Tom Strelich's favorite satire books of all time with nothing in common, except for one thing

I loved this book because it proved that you can think a book is crap one day, and absolutely love it the next*. 

I was twenty-something and about to have an impacted wisdom tooth chiseled out and wanted a book for my convalescence. It had a great cover, so I flipped open to the first page and read the opening line—something like, “Amoebas don’t have bones…”.

Whoever wrote this book was of dubious sanity, so I bought it and had the wisdom tooth removed, which evidently actually removed the wisdom needed to appreciate the writing. Time passed, and I gave the book another try—evidently the wisdom had returned because what had once been chaotic and confusing and stupid was now delightfully random and effortlessly insightful, and really, really fun.

I loved this book.

* Actually, it wasn’t the next day; it was actually about a year or so later.

I loved this book because it’s such a great concept.

It’s a delightfully intoxicating cocktail of Cervantes, Ian Fleming, with a twist of Beckett—shaken, not stirred. Fantastically fun and propelled by an extraordinary character who is obviously totally crazy, or maybe that’s just his cover story. An absolutely ingenious concept for a character and a book that is surprising, funny, ludicrously action-packed, yet strangely plausible, weirdly believable, and ultimately, completely enjoyable!

The characters, the locations, the menus, the yachts, the clothes, the witty repartee—I felt a little classier and more sophisticated just from having read it.

And speaking of Cervantes and a hero of dubious sanity…I was given the book as a gift, a 2-inch thick, 5 lb. gift, that I had no interest in reading because everybody has already read it—the first modern “novel,” the best-selling novel of all time, etc., so it sat for years on an end table where it served two functions: it gave the room a literary cachet, and it was also a good coaster for coffee cups and such.

But then, for some reason, perhaps guilt, perhaps fate, I flipped it open, read a few lines, and then laughed. I was hooked. It was fantastic, funny, and timeless—not just the windmill stuff, but a bunch of other totally outrageous, but totally in character, events (e.g., he chops up a puppet show with his sword).

Truly a gift and highly recommended even if everybody has already read it.

This one got me because, in contrast to the first 3 books, the dubious sanity wasn’t apparent at first; it was in stealth mode (like it is in the rest of us) and slowly revealed itself through the characters in a captivating and compelling demolition derby of old money privilege, no money envy, tennis glory days, hockey knuckles, and Hollywood sleaze. It’s an exceptionally good book by an exceptionally masterful writer that nobody’s ever heard of, at least I hadn’t.

One measure of a book (a physical book) is a count of how many pages have been dog-eared by the reader when they reach the last page. By this measure, this book is an exceptionally good book, since it yields not only an abundance of dog-eared pages but also numerous double-dog-eared pages—a crystalline-perfect character touch, a simple but poetic line of dialogue, a haunting description of a jawline, a blustering façade, a scarred inner voice. Highly recommended.

It kind of relates back to the first book, since it was one of several I got for wisdom tooth recovery.

It was a thick book, a satire, and a new translation from Czech. I loved the illustrations, the setting, and that the new translation was restoring all of the salty language excised from the original/bowdlerized translation.

It’s the story of a simple dog breeder, of dubious sanity and presumed to be an imbecile (an acceptable term at the time), drafted into the army, and his adventures making his way to WWI—always outwitting his (imbecilic) superiors and betters along the way. It’s satirical, hilarious, often scatological, and the best part is that the book ends (because the author died) before he gets to the actual war, so we get to imagine Švejk surviving the war and moving to Florida in the 1920s to raise Greyhounds or migrating to Hollywood to run a movie studio or whatever.

It’s really good; in fact, I might just read it again.