Book Reviews
Cloud Atlas
I am literally stunned that this book is being made into a shithouse movie starring Hollywood’s Tom Hanks to be released later this very month (being October in the year two thousand and twelve). If there was ever a piece of pretentious rubbish which should have been unfilmable, it is this steaming pile. Look at how stupid Tom Hanks looks in it:
Six stories, one soul. You can already tell that it’s lame and sentimental. Aimed right at the highbrow of housewives. Fodder for the world’s dumbest book club.
“One of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt is—and should be—read by any student of contemporary literature.” — Dave Eggers
You’re wrong Dave.
A Confederacy of Dunces
Surely there is no more played out character in the world of modern entertainment than Homer Simpson. The fat, comical buffoon incapable of understanding the world around him (with hilarious results) and dealing with the quirks of other neighbouring degenerates (with hilarious results).
The Man in the High Castle
An alternate-history lark at first glance hides a hidden message of racism. Philip K. Dick would have us believe that he’s written a book about a scenario where Franklin Roosevelt was assassinated in 1933 leading to a weak USA government. From there he speculates that Nazi Germany would have conquered the Soviet Union without the involvement of Americans, Japan would have taken control of Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the Pacific, all of which would lead up to a surrender by the Allies in 1948.
Sounds interesting. Just seem friendly ruminations about the massacre of millions in just a slightly different way than the millions were actually massacred in reality.
The Hunger Games
An insidious example of brainwashing. Extreme left-wing propaganda being peddled to school children. While we watch the world devour the movie version (third biggest opening weekend in movie history?!) those responsible for the shaping of young minds in the freest hemisphere of all have overlooked their most basic responsibility. The foundations of the civilised world are under attack from a subversive and destructive misogynistic manifesto crying out for the destruction of capitalism and begging for communist release.
SPOILERS EVERYWHERE BELOW
Here we have a poverty-stricken heroine (more on the misogyny later despite her lack of penis) struggling to survive in a cruel world ruled by the wealthy who also happen to be the victors of a brutal civil war.
Fuckwits of Fiction #1: Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game is an award-winning science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. It won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards back in the '80s, two of the most prestigious genre awards a sci-fi novel can win, and I'm thinking there'll soon be an increased interest in this novel again now that a film is in production. Most of the novel concerns war games played by child geniuses in a space station against a backdrop of futuristic Cold War-inspired intrigue and an interplanetary war with a race of aliens referred to only as 'the buggers', which I guess will translate fairly well into a big budget movie.
The Road
A novel for fans of walking, looking through cupboards and lying down. It’s a Pulitzer prize winner from 2007 and widely acclaimed by jerks that you work with, or see on the bus, or wherever it is that you interact with other humans, as being tremendous and was even made into a successfully dull movie.
The truth: it sucks.
Journey alongside an unnamed father and son who basically walk around the place looking for warmth and sustenance and avoiding bad guys who are made up of cannibals, thieves and murderers. Enjoy the detailed descriptions of both male humans eating canned goods they scrounge for amongst the ruins of civilisation.
Flashman in the Great Game
This is the book to get you pumped about studying Indian history.
What began as a mutiny of Indian soldiers in Meerut, Uttar Pradash, The Republic of India became The Indian Rebellion of 1857 which spread through Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and the area around Delhi – some of the stinkiest places on earth.
Life Of Pi - Yann Martel
I’ve never really written a book review before. Last time I tried to write one it turned into a rant about hipsters and film adaptations. This book is exactly the kind of book hipsters would hate. It’s popular. It made both Dymocks, and Angus and Robertson’s Top 100s – even though those things are really just a sham to keep popular books popular and keep up and coming authors on the internet where they belong – and if I had to guess, I’d say it probably made Oprah’s Book Club as well. Yep, just checked it. This book has Oprah’s grubby fingerprints all over it.
Life Of Pi is a few years old now, so before I’d even picked it up I’d heard a lot about it.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
This review comes from that horrible place you find youself in on a long plane flight. It's that point where you've picked the low-hanging fruit of entertainment- you're tired and can't sleep - you've watched everything worth watching on whatever in-flight viewing you've got - it's that period where good sense completely leaves you and you'll endure almost anything by way of pain to get the slightest sniff of your brain being occupied by anything beyond listening to the person snoring next to you for twelve hours straight.
Rob Schneider is great in this
