Belated Book Reviews

As a hermit, one gets to do a good deal of reading, and in the name of fairness I'll give you all my latest book reviews in one dose rather than torture you with them over a long period of time. In fact, you don't even have to scroll past them if you don't want to. However, if you care to, simply follow the link to the full post.

Good Omens = good read
If you liked the movie Dogma and you like the writing of Douglas Adams, then there's an excellent chance that you'll enjoy Good Omens. The premise is as follows: A satanic order of talkitive nuns accidentally misplaces the antichrist, who incidentally turns out to be a really nice kid. Meanwhile, the minions of heaven and hell amass for the final battle at armaggeddon, the four bikers of the apocolypse (war, famine, death and pollution; plague retired in the 30's mumbling something about mold) converge on a small idealic village in Brittain and an angel and demon who were both proven incompetant a few days after the creation bend their awesome power and subhuman free will towards preventing the end of the world. Owing the the multiple plains of existance on which the story takes place, there are alot of characters, but it all comes together like the end of a Guy Ritchie movie. And all of this, as the book explains, was fortold in "the nice an acurate prophecies of Anges Nutter: witche" which, while indeed acurate, was the most unsuccessful book of prophecy ever published.
Furthermore, I'd like to thank Mr. Tyler Shaw for recommending the book. If he doesn't read this blog, more's the pitty.

Treasure Island:
This is one of those books that is so famous that everybody knows the story; so well in fact, that not many people that i've spoken to have actually read it. R.L. Stevenson definately wrote this book for kids, there is no doubt about it. It is fast paced, the plot is simple enough and all of the characters are rather flat. Many have hailed treasure island as a 'growing up' story, wherein Jim Hawkins (who's own father dies early in the book) learns a great deal from Long John Silver and their voyages at sea. This idea has so well permiated thought about the book that adaptations are forced write that stuff in. Disney's Treasure Planet is the worst offender in that department; though given all the other liberties that they took with the story, it can certainly be understood.
Despite these seeming literary short comings, Treasure Island is is very enjoyable in much the same way as The Coral Island is more enjoyable than Robinson Crusoe and episodes 4, 5 & 6 of Star Wars are more enjoyable than episodes 1, 2 & 3.

Robinson Crusoe:
This was the origin of the ship-wreck genre, the architype that all the others copied, transcribing all that is good and bad about it. In terms of the good, Robinson Crusoe had far more believability than any of the other ship-wreck novels that I've read. Unlike the Swiss Family Robinson, the protagonist doesn't know the names of every creature that he meets and isn't confronted by, and have the opportinity to eat every creature in creation. Furthermore, unlike The Coral Island, Crusoe recognizes that discression is the better part of valor and only confronts savage cannibles twice - and with guns not sticks. Even the Cannibles are more reasonable: only eating prisoners of war, not killing and eating each other on a whim. Once again however, the drawback for me was the overdone praise of god. I'd estimate that a full one third to one half of the book was devoted to various forms of worship. Crusoe considers himself a rather sinful person and a bad Christian, but never-the-less spends page after page reflecting about how he should be more thankful for his deliverance from danger and sin. The christian prostelatizing in The Coral Island was overwhelming because of the bias and biogtry of the christian viewpoint. In Robinson Crusoe, it's overwhelming because he just talks about it too much.

Life: The Odd (And How to Improve Them):
A decently humorous look at the odds of events happining to random people. E.g.: Dating a super model, marrying money, having the same birthday as someone you meet, death by various means (including desctruction of the earth and of the universe), winning the lotto, etc. It makes a good reference book for some of the esoteric knowledge that one might, eventualy, actually be interested in calling on.

The Ig-nobel Prize:
A very funny book that comes from the annals of improbable research, in the same vein as the Darwin Awards. Not all awards are ignoble as improbable. A prize for chemistry was given to the woman who figured out how to make Jell-o blue. Others are odd but not quite dubious. A prize was given for the publication of a six-page standard opporating procedure for making hot tea. Other awards are as dubious as the name suggests. Various awards were givin to people for writing about the face on Mars, quantum healing, microbes that kind of look like people and dragons (thereby showing that our ancestors were tiny), and the memory held by water of chemicals that it no longer contains. The people awarded this latter group of award did not show up at Harvard to collect their prizes. Like the Darwin Awards, it is a book that is meant to show just how abserd the world is, and to make the reader feel better for never having done anything that might qualify. However, unlike the darwin awards, people who don't win ignobel prizes are more likely to suffer from a dearth of imagination than an abundance of intelligence.