Drew's #26 -- Two Graves by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

 

Ho Hum.  A disappointing climax to an otherwise interesting trilogy beginning with Fever Dream (by the same authors).  The series itself begins with the book Relic, which was made into a pretty awful movie starring Tom Schizemore some years ago; a shame as the story was pretty good.  Anyhow the series follows an affluent but mysterious FBI agent  named Pendergast (you actually don't find out much about him, including his first name, until several books into the series) strangely engaged in only the more macabre cases.  He moves through a handful of partners but returns primarily to a NYPD detective who accompanies him on these dark cases that always seem to span the globe.

The series has it's ups and downs (Cabinet of Curiosities and Still Life with Crows are some of the better ones) but this one is the deepest trough I've read into.  Anti-climactic, pedantic, and somewhat condescending, agent Pendergast's character, usually likable and quirky, is depressingly mercurial and prickly--somewhat understandable as event unfold through the story but the authors drag it out to the point where I really didn't like him very much.  In addition, and this is my pet peeve in any story, there are a number of peripheral characters that are built up and built up only to simply waft out of the story or come to nothing as the story fully unravels.  It's as if the authors wound the story to intricately and got lost in the off-shoots.  Fish soup is a good compliment to the meal, but too much red herring spoils the fare.  Still, it's like Episodes 1-3 of the Starwars series, you have to watch them--but they kinda suck.  If you decide to read other books in this series, you'd do best to skip the last three altogether.

Drew's #25 -- The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

 

The Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.) is a much more than a desk reference.  In fact, it is authority on the english language.   If you've never considered the dictionary, think for a moment just what it took to put one of the first ones together and just what sort of people it would take to accomplish this task.  I mean, you'd have to be crazy to see that project through, right?  The short answer is:  yes.  In fact the largest contribution was made my Dr. William Chester Minor, a paranoid schizophrenic remanded to an asylum in England after murdering another man in his delusional state.  But, like the O.E.D. itself, there's much more to the story than you'd initially assume.  And there were a number of remarkable people that had a hand in the publication.   And the author does a fascinating job of researching, developing and relating the details the people who put the first O.E.D. together.   Murder, insanity, words, famous nerds, social radicals of academia... all wrapped together in a hilariously (in a very dry sense) engaging story.  Take my word for it:  a MUST read.

Drew's #24 -- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

In the author's dreary future, the internet is a V/R universe called the Oasis and is more of a reality to most people than overcrowded, dilapidated  real world.  But the death of the Oasis's creator (clearly Steve Jobs, though not so named) leaves it's future up for grabs in his will, offering control of it to whoever deciphers a collection of riddles and overcomes the challenges they lead to.  The fiercest competitors are the evil computer industry, Integrated Online Innovation (I.O.I) and the Gunter's, a collection of gamers and techies and .  Among the former is a an unlikely young man from a shanty style trailer park who propels himself into fame and fortune when he solves the first clue and takes the lead in the race for control of the Oasis.  The young man becomes the unwitting leader of the Gunters along with a group of his friends who eventually have to brave the real world in order to stay alive when I.O.I. resorts to deadly means to knock the "Goonies"-like Gunters out of the race.

Creative and unexpectedly engaging for what it is.  Lots of nostalgic arcade and movie throw-backs for geek in all of us.  One big turn off for this book for me, though, is that for some reason the author decides to take an otherwise light-hearted story about gamers and nerds and throw in a atheistic appeal that "religion is complete B.S."  It's a two line blurb and nothing to do with the rest of the story and serves no purpose except to highlight the piss-poor job done by the editor to screen such irrelevant takes but it stuck out to me.  Anyhow, if you white it out, the rest of the story is enjoyable.

Drew's #23 -- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

 

Yuk, Yuk, Yuk!  ...and I don't mean "funny"!  The book is as awful as the movie but pretentious enough to present itself as a social criticism.  The story follows Alex the hooligan as he vandalizes, rapes, murders, and burglarizes his way arrogantly through a small field victims (including one of his own hoodlum companions) until he finds himself in prison.   There he cravenly hides behind a priest (whom the author--typical of the common, pseudo-intellectual pomposity of the rank, low-class, trash-writers-masccarading-as-socio-politically-signifcant-commentators-but-in-reality-are-no-talant-hacks--portrays as narrow and dimwitted) until he kills another inmate.  Alex's further crimes (for which he remains remorseless and unapologetic) land him in a controversial reform program which psychologically deters him from violence and mayhem.

However, when he is released back into society, he finds his room rented out to a respectable man--appreciative of Alex's parents, his body beaten by his mistreated cronies--now led by a rival gang leader, and his sorry self imprisoned and tortured by the husband of a woman he raped.  At long last he forlornly throws himself head-first from a window, cursing everyone and everything but himself and his woefully self-indulgent character.  Alas where an unremarkable tombstone should mark the end of this grotesque carnival of a story, the fiend refuses to just die.

Instead, our "hero" is not only saved by the society he preyed upon, but pardoned and venerated by it's officials!  Most disturbingly, he is not simply forgiven by his loving parents but THEY seek HIS forgiveness (whereupon the rotten little twit scorns his family for his mistreatment).  Horrible wretch that he is, Alex is not only held unaccountable for his despicable deeds, he is championed as a moral role-model when he benevolently ponders putting aside his life of wickedness for adulthood.  The authors point, as he belabors to some length in the prologue, is that good and evil are a personal moral choice.  Right.  Somehow this unapologetic cesspool of profane and heathen brutality is really just a philosophical illustration of... something.  The only reason I spent a moment at all recounting this pulp in a review is to save you, gentle reader, from the wasted time of finding this out for yourself.

Drew's # 22 -- The Gray Man by Mark Greaney

Another action-adventure full of big bangs, guns, McGuyver-style saves, and spies.  Like eating candy on a diet, this book is satisfying in the, but no doubt is doing nothing to help my MS...

A lone, private operative finds himself the victim of a wicked double-cross right after a mission.  Just like that, the ex-U.S. military special operations commando turned private gun known as The Gray Man finds himself  in the middle of political power play slotting his contract for termination--permanently.  The more elusive the Gray Man becomes, the more teams are brought in from around the world to kill him.

Fun story even if it stretches the borders of realistic (Die Hard 2 style--there are no ejection seats in a C-130).  But what the heck, it's equally unrealistic that a wolf would dress up like  an shut-in in order to eat a little girl but we've all heard that one before.  Also, it's a little long.  Not exactly epic, but it gets kind of tedious.

Drew's #21 -- Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm spotlight's the oppression of  a Stallin-esque socialist dictatorship.  A great read!  I actually read this just before Cassandra and I read the author's larger work, 1984.  In truth, it's easier to read Animal Farm--the whimsey of talking, self-governing, and/or scheming animals creating a gray, hopeless dystopia for themselves removes one from the more foreboding possibility of such an oppression unnervingly unraveled in the prophecy of 1984.

Must read for this election year...