The Last Coin by James Blaylock

James Blaylock apparently has a bit of a cult following, and while I have read several of his books and enjoyed them all, I've enjoyed none as much as The Last Coin.  His stories follow a template for speculative fiction: light-hearted coastal California romps with quirky heros and heroines,  lots of animals, and some mythic goings on. In this case, we're in Seal Beach (awesome! I want to move there now!) with the 30 gold coins paid to Judas Iscariot.  These coins have a supernatural element to them; they are meant to be scattered; if they do come together, bad things happen to the world.  We have dueling senior citizens and sinister but (thankfully) not torturing evil villain, and a hero that sticks with you because he's terribly likable despite what would generally be considered pretty serious character flaws. He's financially irresponsible, pursuing one silly scheme after another; he mooches money off an aunt who lives with them and keeps too many cats in her room (there is a reason for this; she's not a crazy cat lady). He leaves much of the work on restoring the house they've turned into a boarding house to his wife, whom I would describe as long-suffering, but she doesn't appear to be suffering despite the face that she often bears the brunt of his silly schemes and does far more real work than he does.  She's almost zenlike her placidity and willingness to roll with his silly nonsense.  It's hard to capture just how charming their relationship is.

Much better for light reading than Inferno, which got boring and draggy and depressing with all its plague to save the world ish,  "I'm a genius with meanius" themes; and slogs through art museums.