Clever.

Amazing handanimated poem and the world it describes.

It is always hard to fill someone elses shoes. In the case of Douglas Adams I guess we can safely assume that it is almost an impossibility. Yet, Adams’ wife gave permission to Eoin Colfer to write the sixth book in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy. The book was published in early October 2010 and it is… Well, we’ll get to that in a moment.

Firstly I have to say that I have not read any other of Colfer’s books, though I have been told that the Artemis Fowl books are actually quite good, I guess this was why he was given permission to write the sixth book.

On second thought though, high book sales numbers do not necessarily equate with a talent in writing, I am looking at you Dan Brown.

“And another thing…” picks up more or less where the last book left off and tries to bring the story to an end. I am saying here tries because the end is still somewhat open and it would be conceivable that someone else could be tasked with a third trilogy… But let’s hope not.

The problem with Colfer’s book is not so much his writing. He is a fine wordsmith in his own right, but he cannot escape the comparison to Adams’ writing wit and his unique style. This is exactly where Colfer’s book falls short. The way Adams saw and the way he described it was unique to him and Colfer’s attempts at cpying them are, to me, cringe inducing.

This isn’t necessarily Colfer’s fault. As I said, he can write well and if this wouldn’t be the sixth book in a series that was established by a different writer over the course of almost 30 years it would come off as a rather decent, at times even funny book.

The problem though is that the book is based on a series of five books that has been around for close to 30 years and that people are very well aquatinted it with it. It is hard to conceive anybody would start the series by reading “And another thing…” first.

The book reads and feels more like a homage to Adams and “The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy” than a continuation. It is a bit like the new Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams, the movie did not bring anything new to the Start Trek franchise, instead it rehashed the tired and old story elements, put some new shine on it and added some explosions for excitement. It was for all intents and purposes a fan movie with a mega budget.

“And another thing…” is the book version of this fan movie approach, but it lacks the shiny images and the explosions. Instead it is just a somewhat half-hearted retelling of former elements of the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy and, unfortunately later on of the Dirk Gently world but it never really reaches the level of either of them.

I know this is probably unfair towards Eoin Colfer, but the book is really one that should not have been written. it is not funny if you know the previous books and there isn’t enough of a “Oh, I remember that” moments in the book that would make it amusing for the fans of the series. All it did for me was asking myself “Why?” and feeling the urge to go back and re-reading the original books (which I briefly did after I was done reading and I had more laughs in the first two chapters than I did in pretty much all of Colfer’s book).

If you like Adams work I suggest that you re-read him and avoid this last (latest?) book in the trilogy, the book should have never been written, much less been published.

Even if your youth sucked, hearing the soundtrack from it down the years almost always cripples or caresses you. You can never tell which it’ll be until you hear it.

Unknown

Someone told me they read on a blog that two people had tattooed on their wrists the phrase “Hope gleams in the idiot heart,” a line from the Russian poet Mayakovsky that they found in my novel THE MARRIAGE OF STICKS. I have always loved the permanence of tattoos, the conviction by the person who gets one that they will be happy to have this thing on their body ten, twenty, thirty years from now. But besides the stupid tattoos I see all over the place today, I have yet to see or think of anything I would want on my skin forever. However hearing about this tattoo today I thought, that’s a pretty cool thing. A good permanent reminder that no matter what, there are almost always surprises around life’s corners and we should keep our heads up to see them coming.

Jonathan Carrol

In a political season when environmental policy is the stuff of candidate debates, Kull offers a different take. According to his observations in Solitude, no environmental ills can be cured until we first remedy ourselves.

On his lonely island, Kull finds that we in this society strongly desire to satiate and confirm ourselves through consumption and production. Our identities have come to depend on it. But in the process, we sacrifice our critical awareness, and become ignorant of the fact that our excessive reaching out for a feeling of being important and being alive actually does very little to achieve the experience of vitality.

“My goal in the wilderness was not to conquer either the external world or my own inner nature,” Kull writes in Solitude, “but to give up the illusion of ownership and control and to experience myself as part of the ebb and flow of something greater than individual ego.”

?

Just click here:

Though may I be the first one to say: WTF Harper Collins, why not offer a DOWLOAD???? Why chain someone to a browser? It’s not like some Hacker will not figure out a way to pull down the entire thing and throw it up on Bittorrent in the next 24 hours.

“The Prime Minister did not speak during our brief tribute, certainly not. I don’t think he even looked up. The snarling business of Question Period having just ended, he was shuffling papers. I tried to bring him close to me with my eyes.
Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares not a jot for the arts.

But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate—that would be arrogant, less than that—to make suggestions to his stillness.

For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.”

Yann Martel

Best-selling novelist Michael Crichton is a vocal critic of global warming science. His 2004 novel State of Fear depicts global warming as a hoax concocted by environmentalists to raise money. In January 2005, Crichton spent an hour talking with President Bush; the two were “in near-total agreement,” according to Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes.

Last March, New Republic senior editor Michael Crowley wrote a cover story called “Jurassic President: Michael Crichton’s Scariest Creation.” It highlighted Crichton’s junk science and the danger posed by President Bush adopting it.

Crichton’s response was to smear Crowley in his latest novel, Next, by writing in a character named “Mick Crowley” who rapes a two-year-old boy.Anyways, I didn’t seem to have been the only one who didn’t really agree with his conclusion, but it seems he only grinds his ax with people who are published in a newspaper.

I think I pass on his new “book”.

I can’t help being fascinated and horrified by those pictures. In some of these photos you see how the radiation has distorted the film material, in others you see soldiers and other people directly exposed to the radiation, in one picture they are sitting in sun chairs staring straight at the explosion wearing dark goggles. It boggles my mind.

Up to this day the only film that ever gave me sleepless nights was “The Day After“, I must have been 11 at that point and what scared me weren’t so much the images but because even then I was aware that what was depicted there could happen (of course it begs the question why my parents let me see the movie, but then they may not have quite grasp that I followed the news already and got some of the context).

Seeing those images I have to wonder what a scientist makes work on those things, or weapons in general. I mean there can’t be a “huge benefit for mankind” in creating an atomic bomb or a gatling gun, how does one convince oneself that this is “good”? Or is it just the challenge?

If you get a chance, have a look at the book, it is only a tiny glimpse into the research that happened both in the US and the USSR over almost half a century. Part of the cold war that brought us the US Strategic Air Command, B52 et. al and of course their USSR counter parts. Not to forget this whacko Curtis LeMay.

[…]
Off to the side, from what is probably a glade where the tents and trailers used to be set up, he can hear laughter and singing, and shouts of admiration and encouragement. There must be a mating going on, a rare enough occasion among the people: Crake had worked out the numbers, and had decreed that once every three years per female was more than enough.

There’ll be the standard quintuplet, four men and the woman in heat. Her condition will be obvious to all from the bright-blue colour of her buttocks and abdomen – a trick of variable pigmentation filched from the baboons, with a contribution from the expandable chromosphores of the octopus. As Crake used to say, Think of an adaptation, any adaptation, and some animal somewhere will have though of it first.

Since it’s only the blue tissue and the pheromones released by it that stimulate the males, there’s no more unrequited love these days, no more thwarted lust; no more shadow between the desire and the act. Courtship begins at the first whiff, the first faint blush of azure, with the males presenting flowers to the females – just as male penguins present round stones, said Crake, o as the male silverfish presents a sperm packet. At the same time they indulge in musical outbursts, like songbirds. Their penises turn bright blue to match the blue abdomens of the females, and they do a sort of blue-dick dance number, erect members waving to and fro in unison, in time to the foot movements and the singing: a feature suggested to Crake by the sexual semaphoring of crabs. From amongst the floral tributes the female chooses four flowers, and the sexual ardour of the unsuccessful candidates dissipates immediately, with no hard feelings left. Then, when the blue of her abdomen has reached it’s deepest shade, the female and her quartet find a secluded spot and go at it until the woman becomes pregnant and her blue colouring fades. And that is that.

No more No means yes, anyway, thinks Snowman. No more prostitution, no sexual abuse of children, no haggling over the price, no pimps, no sex slaves. No more rape. The five of them will roister for hours, three of the men standing guard and doing the singing and shouting while the fourth copulates, turn and turn about. Crake has equipped these women with ultra-strong vulvas – extra skin layers, extra muscles – so they can sustain these marathons. It no longer matters who the father of the inevitable child may be, since there’s no more property to inherit, no father-son loyalty required for war. Sex is no longer a mysterious rite, viewed with ambivalence or downright loathing, conducted in the dark and inspiring suicides and murders. Now it’s more like an athletic demonstration, a free-spirited romp.

Maybe Crake was right, thinks Snowman. Under the old dispensation, sexual competition had been relentless and cruel: for every pair of happy lovers there was a dejected onlooker, the one excluded. Love was its own transparent bubble-dome: you could see the two inside it, but you couldn’t get in there yourself.
That had been the milder form: the single man at the window, drinking himself into oblivion to the mournful strains of the tango. But such things could escalate into violence. Extreme emotions could be lethal. If I can’t have you nobody will, and so forth. Death could set it.
[…]

Technorati Tags: books, love, musings, human, quote

First of all the title is really stupid, which takes a bit away from the book. The next thing is that the cover hails the author, Linda McQuaig, as “Canada’s Michael Moore”. Nothing against Michael Moore, he’s entertaining, but I don’t think it serves the book well. The association is even worse due to Moore’s “Dude, where’s my country” book from a few years back.

The book itself is rather well written, with a lot of footnotes and references, which clearly differentiates it from Michael Moore’s writing. It brings up interesting points, but it unfortunately doesn’t go far enough at times. It is entertainingly written and an easy read and clearly a good primer, but at times it doesn’t explore it’s ideas to the full extend it could have (and in my opinion should have).

Rating 3.5/5.

Being bored and having not much to do (and not wanting to read anything which required a lot of brain) I turned to a book I bought some years ago, “Tom Clancy’s “The Bear and the Dragon”" And oh my god is it bad.

I mean seriously. I know that Clancy wasn’t a good writer and his characters were rather “dull” and “two dimensional” most of the time, but hell, it is outright painful at times to read his descriptions. It is the worst of “Look how good the US is, we are not always doing the right thing, but hell we try, so like us!”.

Some of the highlights:

- People in China are utterly bowing to the power of the Politburo, not only that, but they love it.
- Americans are smart and Savy.
- Germans want to invade Poland again.
- Russians are lucky bastards but have no clue how to behave in the world and need the help of the Americans to do anything.
- USA USA USA.

Ugh. I really should stop reading this drivel, but it’s like watching a car wreck. I just can’t look away.

HELP.

I think we should act as if. I think we should read books, and tell children stories, and take them to the theatre, and learn poems, and play music, as if it would make a difference. . . . We should act as if the universe were listening to us and responding. We should act as if life were going to win.”

Philip Pullman

Part of life is a quest to find that one essential person who will understand our story. But we choose wrongly so often. Over the ensuing years that person we thought understood us best ends up regarding us with pity, indifference, or active dislike.

Those who truly care can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive our worst sins. Rarely do we find someone capable of both.

Jonathan Carroll, Glass Soup

The surprising thing is that the protagonist from his last book “White Apples“, Vincent Ettrich, makes a reappearance. I’d thought that was a first.

I finally got Jonathan Carroll’s newest in the mail today: “Glass Soup” so now I am torn between reading this next or Neil Gaiman’s “Anansi Boys”.

Ummm Help?

My biggest problem with the book is not so much that it is a counter point to Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” or that it more or less says that there is no counter culture (that I buy) but rather that it seems to paint with such a broad brush that the only answer one can take away from it is:

“Go forth and keep doing what you’re doing, because everything is fine, you’re just acting like a human”

This is rather unfortunate, on the one hand side they “attack” books like “No Logo” for not providing any solutions to the problems they identify, yet the book itself fails to provide any solutions for the few problems they identify themselves.

At least in the new after word they are admitting to it, as well as the fact that they paint with too broad of a brush.

So what to make of the book? It is still a good read. It can show people who want to make changes why they will fail. If you combine reading No Logo (and similar books) with The Rebel Sell you may get a good understanding on how society works.

Will this cause a change in society and make the world a better place? No, unless everybody reads (and understands) it, it won’t make a dent in society. Changes have already been external (disasters, wars etc.), not ideas alone.

So, read it, but with a large lump of salt.

Neil Gaiman’s “Anansi Boys” as well as Jonathan Carroll’s “Glass Soup“.

Both of them will hopefully as good as their last books and let me dream again for a bit.

I like to dream, and haven’t nearly done enough in the last year.