Instead of making little animated hockey players move around on my television, I was semi-forced to pick up the copy of King Dork I had recently checked out from the library.
It's been out for a couple years now, and I've been meaning to buy/borrow it for some time as "Dr." Frank Portman is among my favourite songwriters and he's witty and articulate enough to pull off a novel that doesn't suck.
He totally made THE BOOK that I wish I could have read when I was in high school.
That's not to say that I completely could relate to his main character's tormented (by bullies) existence, nor his dead father and un-dignosed psycho-mother. And I don't know that any of the girls who were in my high school 14 years ago who would have, uh, endowed Tom with the kind of "gifts" they did.
However, I once was that kid who knows that he knew better than every character he runs into.
The main theme to the book was supposed to be The Catcher in the Rye, and part of the reason I hadn't yet read King Dork was because I hadn't read TCITR until just a few weeks ago. It really wasn't horribly necessary to read TCITR, but it helped with some of the references to characters in that book. Instead it was the physical book Tom finds amongst his deceased father's books that starts the "mystery" of this novel.
Mystery aside, King Dork was really an examination of the high school experience from the mind of the social bottom-feeder.
The only recommendation I can give it, is that I could not put it down, literally. I've yet to read a book that commanded my attention with every turn of the page.
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