Walter Moers’ The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear
The book follows Captain Bluebear from his first memories as a tiny cub afloat on the ocean in a nutshell through his first thirteen and a half “lives” – a bluebear has twenty-seven, although these are lives in the sense of chapters of his life, rather than twenty-seven separate mortal coils – each of which is sort of a self-contained story. Most take the form of “Bluebear finds himself in a new environment, gets into trouble (generally not of his own making), and needs to escape.” There are recurring secondary characters through several of the stories, and Moers’ facility with creating both secondary characters and unusual places is incredible – for example, the Earspoonlets:
Even more innocuous and equally beneficial to society were the acoustic vampires popularly known as Earspoonlets, which lived on speech. They were little bigger than dachshunds but had hearing organs of which a young elephant need not have been ashamed. They spent most of their time lying around in public places and pricking up their ears – an extremely amusing sight. Earspoonlets were capable of storing up all they heard for months and regurgitating it before it was fully digested. Thus they were much in demand as itinerant purveyors of information of witnesses of arguments. You could easily annoy them by noiselessly opening and shutting your mouth as if talking. This made them bounce around like mad things, vainly trying to catch the words they thought they were missing.
The whole book is deliberately silly, and there’s little narrative greed to drive you towards the end – no big foozle to kill, no major question to answer, etc. It doesn’t have the relentless plot of the Harry Potter books or the cheerful nihilism of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Next up: Ian McEwan’s Atonement
Keith:
I love Douglas Adams, although I have to say it seems like he lost steam at the end of the Hitchikers Series… Anyway, can you recommend any other Adams books or author like Adams. BTW the reasons why I like Adams is because he his writing has a very python-esque character to it, so that is kind of what I am looking for.
NOTE: I read the Terry Jones book, Starship (something?) and thought that wasn’t bad.
Your next stop should be Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair
. Hilarious, inventive, and brilliant. The only caveat is that it helps if you know the basic plot of Jane Eyre.
I like the Jasper Fforde, and the Eyre affair had me laughing in fits, but the rest of the series just becomes a drag.
Also Todd, as someone who wrote a college essay that mention THGTG, you really ought to give Adams’ two Dirk Gently books are a shot.
Todd, I’d recommend Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series as well (especially if you have any background with fantasy, which he parodies a fair amount, but it’s still entertaining without that). If you’re unsure, especially about the fantasy thing, you might want to try Good Omens, which he co-authored with Neil Gaiman, and may be the most similar to Adams, but if you want to jump right into the Discworld series, both Guards! Guards! and Small Gods are good places to start (you won’t miss anything by not starting at the beginning of the series, and I think his first couple, while good, weren’t quite as strong).
Thanks for the review, Keith; I’ve always been a bit intrigued by Captain Bluebear, but never got around to picking it up. Might have to now.
Have you read anything from Chuck Palahnuik not named Fight Club? I read where they are making Choke into a movie, and can’t wait for it. I wouldn’t say I liked the book, but I wouldn’t put it down. And it was disgusting.
Never even read Fight Club, actually.