My Reads: Lucky You by Carl Hiassen

If you're looking for a book full of symbolism and literary significance, you can forget reading Hiaasen. But that doesn't mean his books aren't smart. Lucky You is a perfect example.

Lucky You tells the story of JoLayne Lucks, a woman who wins the lottery and wants to use the windfall to save a piece of Florida land from development. However, two rednecks also have the winning numbers, and they don't want to share. They beat up JoLayne, steal her ticket, and plan to use the money to raise a white supremacist militia. The main story deals with JoLayne and Tom Krome, a newspaper reporter, trying to retrieve the ticket.

What Hiaasen does best is writing some of the craziest characters. Here is just a sample from Lucky You.

A kidnapped Hooters waitress

A woman who prays to a road stain that looks like Jesus

A newspaper editor who begins worshipping turtles

and so on...

The book is very funny. Hiaasen is one of our best modern satirists. His main targets are money-hungry developers (all of his books are set in Florida), religious hypocrites (such as a character that builds a crying Mary statue), and racists (the bumbling militia men). However, one topic Hiaasen always reveres is the environment. Hiaasen's books generally have a main character who is trying to protect the environment, and animals usually factor heavily into the plot of his books.

Lucky You is one of my favorites by Hiaasen so far. It has quirky characters, many ironic twists, and some really amusing situations.

Why?

My name is Kenny, and I am a middle school language arts teacher. One of my personal passions is expanding reading interests for all guys. It's a fact that boys in our country perform worse on reading tests than girls, and many read less or none as they get older.

It's a shame, too. As our country suffers, we are left with a decreasingly literate society...especially the guys. And though our society is working hard towards gender equality, it remains true that mainly men run the businesses, make the laws, and head the households. That means that men make most of the decisions that affect our world...and many won't expand their knowledge of the world by reading. I hope that this blog can be part of the solution.

Why do men read less? Well, many guys actually do read avidly or at least regularly. However, our society places so little value on intelligence in modern years that reading a book can be cast as uncool, silly, effeminate, or wasteful. Many intelligent guys are finding that there isn't a place for discussing their reading in the modern world.

Another problem is that women are the target audience for books. There are a lot of great books out there for men, but they aren't as well-advertised. Guys don't know what's good and interesting to them. Many men remember being forced to read novels in school that usually appealed more to women, and they began to hate reading. Some guys are physically active, and don't like to sit for long periods of time to read. These guys don't realize that they can read a little each day...the important thing is that they do so.

Off my soapbox..

This blog will tackle all subjects dealing with the books guys read, and I hope it will give you suggestions of books you may like. Fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, young adult books, biographies...no rules except that they will all be books guys read.