Mtn recommends Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link:

So, these stories are weird. But none of the people in them think they’re weird. A witch dies and comes back in the form of a cat to help guide her son into claiming her vengeance. An aimless youth lives and works at the roadside convenience store serving strange drifters and zombies that wander in late. A medium reflects on the many differences between ghosts and people as she assists a living man through the process of getting a divorce from his dead wife, who is still there with him. Nothing is out of the ordinary here, in these worlds, for these characters. To them, this is just normal. Just work. Just life.

This is a book for fans of works that use the surreal and absurd to explore the blessings and hardships of the mundane everyday, which I most definitely am. Link is driving back and forth down the expressway of what it is to be human. The pride of a first love and the fear of losing it. The monotony of workday after endless workday, broken only by sharp little jabs of uncertain future. Holding a family together through all of its flaws. The premise of each story is completely ridiculous (in the best way possible), yet you the reader feel right at home. Life is, after all, quite ridiculous.

And there’s a tension to it. A constant flutter of static electricity. At any moment, you feel as if something might change. That anything is possible. A “no-rules” sensation. It’s like being on vacation somewhere you’ve never been before with no plan and no tour guide. But with zombies and stuff. It’s an energizing feeling that keeps you eagerly turning each page. You’re drawn into these characters and all of their uncertainty, instilled with a fitful hope that everything will be ok, and a gentle trepidation that it very well might not be. And then you look up and realize that you feel that same sensation every day, waking up in the morning and laying in bed, silent and free to do nothing but wonder and worry, or staring out of a window during an idle moment at work, or waiting to meet someone who might not show up.

Although, if all my daily worries also included haunted houses and rabbit armies and meeting the Devil at a party, my life would be much more exciting. But Magic For Beginners at least lets you slip into that world for a time, with the realization that life in this world is strange and surreal enough as it is, magic or no magic, but (unsurprisingly) magic is at least much more interesting.