Book Report: The Pirates! books by Gideon Defoe

My first book report was a bit on the serious side (anyone finished Sacajawea yet?). The book selections for this report go completely in the opposite direction.

I discovered these gems while browsing for books at my local library. I needed to find small, light books to take with me on a plane trip. These are all small and light, but little did I know how hilarious they are. I am talking about laugh out loud (no abbreviations here) funny. And when I say "out loud" I mean I was getting strange looks from the other plane passengers.

The Pirates! in an adventure with scientists (2004)

The Pirates! in an adventure with Ahab (2005)
The Pirates! in an adventure with communists (2006)
The Pirates! in an adventure with Napoleon (2008)

Gideon Defoe has an amazingly ironic, absurd, clean, clever humor that is hard to find in modern fiction. For a great sample of his writing, check out his website where I was pleased to learn that he not only has a new Pirates! book planned for 2012 but also has a movie in the work from the first Pirates! adventure. I am beyond ecstatic.

On to some plot elements. The stories follow the Pirate Captain and his band of dedicated (but completely inept) pirates on their various absurd adventures. In the first adventure, they meet up with Charles Darwin (who was trying to convince the world that monkeys could look like humans if they wore formal attire). Much chaos ensues and ham is eaten.

In the second book (adventures with Ahab or whaling depending on which side of the pond you live), the Pirate Captain and his surly band chase after the elusive white whale (after being tricked by his nemesis once again) so that they can pay for a new ship which they could not afford. At one point they sail to Las Vegas (you heard me) to earn money the way everyone in Las Vegas earns money: start a stage show. Chaos ensues and ham is eaten.

The third book introduces the Pirates to opera and communists. The Pirate Captain has his hands full with this adventure and, as always, chaos ensues. Ham may or may not be eaten.


The fourth of the pirate adventures finds the pirates with Napoleon while he is in exile. Napoleon and the Pirate Captain have a power struggle. Chaos ensues (although perhaps not quite so much), but ham is most definitely eaten.

These books are perfect for a person like myself who can never remember the names of characters in books. Defoe bestows such names as the pirate with the red scarf or the albino pirate or the pirate with gangrene. It's wonderful. Defoe also disperses little gems in each book (like the reader's guide in one and a list of pages and pages of made up titles of other available Pirates! books).

You may be saying to yourself, "These books can't possibly be as funny as this Joy person is saying."

Perhaps.

But I challenge you to read some of the excerpts of the books found here, here, here, and here. If you don't even chuckle, well, perhaps we can't be friends any more.

But seriously, we each have our own reading tastes, and I love these books. And I'll still be your friend even if we don't like the same books. Maybe.

So who is your favorite comedic writer?

Book report: Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo

I've been thinking about adding regular book reviews to my blog highlighting some of the more memorable things that I'm reading or have read. Since I won't be cleaning again until Thursday or so (I do work some days), I thought I would start with a book that helped jump start all this cleaning in the B-house.

During my elementary school years, I became quite obsessed with all things Native American. I think this all happened when my mom started investigating our family tree and spoke of our Algonquin ancestors.

Needless to say, when it came time to do a book report on a biography, I chose Sacajawea (it may or may not have been this book. The cover looks familiar). While I was imagining myself crossing the Rocky Mountains with a Cabbage Patch kid strapped to my back, my mom was reading Anna Lee Waldo's masterpiece of a novel about this legendary woman. I just recently finished it for myself, and I find myself even more fascinated with this amazing woman.

The novel itself is huge; the paperback is 1359 pages. Ms. Waldo certainly did her research and includes transcriptions of primary source materials, speculations about Sacajawea's life, and plentiful source documents. I loved every word of this novel. The writing paints such a vivid picture of what Sacajawea's life may have been from her kidnapping early in life to her marriage to a French Canadian trapper to her travels with Lewis and Clark and so much more. This woman was inspiring and amazing if only because she did indeed travel across our country on foot with a baby strapped to her back. But her life included so much more than that life changing trip.

What struck me most while reading this book, though, was a continuing recurrence of Sacajawea's small pouch that she always kept close containing her most prized possessions. That's it: one small pouch. It contained a blue bead from her grandmother, a memorable feather, a medal, a bead from another time in her life, and a few other items. That's it. Granted, she had other possessions at various times in her life, but these were the things that she held most dear (at least according to the author). If Sacajawea, arguably one of the most important women in American history, only had need of these few small tokens to savor her momentous life, why in the world do I have an entire house filled with STUFF? Thus began the purge.

I think everyone should read this book. Yes, it took quite a bit of time, but it was time so well invested. I got so wrapped up in it, that I almost forgot to read the last book for the Ledger Book Club. Good thing The Man in Uniform by Kate Taylor (also a good read) was a quick read.