Gods Behaving Badly

Perhaps you're in the mood for a somewhat lighter read, now that the little boxes for each day on the weather forecasting page of the newspaper read like this: RAIN, RAIN POSSIBLE, SHOWERS LIKELY, RAIN LIKELY, RAIN, OVERCAST, MONSOON. Might I recommend Gods Behaving Badly, by Marie Phillips, just out in paperback. The twelve Greek gods of Olympus are alive and well in the twenty-first century, living together in a crammed London town house and frankly not altogether happy about it. To make ends meet, Artemis, goddess of hunting, is working as a professional dog walker; Aphrodite, goddess of beauty works as a telephone sex operator; and Apollo, god of the sun, is a TV psychic. This is probably not going to go down as the world's greatest piece of literature, but it's darned good fun -- you might even call it a hoot, a romp, or words to that effect. And believe me, it's a lot cheaper than one of those light boxes people use to deal with depression during these dark and gloomy days of winter in Portland.