A VERY SCALZI CHRISTMAS – John Scalzi

There are only a handful of authors whose work I will go out and buy as soon as I am aware of a new published work. John Scalzi has become one of those authors for me.

If you’re familiar with Scalzi you can probably already imagine that a book titled A Very Scalzi Christmas is going to be irreverent and sarcastic and full of humor. And you’d be right. Scalzi’s wit is in full force here.

One of the main features of this collection are a series of ‘interviews.’ We have interviews with Santa’s lawyer, Santa’s reindeer wrangler, the Christmas bunny, and the Nativity innkeeper. Each of these has a moment or two that will likely make you snort with a burst of laughter.

There are some short short stories and other oddball tidbits, each usually good for a Christmas snort. Sometimes the humor is pretty apparent before you even read the piece. In “Script Notes on The Birth of Jesus” for instance, we Scalzi goes with the obvious choice of having Hollywood producers suggesting improvements on the Birth of Jesus story – from adding slapstick to the pregnancy situations, and keeping spin-offs in mind.

My favorite section was “The Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time.” Scalzi is at his most creative here, I think, and even though each of these are only a couple of paragraphs long, I was in full belly-laugh mode. Of course I loved “The Lost Star Trek Christmas Episode: “A Most Illogical Holiday.””

If you’re a Scalzi follower you should note that most of these pieces first appeared on his blog and have been collected for this special edition book. But of course, if you’re a Scalzi follower, you probably want the book anyway.

Looking for a good book? A Very Scalzi Christmas by John Scalzi is a lot of fun and I can imagine reading these as a Christmas tradition.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.