Reviews – Books: D
RATINGS KEY
0/5 – Terrible. Avoid this book at all costs.
1/5 – Bad. Only read it if you’re a truly hardcore fan of the author/topic.
2/5 – Okay. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either.
3/5 – Average. A decent one-time read.
4/5 – Good. Worth reading and worth buying.
5/5 – Excellent. One of my favorites; a worthy classic.
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
0/5 | Reviewed 3.31.07
Oh, blech. I don’t think I can relive it long enough to review it; read my thoughts on my Most Hated page.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick
4/5 | Reviewed 7.29.06
I reread this recently for our family book club (and yes, I was the one who recommended it); calling it one of my favorite books might be going a bit too far, yet it sticks out in my mind as one of the best books I’ve read. And yet, it’s not that good, at least writing-wise—Dick’s prose is clunky, his dialogue stilted, and the language downright tortured at times. It’s the philosophy of it that grabs me, the musings on empathy, ethics, and the value of life. And it’s an all-too-realistic depiction of our planet’s future, reeling from the social and environmental after-effects of a devastating nuclear war. It’s not as well-written as, say, Fahrenheit 451, but it packs a similar punch.
Doomsday: End-of-the-World Scenarios by Richard Moran
3/5 | Reviewed 7.29.06
A collection of hypothetical apocalypses, each backed with relevant scientific info and explained in detail by the author, a “global disaster expert”. Sounds like my kind of book, right? And, at first, it certainly was—the imagined Armageddons are plausible enough to stick in one’s mind for awhile. But the chilling immediacy of each scenario is undermined by the author’s almost tangible hysteria—if he is indeed an expert on this stuff, I’d assume it’s become rather rote to him by now, which may be why he’s trying to get past his own routine-induced calm and assure us all that THIS IS HOW IT’S GONNA HAPPEN, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEE. Of course, not all of these things are going to happen, and they couldn’t all happen at once, and since each chapter ends with dire warnings of doom, it’s not long before the reader stops taking it seriously. With all these scenarios being thrown at me, I ended up playing a kind of epic Rock-Paper-Scissors: mega-tsunami beats insect invasion, new ice age beats mega-tsunami, the greenhouse effect beats new ice age... It’s an interesting book, and a (grimly) entertaining read—and, like I said, the scenarios are all fairly plausible—but it’s a bit too hyper-hysterical to be taken very seriously.
