Thursday, July 20, 2006

Best Subtitle Award


Since Drawing a Blank pulled me in by the cover and sold me with the subtitle (OR How I Tried to Solve a Mystery, End a Feud, and Land the Girl of My Dreams), I suspect it shouldn't require any more book talking than, well, that.

Sprinkled with footnotes, drawings and comic strips Daniel Erenhaft (with help from illustrator Trevor Riston) gives us a book that is pretty much as advertised. I'm inclined to put it in the same category as Alfred Kropp, only with a slightly more light-hearted bent. Carlton Dunne IV's relationship with his father has eternally been overshadowed by Carlton Dunne III's obsession with an ancient feud to the point where the younger feels that his dad loves his letter opener more than his son. When the feud is suddenly proved real with the shocking kidnapping of Carlton the third, our hero must venture to the wilds of Scotland in a mad attempt to rescue his father (and maybe convince the babe he travels with to fall for him). All of this is cleverly illustrated to rather amusing result as Carlton III happens to have small but burgeoning comic strip that appears occasionally throughout the text, though I must admit, the heroine, Signy the Superbad is rather buxom, and I felt odd reading it on the plane where all my seat mates could see what I was reading. Clearly I have a self-esteem, peer-pressure-like complex. I should do something about that.

Amusing, but I'll still give them Gordon Korman's funny stuff first.

Funny bit: "Also, my mouth felt like a car seat that had recently been occupied by a pro wrestler: grossly warm and fetid." p 213

A Feeling I can sadly relate to: "I spent the next several hours in closed-eyed silence. Maybe it was even longer than several hours. Maybe it was shorter. It was hard to tell. In any case..." p 291

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