Rumo...a love story

After I graduated college, the first thing I wanted to do was read a book for pleasure. Now, you might think that a recent college graduate would want to stay as far away from books as possible, but this librarian's daughter grew up reading ALL.THE.TIME. I was literally always reading a book until I got into college and had to start memorizing every bone in the body, or the exact order of the 12 cranial nerves, or even better, the various ways in which you can die from diarrhea (studied communtiy health and neurobiology). Anyway, for me, reading was a normal state of being and when I was not reading some book or another, I felt out of whack.

Well right after college I started planning our wedding and working full time. This heartbreakingly (ok that might be a little melodramatic) did not leave me much time to read like I had planned. By the time we were a few weeks away from the wedding, Zak and I both were so burnt out we could barley wait to sit and read for hours straight on our honeymoon. The night after the wedding we went to the bookstore and were perusing the aisle for some dearly missed reading material and I casually glanced at the table where the store employees display their favorite books. There I saw it... it was love at first sight, a bright robin's egg blue cover with the title "RUMO and his miraculous adventures" in a awesome yellow font. Upon further inspection I saw that there was also a pink puppy with horns wielding a sword and some singing dinosaurs (I later found out they are in fact resiting poetry). I was almost hypnotized with curiosity.

Well it turns out, this is probably the most amazing book ever written. I became completely obsessed with Walter Moer's writing because it is so imaginative, funny, and unique. I mean, I have never read anything like this before, and this is coming from a huge fantasy and science fiction fan. Rumo's story  is a combination of Huck Fin, Harry Potter, Monty Python, and an acid trip. It is simultaneously innocent and rolicking, and dark, almost brutal, but every part of the story is done with a wonderful underlying sense of humor. It wasn't until I was done with the book that I discovered that the Moers is actually German, and this book is translated from its origional language. This may be why it feels so unique to me.

 I have since read The 13 1/2 Lives of Captin Bluebear, and am in the middle of The City of Dreaming Books and still can not get enough of the weird creatures, and ridiculous situtations that populate these books. Did I mention Moers illustrates the books as well? Flip through their pages and I bet you won't be able to put the book down until it is fully read. Happy Weekend!