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Picture of a book: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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Picture of a book: Life of Pi
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Life of Pi

Yann Martel
It is not so much that The Life of Pi, is particularly moving (although it is). It isn’t even so much that it is written with language that is both delicate and sturdy all at once (which it is, as well). And it’s certainly not that Yann Martel’s vision filled passages are so precise that you begin to feel the salt water on your skin (even though they are). It is that, like Bohjalian and Byatt and all of the great Houdini’s of the literary world, in the last few moments of your journey – after you’ve felt the emotions, endured the moments of heartache, yearned for the resolution of the characters’ struggle – that you realize the book is not what you thought it was. The story transforms, instantly, and forever.And in those last few chapters, you suddenly realize that the moral has changed as well.You feel Martel’s words lingering, suggesting, and you find yourself wondering whether you are his atheist who takes the deathbed leap of faith – hoping for white light and love? Or the agnostic who , in trying to stay true to his reasonable self, explains the mysteries of life and death in only scientific terms, lacking imagination to the end, and, essentially, missing the better story?There is no use in trying to provide a brief synopsis for this ravishing tale of a young boy from India left adrift in the Pacific in a lifeboat with a tiger who used to reside in his father’s zoo in Pondicherry. There is no use because once you finish the book you might decide that this was not, indeed, what the book was about at all. There is no use because, depending on your philosophical bent, the book will mean something very different to your best friend than it will to you. There is no use because it is nearly impossible to describe what makes this book so grand.Read this book. Not because it is an exceptional piece of literary talent. It is, of course. But there are many good authors and many good books. While uncommon, they are not endangered. Read this book because in recent memory - aside from Jose Saramago’s arresting Blindness – there have been no stories which make such grand statements with such few elements. As Pi says in his story “Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.” It is the same with Martel’s undulating fable of a book about a boy in a boat with a tiger. A simple story with potentially life altering consequences for it’s readers. As Martel writes, "The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?" Like Schroedinger's cat in the box, the way this book is understood, the way it is perceived affects what it is. There has been some talk that this book will make it’s readers believe in god. I think it’s a question of perspective. To behold this gem of a novel as an adventure of man against the elements (the “dry, yeastless factuality” of what actually happened) is certainly one way to go about it. But to understand this piece to be something indescribable, something godlike, is by far the greater leap of faith.Oh, but worth the leap, if the reader is like that atheist, willing to see the better story.
Picture of a book: The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts
books

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

Douglas Adams
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* The Restaurant at the End of the Universe* Life, the Universe and Everything* So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish* Mostly HarmlessSuppose a good friend calmly told you over a round of drinks that the world was about to end? And suppose your friend went on to confess that he wasn't from around here at all, but rather from a small planet near Betelgeuse? And what if the world really did come to an end, but instead of being blown away, you found yourself hitching a ride on a spaceship with your buddy as a travelling companion?It happens to Arthur Dent.An ordinary guy from a small town in England, Arthur is one lucky sonofagun: his alien friend, Ford Prefect, is in fact a roving researcher for the universally bestselling Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ... and expert at seeing the cosmos on 30 Altairian dollars a day. Ford lives by the Guide's seminal bit of advice: Don't Panic. Which comes in handy when their first ride--on the very same vessel that demolished Earth to make way for a hyperspacial freeway--ends disastrously (they are booted out of an airlock). with 30 seconds of air in their lungs and the odd of being picked up by another ship 2^276,709 to 1 against, the pair are scooped up by the only ship in the universe powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive.But this (and the idea that Bogart movies and McDonald's hamburgers now exist only in his mind) is just the beginning of the weird things Arthur will have to get used to. For, on his travels, he'll encounter Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-President of the Galaxy; Trillian, a sexy spacecadet he once tried to pick up at a cocktail party, now Zaphod's girlfriend; Marvin, a chronically depressed robot; and Slartibartfast, the award-winning engineer who built the Earth and travels in a spaceship disguised as a bistro.Arthur's crazed wanderings will take him from the restaurant at the end of the Universe (where the main dish of the day introduces itself and the floor show is doomsday), to the planet Krikkit (locked in Slo-Time to punish its inhabitants for trying to end the Universe), to Earth (huh? wait! wasn't it destroyed?!) to the very offices of The Hitchhiker's Guide itself as he and his friends quest for the answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything ... and search for a really good cup of tea.Ready or not, Arthur Dent is in for one hell of a ride!
Picture of a book: Harry Potter Series Box Set
books

Harry Potter Series Box Set

J.K. Rowling
I had removed this review, which violates Article 2 of the Terms of Use:You agree not to post User Content that: (i) may create a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to you, to any other person, or to any animal.Looking at the comment thread, it is abundantly clear that the review not only may, but indeed has caused emotional distress to several Potter fans. I would like to offer my apologies to these unfortunate people, who had every right to expect better service from Goodreads. But, despite the above, I have decided on mature consideration that I will attempt an experiment: I am reinstating the original review, hiding the dangerous and inflammatory content inside a spoiler tag. If you are a person easily offended by negative comments about Harry Potter and still decide to click it, then you have only yourself to blame. You have been warned.(view spoiler)[I got into an argument the other day with an articulate 17 year old Harry Potter fan - let's call him D - who wanted to know why I was being so nasty in my review of Deathly Hallows. What was wrong with it? I offered various structural criticisms: the ending is abrupt and unconvincing, the subplot with the Horcruxes has not been adequately foreshadowed in the earlier volumes, and the book as a whole is overlong and boring. D expressed surprise that I could call Deathly Hallows boring, when I'd given five stars to Madame Bovary and Animal Farm, both of which he considered far duller. The discussion continued for some time. In the end, I said I would write a review summarising my objections to the series as a whole. Here it is.As I said to D, it's not the books or the author. The early Potter books are cute and entertaining, and J.K. Rowling seems like a nice person - if someone's going to scoop the literary Powerball jackpot, why not her? What I very strongly object to is the way the books have been marketed. About 10 years ago, it seems to me, some clever people figured out a new marketing strategy, which they first applied to Potter; when that came to an end, the same methods were used for Twilight. Both series have enjoyed a level of success which is utterly disproportionate to their quality, and which is also unprecedented in literary history. Twilight clearly follows Potter; I've had several discussions about what preceded Potter, and the answer, everyone seems to agree, is that there was no earlier success story of this kind. Before Potter, there was no YA series of dubious merit that absolutely everyone read. I think it's uncontroversial that Potter, in terms of literary quality, is better than Twilight, but Twilight has been even more successful. At one point, the four volumes occupied the top four spots in the New York Times bestseller list. On Goodreads, nearly half of the top 50 reviews are of Twilight books. This is an absurd and unnatural state of affairs. Even though Twilight may not be quite as bad as is sometimes made out - I'm one of many people who have tried to defend it - there's no way it deserves this level of attention.So why is everyone reading it, and why, before that, was everyone reading Potter? As I said, I think it's primarily about the marketing, though I wish I was more sure about the details. Here, at any rate, are some thoughts. First, the publishers are aggressively using economies of scale and deals with third parties. They print very large numbers of copies, and they work together with movie studios, game companies and merchandisers to cross-promote them. I think it's particularly important that a large proportion of the books are sold, not at bookstores, but at normal supermarkets. It's well known that the cover price is usually marked down to the point where the supermarket is not in fact making any profit; they have discovered that they can successfully treat it as a loss leader. This is causing great pain to independent bookstores. Some of them, I have read, have adopted the desperate expedient of buying copies at supermarkets and then reselling them. Second, let's look at the content and style. Even though Potter and Twilight are fairly different in some ways, they also have many strong similarities. Above all, they are extremely easy to read, at every level. The vocabulary is unchallenging; the sentences are short and simple; most characters are one-dimensional stereotypes; the story is uncomplicatedly plot-driven; there are few references to other works of literature. You can read these books if you're tired, if you're sleepy, if you have poor reading skills, if you've never read anything else. They consequently have a very large potential audience.Third, they describe a comforting, emasculated world in which most of the things that make our own world so difficult and unpleasant have been removed. Most strikingly, there is no sex; in Harry Potter, which is supposed to be about fairly normal teens, no one masturbates, no girls get pregnant, none of them are labelled sluts because they've had sex with more than one boy (sometimes one is enough, for that matter), no one gets their heart broken and drops out of school or starts taking drugs as a result, no one is stuck in a dead-end relationship that they wish they could escape from, but can't. The worst thing that happens in either series is the sequence in New Moon where Edward temporarily leaves Bella. Meyer notoriously doesn't describe Bella's feelings at all, but just leaves several pages blank. Once, in fact not so long ago, most adults would have been embarrassed to be seen reading YA literature of this kind; to start with, the comforting word "YA" hadn't been invented yet, and they would have been reading children's books. Somehow, there's been a shift in standards. You look around you on a bus to see what people are reading, and you can be pretty sure you'll see at least a couple of people over 20 engrossed in Potter or Twilight. It's odd that this has happened, and I wish I understood why.In conclusion, I couldn't help being struck by the two books D chose to contrast against Potter. D, Madame Bovary is going to outlast both of these authors because Emma is a real person who experiences the crazy and contradictory emotions that real people experience when they are very unhappy, and as a result she behaves in a crazy and contradictory way; also, Flaubert, unlike Rowling and Meyer, took a great deal of trouble over his prose, and created some of the most beautiful and ironic passages in world literature. There aren't many books I'd call masterpieces, but this is one of them. And finally, Animal Farm is indeed an allegory of the Russian Revolution. More importantly, though, it's about how smart, unscrupulous people manipulate trusting, weak people. Tens of millions of people are reading Potter and Twilight, not because the books are well-written or interesting, but because the readers have been manipulated into buying them by the Napoleons and Squealers of this world. That's what I'm objecting to. Think about it for a moment. (hide spoiler)]
Picture of a book: The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset
books

The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset

Suzanne Collins, Pilar Ramírez Tello
The Hunger Games Trilogy: these are my issues, let me show you them.Most of the good fiction/fantasy/scifi literature these days is coming out of the Young Adult and Juvenile areas, so every six months or so I round up the new stuff and go on a reading spree. Around two years ago that included the Hunger Games trilogy (thanks to an ARC copy of Mockingjay). I did a review on that for my work newsletter which made me think about it for a good long while. (It wasn’t my best review because we’re encouraged not to say anything bad about the books, the object being to get people to read, not to drive them away.)The first book, Hunger Games, is awesome. Beyond awesome. I loved it and I greatly encourage anyone who hasn’t read it to pick it up now and get to reading! Engaging characters, tight (in both senses of the word) narrative, a plot that, while being far from original, seems shiny and new for all the different spins Suzanne Collins puts on it. It draws out your emotions and engages them, keeps you on the edge of your seat. Highly, highly recommended.The problem is, it’s best if you stop there. I sure wish the story had. At least Hunger Games stands on its own, and after reading the other two in the trilogy, I know that I can go back and just reread the first one and never have to touch the other two to have a complete fulfilling story.That’s not to say that the second book is terrible. Catching Fire is actually pretty good. Not up to the same standards as the first book - it does feel like exactly what it is, the middle book in a trilogy - but not a bad read at all. Basically it both asks and answers the age-old question, “If you could go back and do it all over, knowing everything you do now, would you do anything differently?” Which is intriguing, definitely. But at the same time, it is kind of a rehash of the first book, which is what makes it less engaging. The characters, the politics and the good narrative stop it from feeling tired and dull, and again, it’s a good read, but it’s lost its originality and some of the excitement that made the first book so entertaining.And then there’s the real problem; Catching Fire isn’t a complete narrative on its own. To know the whole story you have to read the third book, Mockingjay.Oh man, Mockingjay. The book that had all the potential to be a wonderful, heart-racing, utterly amazing finale to the trilogy. So much potential; so much fail. The ideas were there, but the execution was...just that. An execution. It’s like everything that would’ve made it a phenomenal book was taken out back and double-tapped.Even a couple years later I’m still somewhat angry when I think about it. Still so disappointed. I keep asking myself, did the author have a word limit she had to adhere to? Was she over her deadline by too much and had to rush? Was she simply bored/tired of this world? What on earth could’ve made her do this?Going against one of the major rules of good writing, Mockingjay is an exercise in telling instead of showing. Nothing big happens in the book that the author isn’t telling us about it instead of giving us the wonderful descriptions of the previous two books. With very few exceptions, events happen off screen and we get an info dump explaining them. That alone was just terrible to read. But then there’s poor Katniss.Remember the spitfire, kick-ass woman of the previous two books, the one who was determined to do whatever she could to survive and thus ensure her family’s survival? Yeah, well, say goodbye to her before reading this last book because you won’t be seeing much of her again.It’s like she just floats through events, letting things happen to her and barely reacting. She just lets herself be used, over and over, turns into something akin to a leaf in the wind. The few decisions she does make often don’t make any sort of good sense and we’re left wondering if this is really Katniss or a robot in a Katniss skin.The introduction of new characters should help things, but the narrative fails there too. The characters (heck, even the old ones we’re familiar with!) aren’t given nearly enough fleshing out; they’re just there. They don’t feel as real, as three dimensional as characters did in the last two books.The combination of all that leaves us with a flat, lifeless book and what amounts to a boring read. You want to get excited, I mean, there are serious, emotional things going on! Or at least they’re supposed to be. Hard to say when you don’t feel it and it’s just words on a page. The originality, excitement and all the drive behind the first two books is just gone. Vanished. And it’s painful to see.Yeah, two years gone and I’m still not over that. Such a let-down.I still encourage people to pick up The Hunger Games, but I barely give the next two in the trilogy more than a cursory mention. I reserve all my glowing praise for the first book and try to pretend the third never happened.