Happy April Fool’s Day! It’s a day full jokes,
pranks, and tricks. April Fool’s Day makes me think of books with quirky
characters. If you like funny characters with lots of quirks, check out these
books.
Opening in England at the turn of the twentieth century, C is the story
of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time
experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for
deaf children. Serge grows up amid the noise and silence with his
brilliant but troubled older sister, Sophie: an intense sibling
relationship that stays with him as he heads off into an equally
troubled larger world. After a fling with a nurse at a Bohemian spa,
Serge serves in World War I as a radio operator for reconnaissance
planes. When his plane is shot down, Serge is taken to a German prison
camp, from which he escapes. Back in London, he's recruited for a
mission to Cairo on behalf of the shadowy Empire Wireless Chain. All of
which eventually carries Serge to a fitful--and perhaps fateful--climax
at the bottom of an Egyptian tomb.
The Junior League of Willow Creek, Texas, is tres exclusive.
Undesirables need not apply. Fredericka Mercedes Hildebrand Ware (Frede to her
friends) is a member beyond reproach...until her life begins to unravel. When
her husband betrays her, steals her money, and runs off to places unknown, it's
something Frede would rather keep under wraps. The last thing she needs is to
become fodder for the JLWC gossip mill. And to make matters worse, there's only
one person in town who stands a chance at helping her get revenge: Howard
Grout, a tasteless, gold-chain-wearing lawyer who has bought his way into
Frede's tony neighborhood. But there’s a price: She has to get his tacky,
four-inch-stiletto-and-pink-spandex-wearing wife Nikki into the Junior League.
Bruno Littlemore is quite unlike any chimpanzee in the world.
Precocious, self-conscious and preternaturally gifted, young Bruno, born
and raised in a habitat at the local zoo, falls under the care of a
university primatologist named Lydia Littlemore. Learning of Bruno's
ability to speak, Lydia takes Bruno into her home to oversee his
education and nurture his passion for painting. But for all of his
gifts, the chimpanzee has a rough time caging his more primal urges. His
untimely outbursts ultimately cost Lydia her job, and send the unlikely
pair on the road in what proves to be one of the most unforgettable
journeys -- and most affecting love stories -- in recent literature.
In this touching, hilarious novel of the heart and mind, of dreams and
memory, of desire and first love, Abe Lee comes of age in the 1960s,
living with his unforgettable family at the Flamingo Drive-In Theatre on
a scrubby patch of coast between Jacksonville and St. Augustine,
Florida. There, some of America's last sweet moments of innocence are
unfolding. For Abe's father, Hubert, there's nothing better than
presenting larger-than-life Hollywood fantasies on his vast silver
screen. Nothing, that is, except gleefully sparring with Turner West--a
funeral home operator who doesn't much appreciate the noise and
merriment from the drive-in next door. Within the lively orbit of this
ongoing feud is Abe's mother, Edna Marie, whose calm radiance conceals
deep secrets; his sister, Louise, who blossoms almost too quickly into a
stunning, willful young woman; and Judge Lester, a clumsy man on the
ground who turns graceful when he takes to the sky, towing the Flamingo
banner behind his small plane. Then Abe falls for Turner's beautiful
daughter Grace. That's when, long before the Fourth of July festivities,
the fireworks really begin.
Hitchcock Sewell is up to his ears in murders, and
the latest clues point to a Baltimore nightclub. Following his nose,
Hitch uncovers a host of nefarious goings-on as well as some downright
strange characters, including a felonious artist, a Miles Davis
wanna-be, an Ida Lupino look-alike, and one very irritated dance
instructor. Put them all together, throw in a bag full of cash and an
incriminating Polaroid, and you have another surefire, humor-laced hit.
Somewhere in the
not-so-distant future, the screwed-up residents of Ennet House, a Boston
halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the Enfield
Tennis Academy search for the master copy of a movie so dangerously
entertaining that its viewers die in a state of catatonic bliss.
Explores essential questions about what entertainment is, why we need
it, and what it says about who we are.
Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-year old
paranoid schizophrenic, gets on an uptown B train alone. Like most
people he knows, Will believes the world is being destroyed by climate
change; unlike most people, he's convinced he can do something about it.
Unknown to his doctors, unknown to the police - unknown even to Violet
Heller, his devoted mother - Will alone holds the key to the planet's
salvation. To cool down the world, he has to cool down his own
overheating body: to cool down his body, he has to find one willing
girl. And he already has someone in mind.
Odile is a lovely twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor
vandal, and a hopeless dreamer. Jack is a twenty-five-year-old shirker
who's most happy capturing the endless noises of the city on his
out-of-date tape recorder. Together they decide to start their own art
movement in defiance of a contemporary culture made dull by both the
tedious and the obvious. Set in February 1999, just before the end of
one world and the beginning of another, Office girl is the story of two people caught between the uncertainty of their futures and the all-too-brief moments of modern life.
Out of Warranty by Haywood Smith
"If you have anything weird wrong with you in this country, you'd better
be Canadian." So says widowed Cassie Jones when, after being written
off by countless doctors, she finally finds one who diagnoses her with a
rare genetic form of arthritis. The condition is manageable, but not
curable, and a new diagnosis, so her health insurance refuses to pay for
most of her expensive medications and treatment. So widowed Cassie,
still grieving for the love of her life and facing destitution because
of her medical bills, decides she has to remarry for better health
coverage. Enter one-legged hermit and curmudgeon Jack Wilson, on the
same appointment schedule at their specialists, who's rude and
obnoxious, but eventually tries to help by setting up e-dating for
Cassie. After a hilarious round of fix-ups and e-dating, Cassie's left
with no hope and no prospects. That's when Jack offers a strictly
business marriage that could solve both their problems, with a serious
set of house rules, including separate bedrooms. How well it will work
remains to be seen.
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison
After losing virtually everything meaningful in his life, Benjamin
trains to be a caregiver, but his first client, a fiercely independent
teen with muscular dystrophy, gives him more than he bargained for and
soon the two embark on a road trip to visit the boy's ailing father.
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
The Bigtree alligator
wrestling dynasty is in decline—think Buddenbrooks set in the Florida
Everglades—and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme
park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor
known as the World of Darkness.
Ava, a resourceful but terrified
twelve year old, must manage seventy gators and the vast, inscrutable
landscape of her own grief. Her mother, Swamplandia!’s legendary
headliner, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost
called the Dredgeman; her brother has secretly defected to the World of
Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their sinking family afloat; and
her father, Chief Bigtree, is AWOL. To save her family, Ava must
journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the
Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.
This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire
Foxman family--including Judd's mother, brothers, and sister--have been
together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd's wife, Jen, whose
fourteen-month affair with Judd's radio-shock-jock boss has recently
become painfully public. Simultaneously mourning the death of his father
and the demise of his marriage, Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as
they reluctantly submit to their patriarch's dying request: to spend the
seven days following the funeral together. In the same house. Like a
family. As the week quickly spins out of control, longstanding grudges
resurface, secrets are revealed, and old passions reawakened. For Judd,
it's a weeklong attempt to make sense of the mess his life has become
while trying in vain not to get sucked into the regressive battles of
his madly dysfunctional family. All of which would be hard enough
without the bomb Jen dropped the day Judd's father died: She's pregnant.
Until I Find You by John Irving
When he is four years
old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several
North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen
to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate
womanizer, is always a step ahead – has always just departed in a wave
of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master
or “scratcher.”
Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is
educated at schools in Canada and New England – including, tellingly, a
girls’ school in Toronto. His real education consists of his
relationships with older women – from Emma Oastler, who initiates him
into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda’s, with whom he first
appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when
sent to learn wrestling at a local gym.
Jack has always lived
in the shadow of his absent father. But as he grows older – and when his
mother dies – he starts to doubt the portrait of his father’s character
she painted for him when he was a child. This is the cue for a second
journey around Europe in search of his father, from Edinburgh to
Switzerland, towards a conclusion of great emotional force.
Carrie
Maura Beth Mayhew is a young librarian working in the small town of Cherico, Mississippi. She truly loves her job and more importantly, the tiny, quaint library that she is in charge of. However, not everyone in Cherico feels the same way. The city council wants to use the funds that would normally go to the Library to bring in an industrial park. Maura Beth is shocked when she is given just five months to bring up her circulation figures and prove the Library is relevant.
