Book club for freaks.

Ahhhhh, hunkering down in preparation of Armageddon. Halloween, election day, my last days of work, the first day of Nanowrimo, and of course, Hurricane Sandy dumping all over all of it.

It's a good time to stay inside and read.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
By Erik Larson

The author of this book, Erik Larson, is wildly popular for his non-fiction books about unusual and often obscure events in history. This was my introduction to his oeuvre and the same probably goes for most readers. If you are one of the ten people who still hasn't heard of or read this book, know that it stands up to the hype.

There are two main subjects: the architects responsible for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and a serial killer lurking in the crush of anonymous men and women who flooded the city looking for opportunity. Non-fiction books of this sort can go two ways... there are the books that are well-researched but are written poorly or vice versa, and there are books that are well-researched, well-structured, and fantastically suspenseful.  This is one of the latter.

The segments of the book about Dr. H. H. Holmes (AKA, Herman Webster Mudget), the serial killer, fascinated me the most because I'm creepy and because this dude was so over-the-top bizarre. I was less interested in the parts of the book about Architect Daniel Burnham, though I have spoken to others who loved them. What is perhaps most interesting about the book is Larson's ability to describe a world so entirely different from our own. In many ways, fin-de-siecle Chicago might as well be an alien country.

When She Woke
By Hillary Jordan

This book is often described as "a futuristic Scarlet Letter." It tells the story of a young woman in a not-so-distant future who is charged with murder. Her punishment? She is "chromed," infected with a virus that turns her skin bright red. She's free to live in society, but everyone can see the marks of her crime. For me, this premise is enough. Sold. Done. Let's read it.

The book is fiercely political in a sci-fi, soft-core Stieg Larsson sort of way. Hannah Payne (get it, H.P.? Hester Prynne?), the main character, lives in the Plano/Dallas area and her parents are members of the largest mega-church in the country. She lives under intense religious stricture. There are oh-so-many ways in which the world has lost its mind, none of which Hannah really sees until she becomes an outsider (isn't that often the case?). But the action in the book keeps it from becoming, well, preachy, most of the time. The second half of the book was not as strong as the first, but I didn't really mind because I loved the unusual premise and was willing to put up with just about anything.

P.S. The kindle version is $1.99 right now.

The Family Fang
By Kevin Wilson

This is another book I fell in love with for the premise, and loved it enough that I stuck it out even with the plot was a little holey. The premise: Buster and Annie Fang, children of world-famous performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang, have grown up, but it's still basically impossible for them to tell the difference between reality and art. Everyone thinks their own family is screwed up, but no one really holds a candle to these people.

There is a plot, but it's really secondary to the pleasure of just enjoying Wilson's writing. The novel wins because it's funny and creative, and because Buster and Annie are so human (even if their parents are more like caricatures of real humans). Read it for the scene with the potato gun, if for no other reason.

Wilson has an amazing imagination and it shines in the guerrilla art-pieces created by the Fang family, and in the fictional movies and novels Annie and Buster create. Plus, the novel is short, which happens less and less in contemporary fiction these days (Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, I'm looking at you), but is sometimes exactly the right thing.