It's been three weeks or so since I got back from my week at the beach and I still haven't posted my book reviews. I've been thinking about why I haven't posted them over the last couple of days (thinking about why you're not getting something done is easier than actually working on getting it done, I guess) and I think I figured it out.
I wasn't writing the reviews as I was finishing the books, so I was looking at writing six book reviews all at once. It started to feel more like a school book report than something fun to post to the blog. What I'm going to do is drop mini reviews on this posting and try to do a better job next time.
Just a short not on the links that I'm posting with the titles of the books. The only reason I'm linking to Amazon is out of convenience. Ecto has an "Amazon" button that I can use to search for and automatically put the link for an item at Amazon in a blog post. I don't get anything from linking there. I didn't get all of these books from Amazon either. Don't get me wrong...I love Amazon, but the only relationship I have with them is that I send them a lot of money and they send me a lot of stuff. :)
This was an interesting book. I'm a big fan of collections of odd and ultimately impractical knowledge. Does Anything Eat Wasps? was right up my alley. The book is a compilation of questions and their answers as published in New Scientist, and is organized into areas of interest as follows: Our Bodies, Plants and Animals, Domestic Science, Our Universe, Our Planet, Weird Weather, Troublesome Transport, Best of the Rest. While the categories cover a wide range of areas, questions about alcoholic beverages seem to be over-represented but that's not a bad thing. It was definitely an interesting and entertaining read.
"The Long Hard Road Out of Hell" (Marilyn Manson, Neil Strauss)
All of the reviews I've read of this book spend a lot of time talking about how terrible and depraved the activities in the book are. My problem in reading it is that I read "The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band" several years ago. I'm not really surprised at reading rock star tales of debauchery, and it was kind of expected...it is Marlyn Manson after-all. What I didn't expect so much is how much this is really a biography of a loser kid who became a rock star with no punches pulled...it's a graphic story of bad sex, bad drugs and bad rock and roll until Mr Manson and the rest of the band figured out how to make it work. The timeline goes from childhood through the completion of the Antichrist Superstar album, which is the main problem I have with the book...it was written too soon, being after a successful second album. I think it would have been more interesting if the biography was written 10 to 15 years from now instead of what was essentially the end of the launching of their careers together. I did enjoy reading the book though....I thought it was funny, sad and sickening in equal measure, which makes a good celebrity biography as far as I'm concerned.
"Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings" (Christopher Moore)
This book's going to be hard to write about without giving away the surprises in the story. It's a story with a simple message: "Save the whales." Haven't heard that since the 70's. The book is about a whale researcher that's tracking and recording whales to try to figure out what whale song means. When he gets close to figuring it out, things start getting weird. It was a fun read.
"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel" (Susanna Clarke)
One of the review quotes on the back said something about the writing making the 800-page book seem short. Having read it, I don't know if I agree with that. It was a long book and the old-school spelling of words (sofah, shewn) and the gentlemanly conversation didn't help any at all. The book follows the story of two English magicians, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, who differ in how they mean to accomplish their shared goal...returning the practice of practical magic to England. Mr Norrell's style is to study and horde information and publish his opinions on how magic should be. Jonathan Strange is more of a public magician...preferring wild displays of the practicality of magic, like conjuring roads for the English army to use while fighting Napleon's army in the wilds of Spain. Long, dense, but interesting. I enjoyed it.
"Beach Road" (James Patterson, Peter de Jonge)
There's not much I hate reading more than a murder mystery that gives no clues to the identity of the killer through the whole book, and then at the very end pick someone seemingly at random to be it. Beach Road was one of those books. I hear a lot about how good James Patterson is supposed to be, but there wasn't any evidence in this book. It starts out as a murder of three white Hampton's locals murdered on the basketball court of a black star's mansion. The prime subject is a young black local high school basketball star. He's promptly arrested and put on trial in a cliche'd burst of racist mob action. Most of the book follows the trial and a local lawyer's cliche'd underdog attempt to keep the kid from being convicted by investigating on his own to try to find the real killer. There's even the cliche'd big city attorney who's the local lawyer's ex-wife who quits her job to help the underdogs out. After the trial, the authors reveal the killer, then there's the cliche'd final showdown. Blah. What a waste.
I'm drawing a blank on this one for some reason. It was another murder mystery. Serial murderer this time. I remember liking it. Will read it again sometime and get back to it.
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