So I've had the pleasure of reading two excellently strange novels recently, an excellent haul from my most recent foray to the library. The first is a book called "The Good Humor Man" by Andrew Fox. It portrays a (mildly) dystopian future where the government has banned all unhealthy foods, leaving America incredibly fit and unsatisfied. The titular Good Humor men roam the country in their repurposed ice cream trucks, acting as a junk food Gestapo, burning it wherever they find it. The hero of the novel is a reformed Good Humor man who is now trying to stop a plague of sorts that increases the body's metabolism to a point where it consumes itself. The novel has a wonderful basic setting, and fast-paced and inventive writing keep it going. I laughed out loud multiple times, mostly at the mundane portrayal of the incredibly weird setting.

The other is called "The City of Dreaming Books" by Walter Moers. (He wrote it in German, but I am reading the English translation) I find it difficult to describe this book, other than it functions as a love song for literature. In this book, the main town of Bookholm is a great metropolis of literature, where every store has something to do with books, infinite second-hand book shops and coffee houses abound on narrow, painted streets. The hero is in search of the author of the greatest story ever written, and the hunt takes him through the darker sides of literature and the city. The writing is dense, but magnificent.

I love venting about literature, because in real life my friends would be staring at me incomprehensibly about two sentences in.