A Drity Job

I have been back at my favorite hobby, reading. I have read a lot of books over the last few months and thought maybe I should start reviewing them here. I have no idea who reads this (probably just me and my mom at times, sad? I don't think so) but maybe more people will if I add more to it. With that said this will be the first of many book reviews. I have already done movie reviews and I will also do restaurant, store, and trip reviews as time goes on. I guess if nothing else I want to chronicle my life as best I can at this point. Who knows, maybe my children will find this interesting one day.

So the first book is A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. This is not the first book of his I have read but the first I will discuss. The story is about a Beta male who finds out he is actually Death (or one of several deaths). His job is to collect souls of the deceased to pass on to other people, thus completing the chain of life. Whether or not you believe that souls get reincarnated it is a very interesting book. The way Moore describes a beta male was what drew me to it first. My husband is a self-proclaimed beta male and seeing how the personality can be mocked in the book helps me to deal with some of his more trying traits (namely that he never wants to try anything new... kind of irksome but I guess I can't blame him now). The location is also special to me as I have always seen SF as a cookie kind of place, like it could be it's own little world and the story is well placed there with excellent descriptions that make me want to go visit. I also enjoyed the unusual characters, from squirrel people to the Emperor of SF (which is much better than being the Emperor of Oakland ;). The story is a little long in points and does drag but it is worth it. Especially for the final scene of the fight between the deaths and Death it's self (who it is you will have to read to find out). This book also overlaps with two of Moore's other books which I think helps to sell the idea of reading the others.

I think this is a worthwhile read if you like fantasy (or slightly fantasy books). I give it four bookmarks out of five, for the excellent story but the slow parts did hurt it a bit.