Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out-with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes- to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There's Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious-and dangerous-asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

A truly very odd story. I'm not really sure what to say, but if you're a sensitive reader, I'd give this book a skip. It is definitely interesting from a cult perspective although some bits (like Oly's conception) that are just downright peculiar. And the story comes together is a bit of an odd fashion, Oly remembers her history as her present (about as bizarre as her past too) unfolds. This is not for your average fiction reader ...

FYI. Before you get confused between our current term for Geek, as in someone typically obsessed with computers, and what exactly they could possibly have to do with circuses, here's the alternate definition:
"a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken."

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Freakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

Cult bestseller, new buzz word..."Freakonomics" is at the heart of everything we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us daily: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams. Asking provocative and profound questions about human motivation and contemporary living and reaching some astonishing conclusions, "Freakonomics" will make you see the familiar world through a completely original lens.

Well, I couldn't really have picked a more different book to follow with and I like to do that. I really enjoyed Freakonomics. It was interesting and made me think. Although the Abortion-Crime debate seems to have taken much flak (as with a number of the other ideas they raised), I like it. And I'm hoping we'll see a similar curb in SA's crime in 10 years when our Pro-Choice law turns 20. Anyway, it's interesting reading and I recommend it ... if you can't get you hands on it, start on their blog in the mean time :)

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran-Foer

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace.

I loved it from the first page. The 9-year old Oskar's internal voice was written so fabulously and I could hear it perfectly. He is a fantastic character. It's not a particularly complicated story, but it does get confusing in bits (esp. the grandfather's pages that are completely illegible). I also loved the crazy layout of the book. Not confined to the expected norm. But with random pictures and pages with just 5 words on them. Brilliant, I'm sure I will read this again one day.

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