Staff Picks

In April, hope springs eternal for all major league baseball teams. Last season is forgotten, and every team believes it can win the World Series, especially our own Atlanta Braves. As the 2008 season is in its infancy, now is the time to read Built to Win by former Braves general manager, now team president, John Schuerholz, the architect of the Braves’ 14 consecutive first-place finishes. While that streak ended two seasons ago, it’s refreshing to reminisce about the Braves’ success and to learn how Schuerholz built the team and dealt with all the obstacles to success. As a Braves fan for over 30 years, I very much enjoyed reading about Schuerholz’s career in baseball and how he turned a struggling franchise into one of the most successful in baseball history. If you love baseball, even if you’re not a Braves fan, this book is a must-read.

A Dirty Job is the first Christopher Moore novel I’ve read, and it was a great one to start with. It's the story of Charlie Asher, an average person leading an average life until his wife dies shortly after giving birth to their daughter. Death seems to follow Charlie wherever he goes, plus, he's seeing glowing objects, hearing voices, and being chased by ominous shadows. It turns out that Charlie has been selected to be a death merchant, whose job is to collect soul vessels (ordinary objects that contain a recently deceased person's soul) before the deities of death can claim them. This is not a job that Charlie wants, but he has no choice but to accept it. Charlie is surrounded by a hilarious cast of offbeat characters. The dialogue is witty, and the situation Charlie finds himself in is wacky and fascinating. Another hilarious tale from one of the funniest writers around.

Serge A. Storms, everybody’s favorite serial killer, returns in Tim Dorsey’s manic new novel, Atomic Lobster. If you’re looking for literary fiction, Dorsey’s take on Florida and its inhabitants is not for you. The book is filled with plenty of violence, graphic killings, sex, drugs, and some of the craziest characters you’ll ever find. And did I mention that it’s also hilarious? This is the tenth book in the series, but it’s the first one I’ve read. I can’t wait to go back and read the earlier books. If you’re a fan of Carl Hiaasen or Christopher Moore, you’ll love Dorsey’s books and his warped sense of humor.

Blasphemy is a Crichton-esque technothriller about Isabella, the world’s largest supercollider, built to recreate the Big Bang. A powerful televangelist is trying to shut down the Isabella project, claiming the experiment is in direct opposition to God. Meanwhile, the research team starts Isabella and discovers a secret that must be hidden from the world. Former CIA agent Wyman Ford is sent to the Arizona desert to investigate the Isabella project and to discover the secret the research team has been hiding. Is there a problem with Isabella, or has it actually found God? Blasphemy is a very intense, suspenseful, and yes, thought-provoking thriller.

Toonamint of Champions by local author Todd Sentell is a hilarious and iniquitous satire of the Masters and Augusta National. Before I tell you about this book, you must understand that I know very little about golf. I’m a big baseball fan, but the only golf I play is of the putt-putt kind (and not very good). However, the lack of golf understanding does not matter. Sentell has filled his story with bigger than life characters, and I was literally laughing on almost every page. Toonamint of Champions is the story of Waymon Poodle, “a teller at the Trust Trust bank branch inside the Publix grocery store on Confederate Victory Parkway in Mullet, Luv, Georgia, and no other human being on earth loves more than he does the Masters, the golf course on which it’s played, the wonderful sport of golf in general, and the iniquitous allure of what goes on behind the gates of ootsie-tootsie private golf clubs.” Waymon’s lifelong dream is to play one round at the Augusta National, and he has to overcome so many outlandish obstacles, including his fiancee, LaJuanita Mumps, Waymon’s supervisor at the bank (also named Waymon), and Giant Cicada Killer Wasps. Sentell has a unique writing style that’s basically full of run-on sentences, but his wordplay is fantastic. It’s sort of like Elmore Leonard, except nobody gets shot at the end of each sentence. But be aware that the book is iniquitous (look it up if you need to) and not for the easily offended. If you’re looking for a great laugh, this is the book for you.

Former South Carolina presidential candidate and The Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert has written a very funny book. Well, actually, he dictated a very funny book over a three-day weekend. The book even comes with endorsements: “A great read! I laughed, I cried, I lost 15 pounds! I cannot recommend this book highly enough.” – Stephen Colbert. Winner of the Stephen T. Colbert Award for the Literary Excellence, I Am America (And So Can You!) is everything we’ve come to expect from the man who is America. If you’re a fan of the show, the book is a must read, but first you must buy. Seriously (a word rarely used to describe Colbert), I thought the book was hysterical.

Category 7 is the exciting and timely story of a powerful and catastrophic hurricane headed toward New York City. The storm, the most powerful ever recorded, is not a natural phenomenon. Someone has developed the ability to manipulate the weather, and a group of meteorologists has to determine if this is a terrorist threat or a government plot, and they need to come up with a way to stop the hurricane before it destroys New York City. The book reads like a Steven Spielberg or Jerry Bruckheimer movie, (slow beginning with the introduction of lots of disposable characters), but once the story gets going, you won’t be able to put the book down. And if the plot seems far-fetched, consider this: last summer two category 5 hurricanes hit Central America, and Hurricane Humberto shocked the Texas coast, going from tropical depression to hurricane in less than 18 hours, the fastest growth in recorded history. Maybe the author, a New York meteorologist, is on to something.

Laugh-out-loud funny is the best way to describe Pest Control, a comic thriller by Bill Fitzhugh. Bob Dillon is a New York exterminator who has lost his job. Seeing this as an opportunity to fulfill his dreams -- opening an all-natural pest control company and buying a truck with a big fiberglass bug on top -- Bob prints a flier that reads: "Professional Exterminator! Fifteen Years Experience! No Pest Left Alive!" One of Bob's fliers ends up in the hands of a man who hires professional killers. Impressed with Bob's "experience," he interviews Bob, who accepts the job without realizing he's been hired as an assassin. As the story progresses, the world's top assassins come into the picture, and the misunderstandings grow to riotous proportions. Pest Control is hilarious and exciting. I laughed throughout the book and had a great time reading it. If you're a fan of Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Christopher Moore, or Dave Barry, you'll love Bill Fitzhugh.