Handy As I Wanna Be : A Novel With Tools

Rating:
Summary: It's hard to compete with the great reviews on this page.
Review: It may be mediocre, it may be horrifically tedious and painful to read, it may be the epitome of all that is wrong with books these days, it may be amauterishly written and imaturely handled, but it's still an excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: Unfortunately not as FUNNY as you want it to be
Review: Vinnie "The Tool" Agita, this book's bumbling but well-intentioned protagonist, has more tools than common sense. That's the one-note joke behind Handy As I Wanna Be. Since Vinnie knows everything about home repair except when to stop, at least the reader comes away with a few handy tips, if not so many laughs. Vinnie's misadventures are presented in episodic chapters, and though they string together into a sort of limp story arc, this is really a collection of light-hearted how-to articles masquerading as a novel. The formula for each chapter is that Vinnie encounters a home repair dilemma, dispenses conventional handyman wisdom, invites disaster by taking things absurdly far, and is banished from the bedroom by his long-suffering wife. There's a good helping of handy know-how, a few laugh-out-loud funny moments, some clever throwaway concepts, and a lot of labored silliness peppered with tired pop-cultural references. Vinnie's exploits might make for the magazine world's most creative and humorous how-to column -- which isn't necessarily saying much, except that this sort of thing works best in small installments. Sadly it's not enough of a foundation to build a novel on, even one that's not meant to be taken seriously.

Rating:
Summary: If I die, I want Rause to handle the punctuation on my grave
Review: What will immediately strike you is the impeccable punctuation; deft and daring, his overpoweringly accurate placement and distribution of commas, periods and the like is simply magnificent. I would even venture to say that Rause's punctuation, in the height of its innovation and refinement, even surpasses God at his best.