Tag Archives: books

Feb 02

Not so mysterious

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This post will contain a spoiler for the classic Jules Verne novel “The Mysterious Island.” In some ways, it’s such common knowledge that it’s not truly a spoiler, which as you will see is part of the point of my post. Anyway, if you plan to read the novel any time soon, I don’t want to be accused of ruining it for you, so just move along.

When I downloaded “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea,” as explained here, I only meant to test out the Kindle reading app on my smartphone. I figured that, once I had seen how that app worked, I would set the novel aside, and finish it once I got my actual Kindle.

But I have such fond memories of the novel from my childhood that once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. The free public-domain Kindle version uses the oldest English translation, which is in some places inaccurate and which supposedly cuts out some material; one of these days I’ll spend the money to buy one of the more recent translations, which are supposed to be far superior. But I still loved the novel, and I could not stop reading it, even on my little smartphone screen.

Anyway, while biding my time until this weekend (when my tax refund will arrive and I will be able to order a Kindle), I decided to downolad a second public-domain Jules Verne novel, “The Mysterious Island.” The current movie “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” a sequel to 2009′s “Journey To The Center of the Earth,” is not a straight adaptation but rather a modern-day “inspired by” twist on the story, including, as far as I can tell, some meta references to the novel.

Anyway — and here’s the spoiler — the reason I decided to download “The Mysterious Island” is because it continues the story of Captain Nemo from “Twenty Thousand Leagues.” I thought that was widely known; I’d certainly seen references to it, well, everywhere.

But it turns out that Nemo doesn’t show up until the last 10 percent of the book (thank you, Kindle progress indicator!), and his identity is clearly meant to be a surprise. I sort of wish I hadn’t known ahead of time he was going to show up — but then again, if I hadn’t known it, I wouldn’t have read the novel in the first place.

I have to say, “The Mysterious Island” is inferior to “Twenty Thousand Leagues” in almost every way. “Twenty Thousand Leagues” has four sharply-drawn and memorable characters, and although Verne has a little bit of florid description, for the most part we learn about them by the way they speak and act.

“The Mysterious Island,” on the other hand, is full of Verne telling us — and having the characters tell each other — what great, heroic, amazing fellows they all are. Don’t get me wrong; I like heroes. I like larger-than-life characters. I think we need more of them. But Verne spends more time telling us what a remarkable and amazing fellow Cyrus Harding* is than he does letting Harding be remarkable or amazing. Verne also overpraises Harding’s supporting cast, even though they sometimes give the impression that they wouldn’t know how to boil water without Harding to guide them. Even the dog, Top, is praised as having intelligence and loyalty worthy of Lassie — which would be fine if this were a story about Top, but in this case it’s just excess upon excess. When you have five superhuman characters, a superhuman dog, a superhuman orangutan, and a pirate who goes through a superhuman process of remorse and redemption, and they’re the only characters for two-thirds of the book, it becomes a bit much. And when antagonists finally show up, they’re pretty much faceless non-entities, shooting at our heroes from a distance. That’s not larger-than-life, it’s over-the-top.

The five main characters, plus the dog, are marooned on an island in the South Pacific. Shipwrecked, you assume? Why, no. They use a balloon to escape from a Confederate prison in Richmond, Va., and are blown by a storm southwest across North America and into the most remote region of the South Pacific.

They set about using their superhuman skills to make their island paradise so comfortable that they have no real intention of leaving, except perhaps to go and retrieve their families and bring them back. This takes away the primary challenge and motivation for a castaway story. (In all their chattering about how much they love their island home, they never once mention the absence of the opposite sex, which makes you wonder.)

There’s also a queasy situation as regards race relations. Reading novels from an earlier era is always a balancing act; you have to take them as documents of their own time. But sometimes, the treatment of race or gender becomes so intrusive that it impacts your enjoyment of the novel.

In “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea,” two of the main characters are Prof. Aronnax and his manservant Conseil. Conseil’s unswerving, completely selfless devotion to Prof. Aronnax, to the point of casting himself overboard at one point after Aronnax falls overboard, sounds a little bit, well, unhealthy to our modern sensibilities, but you’re able to set it aside for the most part. It’s certainly not the only such relationship in classic literature.

Well, there’s a similar master-servant relationship in “The Mysterious Island,” and in this case it’s between Cyrus Harding, late of the Union Army in the Civil War, and Nebuchadnezzar, or “Neb,” as he’s known, a former slave freed by Harding. Neb has the same sort of devotion to Harding that Conseil has to Aronnax, but given Neb’s past, and Harding’s devotion to the Union cause, it seems just bizarre. Neb even refers to Harding as “my master,” at least in the English translation I read, and it gave me the willies. (Perhaps the original French approached the relationship with more subtlety.)

The book is not without its charms, don’t get me wrong, and there are parts of it I enjoyed. But it’s nowhere near the classic story of “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.”

*According to Wikipedia, Cyrus’ last name is Smith instead of Harding in some translations. I like the name “Cyrus Harding” better, however, and that’s what was used in the Kindle translation.

Jan 23

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers

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I have pretty much decided to take a little of my tax refund, in a week or two, and treat myself to the $79 entry-level Amazon Kindle.

Anyway, noodling around the Amazon site in wishful anticipation, I decided to try downloading the Kindle app to my smartphone, just to see how it works and so that I’d already have a Kindle account set up. A smartphone screen is not ideal for long-term reading (as I will point out in a newspaper column about the Kindle platform later in the week), but it actually works quite a bit better than I anticipated.

In order to have a book in my new account, I went to the list of public-domain classics available for free download. My choice was a simple one: “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” by Jules Verne. One of my favorite books as a child, and one I dearly wish I still had, was a terrific annotated edition of this classic. In the margins of the book, the editors would provide helpful definitions and illustrations of the many places and different types of aquatic life mentioned in the book, and would point out passages in which Verne predicted technology that would not exist until decades after the 1870 novel was published.

Anyway, I hadn’t read the book in years, and it seemed like something I’d enjoy revisiting. I started reading it on the smartphone, just to see how it worked, and I’ve gotten about a third of the way through the book just this evening.

I also downloaded the free sample of my own Bad Self-Published Novel, which is available on Kindle. When I get the device, I’ll probably spring for the actual novel, knowing that I’ll eventually get back some of the purchase price. To my knowledge, even though the novel has been available on Kindle since the get-go, I haven’t sold any Kindle copies of it.
Jan 17

Another thing

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I bought a book from the bargain bin at Walmart the other day; I wasn’t sure if I would care for it, but I really had little choice but to take a look.

The book is “And Another Thing ….” by Eoin Colfer. I’ll review it further below, but first I have to explain why I was skeptical of it, and yet why I absolutely had to buy it.

I was in college when I first read “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” by Douglas Adams, which had been published the previous year. It immediately became, and remains, one of my favorites.

The book started life as a BBC radio serial and was then adapted for a British TV series. Later, it was made into a big-budget 2005 movie, well-cast but clunky. (Still, it has Zooey Deschanel at her most adorable.) But for me, it will always be a series of books. Adams wrote five of them: “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,” and “Mostly Harmless.” He also wrote a short story, “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe,” which was included in a massive volume combining the first four books (and a later, updated version combining all five).

If you’re not aware of “Hitchhiker’s,” it’s a skewering of science fiction tropes with a very Monty Python-like sense of humor. That’s no accident: Douglas Adams was one of only two outside writers to receive a screen credit during the run of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Adams also served as story editor for “Doctor Who” for a few years. I had always assumed that “Doctor Who” helped inspire “Hitchhikers,” but it turns out that Adams had already written the original radio serial before his tenure at “Doctor Who.”

Anyway, the first book, like the radio serial, begins with Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered BBC employee, receiving a bit of bad news. He first discovers that his house is supposed to be torn down to make room for a new highway; but then his friend Ford Prefect shows up to give him bigger, but eerily parallel, news: Ford is an alien, who’s been living undercover on Earth researching articles for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,” a sort of tablet-based encyclopedia and travel book. As if the fact that his best friend is an alien weren’t enough of a shock, Ford tells Arthur that the two of them have to leave the planet as soon as possible, because it’s about to be destroyed by a race called the Vogons in order to make room for a new hyperspace bypass.

They eventually link up with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, narcissistic, outlaw President of the Galaxy; the lovely Trillian; and Marvin, a depressed android. Trillian, nee Tricia McMillan,  turns out to be the only other surviving resident of Earth, having skipped the planet a few months before Arthur – not out of necessity but for adventure.

The first few books are a hysterical romp, and beloved by geeks far and wide. If you’ve ever heard people laugh at the number “42,” as if it were an inside joke of some sort, you’ve run across a “Hitchhiker’s Guide” fan. In the first book, a super-advanced race builds a supercomputer to tell them the ultimate answer to “life, the universe and everything.” The computer answers “42,” and then tells them that if they knew the exact wording of the question, the answer would make more sense.

The fifth book in the series, “Mostly Harmless,” ended [SPOILER ALERT!] on a down note, with the surviving major characters seemingly destroyed in a planetary cataclysm. But Adams regretted the ending, and remarked publicly that he was thinking about bringing the characters back for another book – not unusual in the world of science fiction and fantasy. (Remember Spock dying at the end of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”? And then appearing in a number of “Star Trek” movies after that?)

Sadly, Adams did not get the chance to write a sixth book. He died in May 2001, from a heart attack, at age 49 – my current age, come to think of it.

Then, a few years ago, it was announced that another writer – Eoin Colfer, better-known for young adult fiction like the Artemis Fowl series – had been commissioned, with the blessing of Adams’ widow, to produce a new “Hitchhiker’s Guide” sequel.

I recall hearing that the book had been commissioned, but I don’t think I heard anything about it after that. So I was surprised to find “And Another Thing …” in the bargain bin at Walmart. That wasn’t a good sign. But I knew that, for $3.97, I had to buy the book and at least check it out.

It’s neither as good as I’d hoped nor as bad as I’d feared. There are parts I really liked – and, frankly, I enjoyed the book as a whole more than “Mostly Harmless.” But there are other parts where Colfer seemed to be trying too hard either to imitate or avoid imitating Adams.

Then, the book comes to a screeching, and almost-unforgivable, halt when it shifts away from the main  characters to a side plot involving wealthy Earth refugees trying to start a new life on a made-to-order planet. The nominal leader of the planet is striving to set up a religion – any religion – as a way of controlling his subjects. He ends up contracting  with Thor, the Norse god of thunder, who’s been looking to redeem himself after an embarassing video went viral.

I have no problem with satire of religion, including some projects which friends and family members would think sacreligious, because in the end it’s making fun of human attitudes and preconceptions. John Cleese, last I heard, is a Buddhist, but he once remarked in an interview that it would be impossible to actually satirize Jesus because Jesus would have no flaws on which to base the comedy. “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” reviled during its original release as sacreligious, is quietly enjoyed by a lot of Christians I know because they  recognize it as making fun of us, not Jesus.

But “Life of Brian” is funny. The satire of religion in “And Another Thing ….” is so ham-handed and obvious that it feels the need to keep explaining itself. Douglas Adams was a vocal atheist, but he was also a very funny writer. Even though the humor of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” series is gloriously over-the-top, I don’t think Adams would have handled  that same material in such an obvious way.

Still, the book recovers from its detour, and ends well.

I’m still not sure how I feel about it as a whole. Remember above, when I called the 2005 movie “clunky”? Well, I actually walked out of the theater liking it. (Zooey put a spell on me.) It didn’t hold up, however. My attitude towards the book may shift after I’ve let it percolate a bit.

Jan 11

The Secret Life of a classic short story

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I read an entertainment column this week in which the columnist had to explain to a reader the origin of the name “Walter Mitty” for a daydreamer. The name, of course, came from something near and dear to my heart: the short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” by one of America’s greatest humorists, James Thurber.

I have always wanted to give a reading of several Thurber pieces, and I’ve actually practices how I’d do some of the different voices and characters in “Mitty.” It’s one of my favorites.

Anyway, the story was made into a movie starring Danny Kaye, which – according to everything I’ve ever read – Thurber loathed. IMDb reports that Thurber offered Samuel Goldwyn $10,000 not to make the movie. Also according to IMDb, Thurber imagined his friend Robert Benchley when writing the story and thought Danny Kaye all wrong for the part.

Well, I found out from the entertainment column that the movie is going to be remade, with Ben Stiller both starring and directing. I’m guessing Thurber would like this version even less.
Jul 30

52 short stories can’t all be bad

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If you have aspirations to creative writing, you might want to watch this. (Occasional salty language.) If anyone alive speaks from authority on this topic, it’s Ray Bradbury:

“Don’t live on your … computers and all that crap. Live in the library.” Ouch.

I need to do a lot of what he’s prescribing.

By the way, if you go to the YouTube page for the video, there’s an option to download. Click the description under the video to expand it.

Hat tip to Mental_Floss magazine.

“I’ve never worked a day in my life ….” he said. “I want you to envy me my joy.”

May 30

Down to the bare bones?

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For the summer, the Sunday School class I usually attend has decided to go in with another class, which was just about to begin discussing the same book we’d talked about using. We started yesterday, and (rather than wait and read the book week by week) I ended up going through it yesterday and today.

The book is What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?: A Guide to What Matters Most by Martin Thielen. Thielen has been pastor of First United Methodist in Lebanon and will move to what we jokingly call “The Metho-Dome” –Brentwood UMC – in July. He’s a former Southern Baptist preacher, and this book talks frankly about that and about issues that prompted him to move.

The stated purpose of the book is to talk about the essentials of Christianity – the core issues on which we can all agree. I’m not sure that’s what Thielen ends up doing; he ends up more often talking about his own specific beliefs and the faith journey that took him from being a Baptist to a United Methodist. But the book, if mislabeled, is still eminently readable, valuable and a great basis for discussion. (There are a couple of chapters that should lead to quite interesting discussion in our Sunday School class.)

The book is broken into two halves. In the first half, Thielen discusses things you definitely don’t have to believe to be a Christian: negative, divisive or destructive statements that some groups believe but which Thielen says are definitely not part of the core of Christianity. The second half of the book talks about what Thielen considers the various core beliefs of Christianity.

A couple of people in Sunday School had encountered Thielen before, or been to his church. But I noted in the book that he was a friend of the late Rev. Michael Welch, who was pastor of First Christian Church here in Shelbyville before becoming a United Methdodist, and who was killed with his wife and two of their children in an automobile accident. Apparently, he and Welch had lunch together on a regular basis when they were both pastoring churches in the same area.

As with the last popular theology book I wrote about here, “Love Wins,” you don’t necessarily have to agree with every single point to gain from the book – in fact, the book may be of more use if it prods you a bit to think about what you believe on some of the mentioned issues.

May 20

The mystery of God

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My review of “Love Wins” said that while I wasn’t sure if I agreed with everything Rob Bell has written, I think he’s raised some excellent questions and was provoking some terrific dialogue.

This video, although it does not mention Bell or “Love Wins” by name, promotes a forthcoming book which is obviously in response to the Bell book. And this author, Francis Chan, has some terrific points. He responds to some of Bell’s arguments along the line of “Surely, a just and loving God wouldn’t do such-and-such” by pointing to the mystery of God and our human shortcomings in being able to comprehend God’s ways. There are passages, particularly in the Old Testament, that are quite inconsistent with our nice, neat little understanding of who God is. Chan advises against arrogance in presuming to know all of the details of God’s plan.

But that’s also part of what Bell’s purpose was: to poke at the arrogance of those who presume to know God’s will. The book begins with a story about someone leaving a (gutlessly anonymous) note at an art exhibit proclaiming that Gandhi is now in hell.

This video, as far as it goes, is civil and well-presented and, like Bell’s book, provokes thought and discussion. It will be interesting to see the book itself, and to see how this discussion progresses.

May 14

Books on the truck

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My youngest brother and his wife gave me an Amazon gift certificate for my birthday. I originally told them I was going to hold on to it towards the future purchase of a Kindle, but then when I was venting about career frustrations the other day a former LEAMIS board colleague recommended a book which he thought might help. So I decided to go ahead and blow the Amazon certificate.
According to the tracking info, the package is on the truck, and should be delivered about the time I get home from work today (Saturday). Here’s what I’ve ordered. First, the book that was recommended to me:

Next, a book I’ve been dying to read for weeks, “Love Wins” by Rob Bell. In case you’ve not heard of it, it caused a minor firestorm in the evangelical Christian community when the promotional material caused people who hadn’t actually read the book itself — the book itself had not been released yet — to accuse the author of heresy. Most of the reviews from people who have read the book, even if they don’t agree with Bell, absolve him of that charge.

Those two books got me within spitting distance of the $25 requirement for Super Saver Shipping, so I went ahead and ordered a third book, just to put me over the margin. The third book is a sequel to “Non Campus Mentis” (stupidly retitled and re-released as “Ignorance is Blitz”) by Anders Henriksson.

Henriksson’s books compile actual errors made by college students in papers and blue book exams, and string them together to write hilariously-fractured history. “Non Campus Mentis” is one of my favorites, and I’m sure the new book will be hilarious as well. I had hoped and watched for a sequel for some time.

At one point, Amazon’s recommendation algorithm offered to pair a leftover copy of “Non Campus Mentis” with a copy of “Ignorance Is Blitz” for a special price — which would have been a bad deal, since they’re the exact same book. “College In A Nutskull” really is a sequel, however.

Dec 18

As much information as I required

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The paperbacks I ordered from Amazon to take my harmonica reed plate order into the mystical realm of Super Saver Shipping were two by John Hodgman: “The Areas of My Expertise” and “More Information Than You Require.”

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them, and should have picked them up long ago. I love Hodgman on “The Daily Show” and on his new “Judge John Hodgman” podcast, and I’ve enjoyed little bits of pieces of his writing that I’ve seen in magazines or on web sites.

Hodgman has been a literary editor and writer for magazines. “Areas,” his first book, is a parody of almanacs, reference books, and especially the “Book of Lists” series that novelist Irving Wallace and his children produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. An appearance on “The Daily Show” to promote the book led to Hodgman appearing regularly on the show as its “resident expert,” dispensing his absolutely-confident and absolutely-crazy widsom on various topics and issues. About the same time, he began appearing as the PC on those “I’m a Mac … and I’m a P.C.” ads.

“More Information” continues the fake-almanac theme of “Areas” but also includes more in the way of humorous essays, including some in which Hodgman laughs at his unexpected celebrity.

Both books are loads of fun, and both are the type that you can browse or skip around in as you please.

Nov 14

The Sheriff of Yrnameer

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When my brother was in town a couple of weeks ago, he loaned me a book he thought I would enjoy.

I finished said book this evening, and he was absolutely right.

As my brother had suggested to me, the setting and tone of Michael Rubens’ “The Sheriff of Yrnameer” will be a little familiar to fans of Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” books, but I mean that as compliment, not accusation. Rubens’ book is original, an American answer to Adams rather than a pale imitation. It’s also loads of fun, the story of an intergalactic ne’er-do-well who ends up becoming a hero in spite of himself. There are sly references to everything from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Alien” to “High Noon” and its many imitations and parodies.

It’s a fun, breezy read.

I even like the jacket blurb:

A science fiction book your grandmother will love – if she’s a lustful, violent lady. – Stephen Colbert