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C.D. Payne
His works make me laugh no matter where I am reading them. In the car, on the bus, in the woods. Wherever. He's made me appear to be insane on numerous occasions. I cannot do him justice by summarizing any plots or coming up with quirky adjectives to describe the hilarious events that take place in all the books I've now read, but I'll try and you should run to the library or to the bookstore or to Amazon Dot Com to get 'em if humor is part of what you enjoy reading. I'm pretty sure that if you read more into it than the plot and the humor, you could come up with good lessons and morals, but I was too busy laughing.
Books by C.D. Payne:
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Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp
A 14-year-old ordinary boy is growing up in Oakland, CA with divorced parents. All this sounds ordinary. Normal for a lot of lives. But Nick is extraordinarily inventive and manages to get himself into extraordinary situations. Although it really does always seem as if the events just happen and he makes the best of them. The book is written as Nick's journal and divided into three parts, which cover three different phases of Nick's life in California. He is sometimes obnoxious and often criminal, but in a way where if I were on the jury, I'd have to acquit, just because of the hilariousness of the situations that occur. He blows up part of Berkeley, poisons a girl who is influencing his girlfriend just a little too much, and invents new fashions that lead to big bucks. He also is a huge Frank Sinatra fan and, unrelated to that, becomes a woman through much of the book and.. well, the whole darn thing is just hilarious! I recommend it for anyone who was once a teenager and doesn't mind a lot of sex talk. Nick is, afterall, a 14-year-old boy.
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Revolting Youth: The Further Journals of Nick Twisp
This is a sequel to the above and I can't remember where one leaves off and the other starts, so please read the above. You are going to want to read this right after the other, because you'll miss your Nick Twisp fix otherwise, so get both at the same time.
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I can't decide if I like this book better than the Youth in Revolt books or not. I think maybe I did, but only because it moved faster. This book's plot sounds weird if I describe it, but please be assured that it's much weirder when you read it. Some booze-swilling, chain-smoking pigeons wreak havoc in San Francisco when they are rescued from an animal testing laboratory. Their adventures are all about how to get more smokes and booze, while trying to get back to the lab where they got it all for free. See? It's so much funnier when C.D. Payne writes it. Please check out chapter one and see for yourself.
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I'm still reading this one. It was a lot harder to get into for me than the others, but just last night I got to a part that made me choke on Pepsi. So it's looking up. I'll try to update after I finish it, but I'm pretty sure it'll be worth having.
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I don't have this one yet, but according to the site below, it's C.D. Payne's first play. I'll be checking it out.
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Cut to the Twisp : The Lost Parts of Youth in Revolt and Other Stories
I just found out about this book! I'm very excited and can't wait to order it. Due in August 2001. I'll keep you posted.
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For more fun things to do with C.D. Payne, please visit this website: http://www.nicktwisp.com/index.html