Books That Are Making Me Happy Today, vol 3

Love Monkey by Kyle Smith

I haven't been doing a whole lot for the last few days because I have been stricken by some kind of serious pain relapse I decided must be related to my surgery. Although my doctor isn't certain exactly what caused my intense abdominal cramps. So this may be neither a relapse nor related to my surgery at all. For various reasons, the details of which I'll spare you, my doctor now has me on Cipro, and I actually feel a lot better.

All of this is to say, I have spent the last three days in pajamas with nothing to do other than watch dvds and read. Save my two trips to the doctor's office, that is.

But the down time gave me a chance to rip through Love Monkey, which I actually bought at Trident Booksellers and Cafe on Newbury Street in Boston while I was on vacation. It was a $5.98 impulse buy from the discount table, and I'm glad I indulged. Please, do not be confused; this book is light years better than the horrifyingly bad television show it inspired. No offense to Tom Cavanaugh, the show's star and one of my tv boyfriends, but the 15 minutes that awful waste of television airtime lasted on CBS was far too long. Supposedly it's now on VH1, but I say miss the show and try the book. That's good advice, in general, but especially in this case.

Now, this book is not going to change the world, but it is a lot of fun and rather well-written for somewhat fluffy literature. I am a huge snob when it comes to bad books (let's not even discuss most of Oprah's book club selections before Jonathan Franzen embarrassed her into choosing classics), so know that when I describe something as "fun" or even "fluffy," it is still good. I was torn between having sympathy for the semi-loser single guy protagonist in Love Monkey and being horrified that men, even fictional ones, really think of women that way. But it kept me involved, and our single guy hero is no more pathetic than a lot of heroines in contemporary "chick lit." And this book is better written than many of those beach reads. Author Smith does an excellent job of communicating feelings of infatuation that are very relatable, whatever your gender. And he endears himself to me with music references, especially two characters' disdain for the loathsome "Drops of Jupiter" by Train. Yes, I know they're from the Bay Area, so I'm supposed to love them, but people, that band sucks.

Anyway, if you want a book that can make you laugh out loud and, if you're female, roll your eyes at the ever-confounding behavior of single men (not that we don't do that everyday), pick up Love Monkey. It really is a lot of fun.

Upon finishing Love Monkey, I swung by Browser's Books on Fillmore after my doctor's appointment today and found Joe College by Tom Perrotta, Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth and Boonville by Robert Mailer Anderson. Not that I don't have plenty of recently purchased, yet unread books sitting on my bookshelves. It's an illness, I admit. I have never done any drugs other than alcohol, but as I've said before: bookstores are my crack. I cannot get out of one without several paperbacks in tow. We all have our addictions.