Book Blog: January 2009

More Information Than You Require: John Hodgman

Rating: 3 stars

January 22, 2009

Cute, but ultimately rather tiresome; there were quite a few laugh-till-you-spit lines, but the sheer amount of humor crammed into each sentence gave me a funny overdose after awhile. I could see the seams where Hodgman patched in various stand-alone, previously-published essays, but those drily funny, sometimes poignant pieces were by far the best parts of the book; I’d recommend this book for those articles alone. On the other hand, plowing through an in-depth history of the Mole-Men is not my favorite way to spend an afternoon. A solid three stars for this one — too funny for two, too tedious for four.

Breaking Dawn: Stephenie Meyer

Rating: 0 stars

January 14, 2009

Reading the Twilight series is like banging your head against a brick wall: the only reason you do it is because it feels so good when it’s over. Actually, that’s a wobbly analogy, since reading this book was more like stabbing myself in the eyes with a red-hot ice pick while someone slowly sucked my brain cells out through my screaming mouth with a Dustbuster. It. Is. That. Bad. Think of the worst Mary Sue fic you have ever read in your entire life, then imagine what it would be like if the 13-year-old girl who wrote it had expanded it to 700+ pages, gotten a deal with a major publisher, and was planning to write more books like it. And the worst part of this book? The moment when I finished the last page and realized that I didn’t even need to have read New Moon and Eclipse; I could have just skipped straight from Book 1 to Book 4 without missing a beat. I put myself through how many hundreds of pages, just so I could hate this series with authority? Sweet Jesus, I am dumb.

The Last Duel: Eric Jager

Rating: 3.5 stars

January 12

Boys, forget opening doors and laying your coat over puddles; if you really want to impress a woman, you’ll battle her accused rapist to the death. At least, that’s how it went down in medieval France, where the legal system permitted a man who had exhausted all other legal options to challenge his opponent to a full-blown death match, with the legal and moral victory going to whoever came out alive.

Who knew chivalry had such an ugly side? On the other hand, who’s gonna complain about a system that allows a dog to legally challenge his master’s suspected murderer to a fight to the death? Maybe we should all just sit back and watch the fight.

A Pale View of Hills: Kazuo Ishiguro

Rating: 4.5 stars
A Pale View of Hills (Kazuo Ishiguro)

January 2, 2009

All through this eminently haunting book, I kept wondering why it hadn’t been made into a Japanese horror movie yet — it’s creepy, it’s surreal, and the imagery would surely be visually arresting. Then I got to the end, and I realized that it never made it to film because any filmmaker reading this book probably had the same reaction I did: “What the — holy hell, what was that?!” And I mean that in a good way, because it’s the kind of book I’ll be puzzling over for years, trying to figure it out. But then, A Tale of Two Sisters worked well as a film, so why couldn’t this story? (But would I go see it, knowing what happens to the kittens? I read that river scene with two kittens asleep in my lap, people, and I almost had to stop reading right there. Glad I didn’t, but still. That was harsh.)

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