Recommended Reads with the Huntsville Public Library - May Edition
What's on your reading list for May? We're back with our friends from the Huntsville Public Library with more tips on what books you may want to explore this month. This month, we are focused on humour.
There are so many different types of humour, from laugh-out-loud funny, to sly witty banter and even that dry sense of humour. We often think of Terry Pratchett, David Sedaris, Terry Fallis and even Jane Austen as authors of witty and humorous works of fiction. I’ve picked three other great authors to share with you this month. Humour provides us a way to escape from day-to-day life as well as process and work through our emotions. It’s a great way to spend some time, as laughter really is the best medicine.
Kate Hilton – Better Luck Next Time
Kate Hilton is the master of re-invention. Her novels often focus on a 40 something character going through a major life change. She approaches these life changes with wittiness, a pinch of self-deprecation and a whole lot of twists and turns for an often very relatable family comedy.
Better Luck Next Time follows 5 cousins through one year of their life, starting with a chaotic family Christmas scene, and ending with a less dramatic version of the following Christmas. What happens to them all in between can only be a matter of fiction as they battle divorces, cheating spouses, an unwanted marriage, a surprise secret love child and their own internal family drama. The sixth degree of separation theory makes for some truly hilarious, and awkward, scenes in this book as the characters all become much closer than they had ever anticipated. As chaotic as life might be for the Hennessey family, I think most readers can truly relate to the characters, and complications of everyday family life. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?
Thomas King- Indians on Vacation
We often think of Thomas King as a teller of serious stories of Native American culture. If you’ve never read one of Thomas King’s novels you may be surprised at the conversational nature of his works where he works in traditional oral storytelling with western narratives. While the overarching story is often rather serious, he often tells them in a very funny way.
Indians on Vacation follows couple Mimi and Bird as they attempt to trace Mimi’s long lost uncle in Europe through a series of old postcards he sent over a hundred years earlier. There’s a catch though, while Mimi loves to travel, Bird does not. He gets dragged along to the tourist sites, frustrated that his wife is always sleeping through the free hotel breakfasts and really wants to be back in his own comfort zone at home. There are some truly funny exchanges between Mimi and Bird such as Mimi’s pet names for all of Bird’s maladies and personality quirks. Like the rest of Thomas King’s novels, we come to understand under the surface of these cheeky characters, there are two complicated individuals that have been shaped by larger socio-political issues. These themes run deep in King’s novels and he uses witty dialogue to lighten the mood.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Andrew Greer’s novel Less is a satirical novel that tracks a lovelorn writer on a cathartic voyage of self-discovery. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, spent almost a year on the New York Times Bestseller list and was subsequently published in Europe after its North American debut.
Main character Arthur Less is abruptly single after a 9-year relationship with a much younger man comes to a halt. He is about to turn 50 and suddenly finds himself trying to avoid the newly announced wedding of said younger man. Instead of having to RSVP, he decides to take up invitations to speak at writer’s conventions that will take him around the world having the perfect excuse to not attend. This should help to take his mind off of the wedding and fear that the second half of his life will be nothing in comparison to the first. Along his travels, we are captured by his endearing qualities and unexpected humour in finding out how wrong he has been about his concept of life after 50. Andrew Greer skillfully navigates us through break-up, conceit and self-absorption, and finally delivers us a love story all wrapped in a comical outer shell.