Book: King Dork

by Frank Portman (2006).

I don't even remember where I read that this book was awesome, or how I decided that I needed to read it right this second. But I did, and I requested it from the library, and I was more than halfway through before I flipped to Portman's bio in the back and discovered he was the guy from The Mr. T Experience. And suddenly it all made a lot more sense.

I loved the book for the first half as well; my love is in no way contingent on the identity of its author. But I loved MTX first, though briefly--my boyfriend played me The Mr. T Experience... And the Women Who Love Them during a roadtrip across southern Mississippi. We were driving to Natchez, if I remember correctly. And he was especially excited to for me to hear the song "King Dork," with its reference to Doctor Who. (Side note: Jon's mom loves to hear him play "Even Hitler had a Girlfriend." I just think that's funny.)

So putting two and two together, as it were, was really satisfying for me. Kind of like in this book, how the narrator has to put a bunch of disparate details together and comes up with a pretty strange story by the end. I loved all the 70s rock-geek stuff, and the mystery stuff, though I did wish there was a bit more of that (I'm in Veronica Mars winter hiatus withdrawl at the moment). I also wished for a bit less interior monologue rambling, only because it became hard to follow after a while.

But overall, I really really really enjoyed this book, and I definitely recommend it. (The title of this post is a link to the book trailer. It is fun.)