Threefer: Book reviews

It's been a bit since I posted some book reviews, so let's have a few, shall we?

The Maze Runner, by the delightfully named James Dashner

The Maze Runner is pretty weak. And I feel bad since it's an LDS author and the language is clean as super soap and nothing immoral happens in the book and it's a nice harmless read for today's young adults, but boy this is dull.

First, it's a Hunger Games ripoff. Everyone's going to compare it to that, but that's only because it's TRANSPARENTLY A HUNGER GAMES RIPOFF. And I haven't read any of the HG books but I assume they have better writing and better characters than in this book.

Young adult Thomas wakes up in a strange maze world where about 50 other young adult boys live. They have all had their memory erased. They run in a big maze. A girl gets sent to the 'Glade' where they live, and immediately goes into a coma. There is a bit of maze running and some hints at some genuinely interesting mysteries.

All of these mysteries fail to pan out. And the people who erased Thomas' memory erased his personality as well, along with anything that would make him interesting or a compelling or a realistic character to base 3 entire books around. He isn't funny, he isn't cool, he isn't interesting, he isn't well written, he has no interesting thoughts, and he's not attractive. So obviously let's make him the main character. He is mostly a passive observer of events. He comes up with a few ideas, and has one heroic scene thing, but for the most part he runs to and fro looking concerned and wondering if the girl in the coma likes him.

Spoiler: no one knows or cares. The ending arrives and few questions are answered. And, apparently - and I'm completely serious here - one of the very main characters apparently died and I didn't even notice it. I'm on the 2nd book (don't ask) and said character isn't in the book at all, and no one has even mentioned that he isn't there anymore. So either he died off-screen with no mention at all or he died onscreen but it was so poorly written that it barely made the slightest impact.

I read this because there's a movie version coming out in September that is getting terrible advance reviews. I did these things because I enjoy tormenting myself, apparently.

On a side note, books like this make me mad that I never wrote a book. Other than not having any ability to write dialogue that doesn't sound like it comes out of a late 90s Riesen commercial (look it up - they're painful) and having no ideas whatsoever for any interesting plots, my big holdup was 'why write a book if you can't write the BEST book'? Now I wish I'd just rehashed a popular YA fiction series and cashed in while the cashing in was good. Even I could have done better than The Maze Runner.

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Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

I read this because it's the sequel to The Shining - the only Stephen King book I've ever enjoyed. This book isn't a) scary b) good c) anything like The Shining, though, so it was pretty much a bust as far as sequels to The Shining go. It's also, like everything SK has ever produced, hopelessly over-written. Why use one paragraph to describe something unimportant when you can use 17??

Dan Torrence is all grown up and is an alcoholic. A young girl named Abra can communicate with him telepathically. They meet on page 1800 of like 2000. (This felt like an insanely long book since literally not a single interesting thing happens from pages 10-one million.) There is a group of vampire-like people who are searching for Abra because if you kill telepathic kids, they give off 'steam' that said vampire-like people ingest and it makes them young.

All of the vampire characters are annoying and terrible. Dan is OK but you think his alcoholism has a point but it doesn't. It doesn't come into play at all. He quits drinking on like page 200 and never drinks again. Some insane coincidences occur but never pay off. i.e. a guy in Dan's AA group is Abra's pediatrician. He knows both Dan and Abra are telepathic and gifted with paranormal stuff. But he never introduces them ever. They meet in a completely different way. So what was the point of this pediatrician?

There are one or two sort of clever things in here about how the telepathy works (I liked a scene where Abra was able to write messages on Dan's blackboard from many miles away) and the ending was pretty OK in a high level kind of way. Like, I like the plan Dan came up with to kill the vampires. But meh.

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The Martian by first-time novelist Andy Weir

I saved the best for last; this is the best book I've read in years. It's hilarious. I couldn't put it down. The main character is brilliant. The supporting characters are a little weak but since the main character is 95% of the book it's fine. It's about an astronaut who gets accidentally left on Mars because his team thinks he died in an accident. Turns out he survived. The entire book is about him and NASA trying to get him off of Mars. Lots of language, unfortunately, but everything else about this book is perfect. It's very heavy on scientific talk but it all sounds pretty accurate; the author reportedly spent over 3 years researching this book, and it shows.

It's not a comedy officially but it is laugh out loud funny. The main character is a riot. The plot moves quickly - much is going on. You're rooting for this guy from the first few pages of the book. It immediately hooks you and you stay hooked because the dialogue is so great. Thematically I guess it would be considered sci fi but it feels very realistic and is set in the very near future, so don't shy away if you're averse to sci fi...

It's been optioned into a movie to be directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, who is 100% the wrong casting and will utterly ruin this movie, plus I hate Matt Damon. Plus, the entire gist of this is that it's a guy's journal log entries. Many things happen, but they're kind of not the point. His stream of consciousness is the star. So unless you want to film 2 hours of an astronaut typing up journal entries, 99% of the charm of this book will not translate well to film.

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More to come! My constant absorption of odd books continues apace...

Movie Review: Johnny Lingo

Johnny Lingo is a unique little slice of LDS cultural lagniappe, and as such is very easy to take for granted. Anyone raised in the Church is familiar with the story, and the concept of being an '8-cow wife' (more on this in a second) and the other distinctive aspects of the 'movie,' which at 29-minutes long is more a one-episode TV mini-series than a movie, but whatever.

We start off with Johnny Lingo, ruggedly handsome dude and all-around good guy, who is Polynesian and yet has a name that sounds like he was one of Patrick Swayze's surfer gang members from Point Break.

Johnny Lingo is interested in marrying a girl named Mahana, and shows up at Mahana's house to bargain with her dad...

Pictured here, sporting his very best 'Velma' haircut.

...and his best friend, the enigmatic and nameless 'counselor' of completely indeterminate age and gender.

If you gave me a million dollars I still couldn't tell you if this is a man or a woman.

Poor Mahana is (figuratively) beaten down by her dad and, with no modern Disney movies around, has no way of knowing she just needs to believe in herself, and would it kill you to put on some makeup or something?

Mahana: for when you're attracted for some reason to the 4-day heroin binge look.

Dad thinks Mahana is worth, at best, 3 cows, but Johnny blows everyone's minds when he declares that he will pay 8 COWS for Mahana. This is the cow equivalent of demanding to pay $2,000 for USA For Africa's "We are the World" on 8-track. This despite Dad exclaiming, "Mahana, you ugly!" just moments before.

"You're no Adam Levine yourself, Dad."

Anyway, despite Dad's doubts, Johnny Lingo makes good on the cow thing, and shows up to whisk Mahana away to places unknown, 'visiting many islands.' They get married (apparently - it's off-screen), but the shoot really hits the fan when some juvenile delinquents make up a mean anti-Mahana chant at the wedding dinner, and Johnny Lingo runs them off with a nonsense threat.

"Kooie Phlay!!!"

Around this point I'd like to mention that the film didn't apparently have any lights for the shoot and thus filmed about 25% of the movie by, apparently, moonlight.

Johnny and Mahana Lingo take off in his 8-cowpower boat and that's the last we see of them until the end, when a shopkeeper guy (oh sorry, there was a shopkeeper guy) hears that the Lingos are finally back from their honeymoon. He arrives to deliver something that Johnny had put on layaway, and discovers Mahana's Dad leaving in disgust, mumbling that Johnny Lingo had 'cheated him.' Baffled, the shopkeeper goes into the Lingo's house to discover...

Someone got a JC Penney card...

Mahana is pretty now! Or at least she smiles a little more. You see, all she needed was a little nurturing, a new wardrobe, some makeup, a nearly total make-over, a haircut, a pedicure, a manicure, posture lessons, an eyebrow plucking, a completely different personality, and a wealthy/attractive husband who excessively spoils you, and poof! She's hot and emotionally stable, just like that!

And all it took was love, and several thousands of dollars.

The shopkeeper pervs out on Mahana and almost literally starts drooling on himself until Mahana, realizing that things are getting weird and not a little bit uncomfortable, excuses herself to attend to an urgent errand involving walking over to the beach for no reason.

OK pal, let's reel it back in a little...

Johnny Lingo helpfully explains to the shopkeeper that blah blah blah something believe in yourself blah blah possibly plastic sugery, you too can be hot like us. 

I give it 8 cows out of 8. And if you want to, you can watch the entire movie here.

Book Review: President Me, by Adam Carolla

OK, the book cover is dumb. I know that. It looks silly. My wife has told me this many times. But I have read all of Adam's books, and each one is funnier than the last. President Me is no exception.

The interesting thing about how he 'wrote' the book is that he reportedly did it by calling someone up while he was stuck in traffic in LA every day and by dictating it to them. They would transcribe it and edit it together later. He's basically so productive that he felt like sitting in a car was a waste of productivity that he couldn't tolerate, so he decided to write a book.

And that's mainly the recurring theme of the book - hard work is what leads to success, not government welfare or luck. Much of the book is political, and, despite some salty language in places, it's really funny, particularly because of how non-politically correct he is. Things that wouldn't have been controversial at all 20 years ago are now side-splitters. He's pretty fearless.

If I hadn't have had a library copy, I would have highlighted about half the book. As it is, I took a few pictures of some parts I really liked. Here are two of them:

And let me say this quickly about "community organizers." We sing the praises of "community,' but why is it the more that word appears in your life the worse off you are? If you go to a community clinic, community college, or are represented by a community organizer, you're in tough shape. The only time you want the word "community" to describe part of your lifestyle is when the word "gated" is in front of it.

And also this part:

[About Elizabeth Waren saying that the 'system' is rigged against people] Stop telling people the system is rigged and that the deck is stacked against them. Tell them to forget the deck and focus on themselves. But you won't convey that message because if you tell your constituency to actually do something for themselves, they won't elect you to do it for them. You have to keep preaching how they system is rigged and that they'll never get a fair shot so they'll elect you to unrig it. That's how your party stays in power - a perpetual-motion machine of hopelessness.

There's stuff like this on nearly every page. And after reading the whole book, I'm pretty much ready to go door to door to get signatures to draft Adam into the actual 2016 election.

Book Review: The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, by Stephen King

I really hate Stephen King. By my count, I've read, I think, 5 of his books (The Shining, Insomnia, The Green Mile, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and Everything's Eventual). With the sort of exception of The Shining, I hated them all. I think he's a sloppy writer, not that creative, really tacky, and obnoxiously liberal and heavy handed.

So why read another one? Curiosity, mostly. The Dark Tower series was almost going to be made into a movie or or movie series or TV series or something like that, and didn't happen, and then might happen again, and everyone talked about how unfilmable the series apparently is. So what was the big deal?

In short, the big deal is not remotely a big deal, at least as far as the first book is concerned. It's set in a desert and would only have two sets: an old west town and a cave. But let's back up.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger is about a cowboy guy who befriends a young boy and has a 300-page flashback in which nothing happens, and over the entire book tries to track down a bad guy wizard person. He finds the bad guy wizard person, who tells him that there are multiple dimensions. The young boy is from New York on Earth. The Gunslinger is from some other Earth-like planet. In the end, will The Gunslinger stick with the young boy or will he allow him to fall off a train track in a cave when he probably could have saved him without much effort? 

Spoiler: He allows him to fall off the tracks, making you wonder what the point of having the boy be in the story was in the first place, and why him falling into the cave was apparently a pre-requisite to meet with the bad wizard guy. 

The budget of this movie would be about $500, most of which would be used on CGI to make a raven be able to talk like a parrot. There are also some 'mutant' cave people that glow in the dark, so you'd need to get some glow sticks for them.  

Is this a good story with good characters? Good story, not remotely. Good characters? The Gunslinger guy (who has a name - maybe something like Ronald Chastain or something like that?) is fine, but 99% of his personality is in his thoughts, so it would be tough to translate that to TV/Movies without a lot of voice-over, probably. The bad wizard guy - eh, not really. The ending is just a set-up for the rest of the series, and I think that sucks. Stories should be able to stand on their own. 

In the end, I give The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger 1 gun out of 7. If you find yourself craving a supernatural western, I would instead recommend reading Shane and War of the Worlds simultaneously - it will make more sense than this.

Quick hits

• Maddie and I sometimes sing goodnight songs at night. Tonight we sang "Daydream Believer," which she calls "Sleepy Jeans." We got to the part that says 'and our good times start and end without dollar one to spend, but how much baby do we really need?' Maddie sat up and said "One." I said "One what? One dollar?" She said, "No, one baby." She told me that Emmerson was the baby in the family and we needed to have one baby in the family, in response to 'how much baby do we really need." Problem solved.
• Jan told Maddie that they could work on some crafts while they're still in the extended stay hotel while we're waiting for our house items to ship up from Florida. She told her that Father's Day was coming up and maybe they could make a card for Daddy with paper, glue, and glitter. Maddie said, "Uh Mom, Dad's a boy." Mom said, "Oh." Mads thought for a minute and looked concerned. Maddie then said, "We'll have to use blue glitter."

On the Road Again Part 2

When last we left off, we had made it to Savannah, GA. 

8:00: Enjoyed complimentary breakfast at the Marriott. Silently judged the misspelling of 'Sugar' on a sugar bottle. (It was labeled 'suger.')

8:45: Drove downtown and wandered around briefly to take some pictures. I've posted all the noteworthy ones on Instagram. It was OK. Probably not as cool in the early morning as it would be at night. The next time I find myself there, it's probably worth going on a ghost tour so I can get more of the history. 

9:15: Back on the road. I drove over an extremely tall bridge that went over the Savannah river that forms the border between GA and SC.

9:17: In SC! Finally!

9:19: Things already are much more green and lush and noticeably prettier. I drive through a nature preserve to make my way back to I-95.

10:00: I stop and gas up...and the gas is $3.55 - a full $.33 cents cheaper than it had been in Miami. Not bad. While in the store to buy a water bottle and some life savers, I notice a local newspaper. The main headline: "And that's when my dryer completely exploded..."

11:00: I make it to my turn and head up to Columbia.

12:00: I stop at the temple. It's microscopically small and on a very very small bit of land. I feel sorry for people who get married there, because there are no temple grounds. And I'm not just exaggerating. There. Are. No. Temple. Grounds. There is a tightly fenced-in sidewalk area. If you tried really hard, you could probably get a close-up picture at the south side of the temple. The scenery would be a big white wall behind you. I wonder why they didn't build on a spot with more grounds?

12:15: Back on the road to Greenville. There are hills!

12:45: OK I now realize I am slowly driving up a mountain. There are a lot of hills, and the altitude is steadily increasing. Scenery is great - lots of trees and still very lush!

1:30: I make it to town. Hooray!

The rest of this would involve me getting lunch and settling in at my palatial imitation extended stay apartment, but I'll spare you those thrilling details. So far, the city is like an A, the job is a B (has some issues but nothing that can't be solved) and my wife is an A+. She has handled the entire move all on her own while I've been up here. I head back down to Miami (on a plane) again tomorrow to help finish the move and bring everyone else back up!