2014)

I am always so proud of myself when I read a book that was actually published in the current calendar year. You'd think being in a library almost every day would give me a leg up on the new releases, but I tend to be a bit behind the times.  I blame the excess of amazingly readable books I see every day (and my constantly expanding GoodReads To-Read list--current count: 298).

Anyhoo, this is a delightful chick littish novel about an airline attendant who gets in a plane crash and her pilot bf (who was about to propose), breaks up with her while she's still in the hospital.  So she takes her settlement and her injuries and goes to Black Dog Bay, a town whose entire tourism industry is dedicated to healing people who are getting through break-ups.

The surprisingly delightful part of this novel is that Summer, the stewardess, is hilarious and full of the devil.  No neurotic, shy, insecure chick lit heroine here.  She's funny and full of sassafras and turns the town upside down, in a good way.  A host of wonderful little details (like the Rebound Salon and local bar the Whinery) and great, rich characters, as well as a very dashing romantic lead, make this great fun.

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge (2007)

It’s Halloween night and every teen boy in town has been locked up for five days.  Tonight they are released, ready to do battle with a legend come to life: The October Boy—born in a cornfield and made of candy, vines and a pumpkin head.  The boy who succeeds in killing him gets to leave town and the competition is fierce, but who are they truly fighting?  

Partridge creates a suspenseful, chilling novel and beautifully evokes the feeling of autumn and Halloween, while telling a truly original story with well-drawn characters.

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo (2013)

You MUST read this book.

I hear about books from a lot of sources.  Blogs, friends, reviews, whatever.  And then there's the books that I just run across in the library catalog while looking for something else.  Which is to say, I have NO idea how I found this book.  But I'm so glad I did!

Set in colonial Mayala, among the Chinese who reside there, the story is about Li Lin, a young woman of marriageable age who lives with her opium-addicted father and her beloved Amah.  Despite the loss of her mother at a young age, all is pretty much satisfactory until she receives a marriage proposal from Lim Tian Ching, the son of an influential neighbor.  A promising engagement with one small detail: Lim Tian Ching is dead and the proposal is for Li Lin to be his ghost bride.

Lim Tian Ching begins to haunt Li Lin in her dreams, and she is quickly drawn into a dark world of murder, hungry ghosts and restless spirits.  She also falls in love with Tian Bai, the new (live) heir to the family.  Li Lin ventures into the Chinese afterlife, travelling to the Plains of the Dead on an errand for the mysterious Er Lang, a man who may not be what he seems.

Choo creates a marvelously rich and detailed world of the dead:  paper funeral offerings and hell money, afterworld bureaucracy and the shifting corporeal nature of ghosts.  This novel is utterly original and impossible to slot in a particular genre.  It's historical fiction with elements of fantasy, wonderfully suspenseful and spooky with more than a touch of romance.  It's also just beautifully, vividly and cinematically written.  Much of the book's world is based on Chinese folklore, and Choo's notes section outlines the original stories as well as her own creations.  CRIPES, this is a good book.

Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir by Wendy Burden

I picked this up in a used bookstore based on the intriguing cover and it paid off in every way possible.  This is a memoir about the descendants of a very, very wealthy family (Vanderbilt), and how things went terribly wrong.

Wendy Burden writes unsparingly and hilariously about her very wealthy and very dysfunctional family.  From visiting her grandparents' estate on an island to only occasionally seeing her flighty, hippie mother, this is a fascinating look at the 1% and how things can go terribly wrong no matter how much money you have.  

But above all, it is utterly hilarious.  I didn't write much about it when I read it, but DANG, it's good.  You should read it.  I mean, look at that awesome cover!

The Outsmarting of Criminals by Steven Rigolosi (2014)

This mystery novel, subtitled: A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim, is absolutely adorable.

Miss Prim lives in NYC, but gets mugged and decides to move to Connecticut and take up her dream job: Criminal Outsmarter. This book has so much love for mysteries and books, and great, rich characters, including the fabulous Miss Prim herself, who is practically perfect in every way (but has NO idea that she drives like a bat out of hell) and is not averse to a slight crush on an attractive policeman. So darling. And she's one of those characters who gets everyone to do what she wants--kindly and with excellent etiquette--but it gets DONE.

A few things I particularly loved:  The signs at her local bookstore:

 "New York Times Best-Sellers That Nobody Reads, The Latest Dreck from Writers Who Phone It In, Ponderous Literary Prose with No Plot and Snotty Characters, Urban Musings by Self-Involved Authors who Don't Take Showers, Ongoing Sagas/Series That Lost Their Edge 4-5 Books Ago," and my all time favorite: "Books by Ivy League Graduates That Got Glowing Reviews in Prestigious, Low-Circulation Magazines Edited by Other Ivy League Graduates." (p. 123) Hilarious and SO true.

 Also: 

"Why, Miss Prim could even see a highly talented novelist writing about her exploits. The book jacket would feature a slim, attractive woman in her rose garden. under the title, the words "A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim" would appear, thus positioning her tale as the first in a wildly successful, long-running series. But no--Miss Prim was getting carried away. All of that was fiction, and this was the real world." (p 151-2)

Glitter and Glue: A Memoir by Kelly Corrigan (2014)

Kelly Corrigan begins this memoir, her second, with a discussion of her mother's cancer diagnosis. This triggers the memory of a trip she took in her youth to Australia, and the job that she took there to stay in the country.

She became a nanny for a widower with two children, who had recently lost their mother to cancer. As she struggles with becoming a caregiver, she hears her mother's voice in her head. A very subtle, poignant and sweet memoir that focuses on her realization of the impact that her mother (the "glue" of the title) had on her as she grew to adulthood.

Side note: I read it as an e-book from the library and placed 'notes' on a couple of pages I rather liked. However, as the book expired and disappeared from my 'bookshelves' so did the notes, darn it.

This is a lovely book about Corrigan's relationship with her mother, and when she began to stop taking her mother for granted. Here are a couple of quotes I just loved:

"The fact is, lately it seems like the only person who can lift the anvils that sit heaviest on me is my mother. It didn't happen all at once. Maybe it was inevitable, something that develops as daily life delivers its sucker punches, streaks of clarity, and slow-dawning wisdoms." (p. 8)

"The only mothers who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, distort, neglect, baffle, appall, inhibit, incite, insult, or age poorly are dead mothers, perfectly contained in photographs, pressed into two dimensions like a golden autumn leaf." (p. 56)