John McDonough, the narrator here, sounds like a man standing on a bridge, killing the last couple of hours before he jumps to his death. His deadpan delivery of Paul Theroux’s Last Train to Zona Verde seems a little morose. But then, there is little enough here to be happy about in this tale of overpopulation and massive poverty in Africa. Like most places on earth, people in Africa would be a bit better off if they had been left alone by Europeans. But just as Native Americans can’t go back to roaming the plains hunting buffalo, Africans can’t return…
Category: book review
Caffeinated
A few years back I went on The UltraMind Solution Diet. Among the things forbidden on this diet, was caffeine. I went six weeks without drinking coffee, sodas, or anything else that had caffeine added to it. After the diet was over, I was on a long drive and bought a Red Bull. Wow. You really can’t appreciate what this stuff does to you until you stop using it for a couple of months. Caffeinated tells the story of caffeine, one of the three most abused drugs in America, the other two are nicotine and alcohol. The story starts with…
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
I’ve always been a fan of time loop stories. The first such tale I remember reading was a brilliant little short story called 12:01. Then came [easyazon_link identifier=”B00170I7GG” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Groundhog Day[/easyazon_link] and a number of very good episodes of [easyazon_link identifier=”B002PQ7JQK” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Star Trek[/easyazon_link]. All of these time loop stories worked on a fairly short interval, from an hour to a few days. [easyazon_link identifier=”0316399620″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August[/easyazon_link] takes the time loop to a new length, the length of a man’s life. At first Harry is shocked to find himself in an infant body again.…
Jason-Stop The Presses Anita Blake Likes Rough Sex
I can see Laurell K Hamilton sitting at her desk. She arches her back and cracks her knuckles like Lurch getting ready to play the harpsicord. She smiles as she thinks to herself, what could I do that would be more boring than watching Anita Blake have sex for the umptempth time? Aha! Inspiration strikes. I could have Anita talk about having sex! The Anita Blake books used to be nice and predictable. She would go to work and raise a zombie or two. Word would come down about a Monster on the loose. She would track the Monster down…
The Graveyard Book
The story of a boy who grows up in a graveyard and learns the many tricks of the trade of being a ghost. We start off with our hero as a baby, his parents murdered and a madman hot on his trail. The child ends up in the graveyard and falls under the care of a rather tall man who has the power to cloud men’s minds. We also met a Russian woman who possesses some interesting powers of her own. Oh, and the whole graveyard is filled with ghosts, who all end up influencing our young hero one way…
The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window
Spoilers and such. Basically, this is a book you should read without knowing anything more than the title. The story of a Swedish Forest Gump and how his miraculous luck leads him from one history changing moment to another. The story is broken into two narratives, one that follows the hundred year old Allan Karlsson as he randomly stumbles through a number of adventures dealing with drug dealers and thugs of one sort or another and the other following around a much younger Allan Karlsson as he alters the course of human history. Along the way he meets…
Watching Movies by Rick Lyman
Watching Movies is a collection of interviews featuring famous film personalities watching their favorite movie and talking about why it’s important to them. It’s a simple idea, but the result is often surprising and occasionally shocking. For instance, Kevin Smith’s favorite film is A Man For All Seasons, a movie about Thomas More, while Woody Allen’s favorite is the western Shane. Other surprises include Quentin Tarantino choosing a Roy Rogers film and Michael Bay picking West Side Story. The mind boggles. Of course, I’m not one to talk; my own favorite film is The Matrix. Movies are one of those…
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Spoilers and such-if you haven’t read the book or seen the film, go do so now. Right now. Like countless authors before and since, Truman Capote didn’t like what Hollywood did to his book. F. Scot Fitzgerald walked out on The Great Gatsby, Stephen King hated The Shinning, Anne Rice didn’t want Tom Cruise to play Lestat, and Truman Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Holiday Golightly, Traveling. I think she would have been brilliant in the role, just as she was in everything she ever did, but I’m not sure the 1960 edition of Marilyn would have been…
More Fool Me by Stephen Fry
More Fool Me is the story of Stephen Fry’s life, so far. I’ve been a fan of Stephen Fry since the days of Black Adder I and Jeeves & Wooster. He’s a funny fellow with a great deadpan deliver. He’s also a pretty damned good writer. Making History, a time travel book about Hitler, was shockingly good. More Fool Me is what all autobiographies should be. A bit of history, a bit of reflection, and a bit of actual diary from the good old days. I have been a fan of Stephen Fry for lo these many years, but I…
Being Mortal
We’re all going to die. Easy enough to think about in the abstract. But most of us think about it in terms of the Sun going Nova. Yeah, it’s going to happen, but it’s nothing I need to worry about. Until, that is, it is something to worry about. Being Mortal talks about things like Nursing Homes and Hospice Care and DNRs. This is pretty depressing stuff, but Dr Atul Gawande says it really shouldn’t be. Circle of life and all of that. You are going to die, so it’d be best if you had some idea of how you…