Books like Sick Puppy — picked by fans

I loved this book because it shows that the setting/particulars of the “journey” don’t actually matter.

It’s all about the author’s voice, perspective, and, in this case, their sense of humor. If these aspects are unique and engaging, it doesn’t matter where they went, or if you have any interest in seeing/doing those things for yourself.

I’ve always felt like I can resonate more with people that are willing to admit their fallibility, and even draw attention to/make light of it. To just how ignorant or clumsy or hapless or cowardly they are. I think that always makes for a better, more human story, a better connection with the reader.

On top of all this, I have a soft spot for the Appalachian Trail, since it crosses through Pennsylvania, only a few miles from where I grew up.

The mere thought of this book makes me smile – I enjoyed its style, which was charming and nicely wacky. 

Environmental expert and nature writer Gerald Durrell details his extremely unusual upbringing, when his mother transported her four (untamed, wilful, contrasting, more than lively) children from England to Corfu – and this was decades ago, when few people did daring things like that. They plunged into a culture clash adventure – filled with much alarming wildlife in the house!

I loved how it was continually surprising. I don’t see how his mother put up with all of them. It’s all valiantly shambolic and funny. 

I learned a lot about our damaged environment from Earth Day, first observed in 1970, and the mostly peaceful efforts it catalyzed. 

This novel, published in 1975, made me picture a different, militant green activism. Its characters go around torching billboards and smashing machinery. They're also endearingly ridiculous individuals. The book is a laugh-out-loud farce, which seemed to render their violence harmless and fun.

Violent action seemed appealingly bold to me back then. But—inspired by Abbey?—in the decades since, there has been a fair amount of what's called ecoterrorism. It's been a long time since I've cheered that on. I still find the book a romp, but it's fiction, not a template for saving the planet.

Reading this book was an act of both admiration and agony, admiration for the courage of the author to look where no one else was looking, to take huge physical risks, and to prevail, and agony because I longed every moment to have the ability to myself ascend the world’s tallest trees and meet the life that lives, separated forever from the ground, at their very tops.

Everything about this book is poetry of the best kind because it’s also true.

As a woman who was raised to have a moral compass, I am outraged whenever someone in authority abuses their power and gets away with it.

While I don’t condone revenge, nonetheless, I have to admit I cheered when lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida Judge Robert “Maximum Bob” Gibbs finally gets his comeuppance and is judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death-by alligator, a unique means of execution, to say the least.

Ingenious, more than slightly off-kilter Elmore Leonard is the undisputed king of criminal mayhem. His wacky, raucous Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark humorous tale chocked full of zany characters; a group of magnificent miscreants Mr. Leonard created, knowing his readers would love to hate.

Before I became an author, I enjoyed a successful career as a ladies’ swimwear sales exec. So, naturally, I spent a tremendous amount of time in the swimwear Mecca of the USA…better known as Florida.

While in the Sunshine State, I encountered my fair share of zanies…better known as buyers; a cast of kooky characters who loved to add some spice to the human stew we all simmer in with some pretty hair-brained schemes. So, it’s only natural that no one tickles my funny bone more than Tim Dorsey’s protagonist, trivia buff and certifiably crazy as a loon Serge A. Storms and his drug-addled partner Coleman who loves cartoons.

In Florida Roadkill, Tim Dorsey’s debut novel of the series, the author introduces us to socially conscious, but misguided Serge who eliminates those he deems either jerks or pests of humankind. Serge’s zany brand of frontier justice is nothing short of… show more.

Maybe it’s because the protagonist and her group of amateur sleuths in my series manage to make every mistake imaginable before they finally succeed in bringing the real killer to justice, that I am tickled pink by Donald E. Westlake’s cast of over-the-top-miscreants.

Starring in Bank Shot, Westlake’s zany characters are more like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Gang leader John Dortmunder and the most inept group of criminals ever to stumble and bumble their way through an ill-fated caper are a rollicking treat that combines fast-moving suspense with laugh-out-loud wit as they attempt to steal a temporarily relocated bank that is inside a mobile home.

All Dortmunder has to do is get past seven security guards, put the bank-on-wheels in gear, and drive away. It’s a simple plan, until it all goes wrong… 

I began my ladies’ apparel sales career as a manufacturer’s representative traveling the deep Southern states where many of my accounts were located in small, rural towns that were dead ringers for Maggody, Arkansas, a hotbed of gossip and murder, and the fictional burg where Mischief in Maggo takes place.

So, of course I have a special place in my heart for Joan Hess’s cheerfully bawdy, tongue-in-cheek second book of the Arly Hanks Mystery Series.

Brilliant, unapologetic author Joan Hess gleefully created a zany cast of characters-Madame Celeste, the psychic enthralling gullible local Yokels with her predictions of doom; a crooked Mayor who also owns the overpriced grocery store, and the fire and brimstone preacher who can’t keep his pants zipped, along with a gaggle of mantra-chanting hippies who have turned the old general store into the source for “cosmic harmony.”

With the brutal murder of Robin Buchanon-a moonshiner, prostitute,… show more.

I first read Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress in a literature of science fiction course as an undergrad around 1991 and I’ve reread it a bunch of times since then. Lem’s endlessly creative wordplay and brilliant satirical style have been major influences on all of my fiction, especially the Great American series. His novel might seem less like an overt haha comedy than the others I’ve listed here, but I still laugh every time I read it. Sample sentence: “Still, the sight of a man at your side crumpling to the floor under heavy fire is not among the most pleasant, even if it is the result of a simple misunderstanding, which ends with an exchange of diplomatic notes and official apologies.”

This book taught me that you can surf the line between realism and the incredible (even the ridiculous). The main character, Oedipa Maas, is my favorite heroine because of her openness to every tantalizing possibility (and the possibilities keep ramifying infinitely).

Everything in this book is both fully a symbol and fully itself.