No recap. Just go back and read the previous posts here, here, and here.
4th grade was better. He had a good teacher that year, a teacher we had been looking forward to him having because of what we knew about him from when his older brother had had the same teacher. He began to enjoy school and quit asking if he didn't have to go. Not that he was being challenged, but it was at least interesting. He also started 6th grade math that year, which was still too easy, but at least it wasn't depressingly easy.
Well, it wasn't depressingly easy at school, at any rate. At home was another story. See, going into middle school math meant a certain amount of homework to go along with it. Unnecessary homework. It's not that he hadn't already been having unnecessary homework (and I would argue that nearly all homework is unnecessary (in fact, I have)), but it had been relatively small amounts of unnecessary homework. 6th grade math stepped that up to levels that became depressing, because, again, it amounted to busy work for him, and he hated doing it. Because he hated doing it, it became a huge ordeal every fucking day. Every fucking day that has lasted for years. That year to this one, in fact.
This homework thing is part of the system that has failed not just my son but is failing pretty much all students in the United States, right now, and we refuse to give it up because, well, it's how we do things. If there's one thing Americans are good at it's taking something that is failing and doing it harder and more intensely and hoping for a better outcome. Homework is a system that has proven to be a failure and, yet, we just continue to give students more and more of it.
As an aside, my kids' school, many years ago, now, did actually take a look at homework and considered doing away with it. That's what the research shows: Homework should be so minimal as to be almost non-existent. Except reading. Reading should be assigned and promoted, because kids need to be reading. However, when it came down to it, the teachers couldn't agree to drop it. Why? Because assigning homework is what they knew.
So... He did better at school, but the homework he was having cancelled all of that out and, rather than his level of dislike for school going down, it just sort of simmered there at the same level. But, other than spending hours on homework every night, the year went well.
About a week before school started the next year, the year he would have been in 5th grade, we got a call: The school had just received back the results from the STAR test from his 4th grade year and he had, essentially, scored a 100% on it (like a 99.5% or something). He had always had high STAR test results, scores in the high 90s, which is why they had done an academic review in 3rd grade, but they couldn't ignore the 100, and they wanted to skip him to 6th grade. Of course, we said "yes."
>sigh<
I mean, of course, we said "yes." Along with the request to skip 5th grade was also an apology for not having listened to me about him for the last several years. Yeah, the principal said something to the effect of, "We should have listened to you. We're sorry. But we'd like to move him up to 6th grade this year." And, actually, they had to know right then because school was going to start in a week.
In hindsight, that was probably the wrong year to have done that. Not because he wasn't ready but because we had finally found a teacher he enjoyed, and he would have had the same teacher in 5th grade as he'd had in 4th grade. We did, briefly, consider that, that he would have to leave that teacher's class, but we figured it would be better to get him more closely aligned to where he was academically.
But the 6th grade teacher, as nice as she was and as much as he liked her, was not engaging in the way his 4th grade teacher had been, and it wasn't long before he'd moved back to being bored with school because nothing interesting was happening, and they weren't doing anything that he didn't already know. Not in the core classes, at any rate. There was some history he wasn't familiar with, but there was nothing in math, science, or English that he didn't already know.
There were two saving graces for him in 6th grade:
1. He was in the middle school musical production of Alice in Wonderland, and he discovered a love of musical theater.
2. I went in once a week to teach creative writing, which he loved. [I discovered that my son is a brilliant writer, which was a surprise. Not that it was a surprise, but just how brilliant was a surprise. At 10, his writing had a fullness to it that most high school students never achieve. It was way beyond what I was doing at 10, that's for sure.]
The problem with all of this is that once the perception becomes a belief, it's really hard to shake. My son's perception of school was that it was a waste of time, and, by the end of 6th grade, that had become a belief. A solid belief. He couldn't see a point in it and found nearly all of the work beneath him. But, still, he had a successful year in 6th grade and, probably, other parents would have been unconcerned with what was going on. People tend not to worry about their kids' performance at school when they're bringing in A's.
Showing posts with label Alice in Wonderland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alice in Wonderland. Show all posts
Monday, June 13, 2016
Friday, August 14, 2015
The Windup Girl (a book review post)
Except... Except the Cheshire was just an augmented house cat, and it's new genetic abilities carried over in breeding almost 100% of the time. Within a few years, regular house cats had become extinct and replaced with a creature with uber stealth technology. The ultimate hunter. Birds, at least what we generally call song birds, had also become extinct.
They learned their lesson, though, and subsequent genetic creations were made to be sterile and given a hitch in their movements so that they looked like windup toys when they moved, hence The Windup Girl.
Paolo Bacigalupi has created a fascinating world with Windup Girl. It's detailed and textured in a way that few books are, and he does it without stopping to explain all of the science(fiction) to the reader. There's no break in the story where he stops and has someone explain how things work just so that he can show off how creative and cool he is for having ideas. The characters accept their world as real and, therefore, so do we.
The story is told in present tense, which is not something I generally enjoy (because, with many writers, it seems forced), but it works here. Mostly, I didn't notice it once I got going, and it provides a clean break for the very few flashback sequences which are, of course, told in past tense.
The characters are all very interesting but not all of them very likable. In fact, some of the protagonists actively work against each other, but there aren't really any "bad guys" in the story. Or rather, maybe all of them are bad guys. They all have their own motivations and agendas and there's no one thing that any of them are trying to defeat or overcome.
The book is a fascinating read with some very interesting ideas in it. It sucked me in pretty quickly. However, possibly because of the lack of a clear conflict, I wasn't satisfied with the ending. By the time I was about half way through, I began to worry about the ending, because I couldn't really see a path for him to bring the characters through, and once I hit the three quarters mark, I was sure that I was right and that the ending would be the weakest section of the book for me, which it was. Well, except for the character who starts talking to a dead guy; that really came from out of nowhere, and I had a hard time with that character once that started happening.
Overall, I'd say it's a great read. It's good enough that I want to look into Bacigalupi's other books. Which I will.
Oh, also, the edition I read has two associated short stories at the end. I liked "The Calorie Man" quite a bit, but I didn't care for "Yellow Card Man." "Yellow Card Man" is centered on one of the characters from Windup, the character I liked the least (although I think he was supposed to be one of the more sympathetic characters), so I actually struggled to get through that one, even though it was just a short story.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz was never that big a deal to me when I was a kid. Not that I didn't watch the movie every year when it came on TV, but it was never my "thing." No, that was Star Wars. Still, I probably would have read it if I had known it was a book, but no one ever bothered to tell me that. I suppose that's what comes of having non-reading parents. By the time I found out it was a book (probably during high school, certainly not before), I just wasn't interested in it.
This was all sort of like my experience with Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was a movie that I loved as a child and still do to this day. But I didn't know it was a book and had never really even heard of Roald Dahl until I was in college, and I had no interest in reading it at that point. That came later after the second movie was made, which I didn't like but the Dahl family did, so I decided that I should probably read the book. And I didn't like it. It just wasn't magical like the movie had been. And I didn't like Charlie and the Glass Elevator, either, despite the high hopes I'd had for it since there was no movie to hold it up against.
Despite all of that, I decided I should give L. Frank Baum a try. If nothing else, I wanted to see what it was like before passing it on to my daughter, especially since she loved the Charlie books despite my dislike for them (which is great; maybe, I would have liked them when I was a kid).
In a certain sense, both Baum and Dahl borrow their style of story-telling from Carroll. As in the Alice stories, crazy things happen to the main character, and that character just goes along with those things as if they are normal. There's no plot as such. For Carroll, this is certainly true. Both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass just end. It's as if Carroll decided, "I'm though with this now," or, maybe, he just couldn't figure out how to end the story, so Alice wakes up and everything is over. I had that same sense from Glass Elevator. Dahl just got tired of writing or didn't know what to have happen next, so he just had it end. Chocolate Factory did have a bit more plot, but it was still kind of all over the place.
The stuff coming up about The Wizard of Oz will have spoilers. Now, you know. Also, it's kind of impossible to talk about the book and not talk about the movie. Okay, it's not, but I'm going to compare some things in the two mediums.
First:
The book starts out describing how gray Dorothy's life is. Everything is Kansas is gray. The land, the sky, her aunt and uncle. Everything but her little, black dog, and, by extension, Dorothy herself (because there is a heavy implication that Toto is the only reason Dorothy has not become a gray person herself). On the other hand, Oz is full of color and life that Dorothy has never experienced and is amazed by (I'll come back to this).
The movie starts off in black and white, mirroring the tone of the book, and bursts into full technicolor after Dorothy arrives in Oz. I think this is the most amazing thing about the movie and possibly the one thing that has made the movie so beloved for so long. I can't imagine the effect on an audience who had almost exclusively only seen black and white movies.
Second:
The Ruby Slippers. The issue of the shoes is one of the things I've most heard complained about from people that love the book, wherein the shoes are silver. But, well, I get the desire to make them red for the movie since they were doing the big color shift in Oz, and I think going with the red was the better choice. Visually, it just stands out more. So, no, there was "no good reason" to change the color of the shoes... except that there was, and there is no significance to the shoes being silver in the book except that that was the arbitrary color that Baum chose. Or not really color, because I think he was just going with "silver shoes" to contrast against the "golden cap."
Third:
And speaking of the "golden cap," it's completely missing from the movie, so why not change the slippers to red since there is no golden cap to go with the silver shoes. I get dropping the whole "golden cap" thing from the movie, because that was a plot thread that the movie didn't need. That's just what frequently has to happen when you adapt a book to a movie: you have uncomplicate the book, so leaving the golden cap out of the story makes sense.
Beyond all of that, I liked the book. It has a more careful attention to plot than either Dahl or Carroll put into their stories while keeping the whimsical "you have no idea what might pop up next" quality. Bad things happen to the characters, and, if I hadn't seen the movie, I might have wondered what was going to become of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman during Dorothy's captivity. I also like that Dorothy is actually gone from Kansas in the book rather than seemingly just waking up like in the movie.
The book does, however, have one great flaw which keeps me from liking it more: Dorothy has no real motivation to go home to Kansas other than that she ought to want to go home to Kansas. It's clear at the beginning of the book that she doesn't like Kansas. She has no joy there other than her dog, and the dog goes to Oz with her, so, really, there's nothing that ought to make her want to go back, especially since she loves Oz. But she does want to go back, and it is her unwavering desire to go "home," for going home's sake, that drives the story. I found that, along with the lack of growth on Dorothy's part that accompanied that, to be rather inexplicable. Other than to make the story happen, why did Dorothy want to go back to a place she didn't like to people that, as far as we can tell, she had no true emotion for.
And, speaking of the lack of growth on Dorothy's part: Dorothy doesn't grow as a character during the story. She's the same girl going back to Kansas as she was when she got to Oz. However, she does serve as the catalyst for all the other character growth in the novel, which was interesting to watch and not often done, so, whereas I would normally dislike a story where the protagonist is static (see my review of Brave), I found that I didn't mind that so much in Wizard. Well, except that I really did wish she would have realized, "Hey, I don't have to go back to Kansas."
Mostly, though, I found the book most interesting in how it and the movie deviate from one another. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it so much just all on its own. At least not, now, as an adult. I wish I'd read it when I was a kid, though. However, I found it enjoyable enough (and Baum himself interesting enough) that I want to read more of the Oz books, so, I guess, you can't really ask more from it than that. Making me want to read the next one is its job, right? And it accomplished that. I'll have to wait and see how the rest of the books are.
This was all sort of like my experience with Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was a movie that I loved as a child and still do to this day. But I didn't know it was a book and had never really even heard of Roald Dahl until I was in college, and I had no interest in reading it at that point. That came later after the second movie was made, which I didn't like but the Dahl family did, so I decided that I should probably read the book. And I didn't like it. It just wasn't magical like the movie had been. And I didn't like Charlie and the Glass Elevator, either, despite the high hopes I'd had for it since there was no movie to hold it up against.
Despite all of that, I decided I should give L. Frank Baum a try. If nothing else, I wanted to see what it was like before passing it on to my daughter, especially since she loved the Charlie books despite my dislike for them (which is great; maybe, I would have liked them when I was a kid).
In a certain sense, both Baum and Dahl borrow their style of story-telling from Carroll. As in the Alice stories, crazy things happen to the main character, and that character just goes along with those things as if they are normal. There's no plot as such. For Carroll, this is certainly true. Both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass just end. It's as if Carroll decided, "I'm though with this now," or, maybe, he just couldn't figure out how to end the story, so Alice wakes up and everything is over. I had that same sense from Glass Elevator. Dahl just got tired of writing or didn't know what to have happen next, so he just had it end. Chocolate Factory did have a bit more plot, but it was still kind of all over the place.
The stuff coming up about The Wizard of Oz will have spoilers. Now, you know. Also, it's kind of impossible to talk about the book and not talk about the movie. Okay, it's not, but I'm going to compare some things in the two mediums.
First:
The book starts out describing how gray Dorothy's life is. Everything is Kansas is gray. The land, the sky, her aunt and uncle. Everything but her little, black dog, and, by extension, Dorothy herself (because there is a heavy implication that Toto is the only reason Dorothy has not become a gray person herself). On the other hand, Oz is full of color and life that Dorothy has never experienced and is amazed by (I'll come back to this).
The movie starts off in black and white, mirroring the tone of the book, and bursts into full technicolor after Dorothy arrives in Oz. I think this is the most amazing thing about the movie and possibly the one thing that has made the movie so beloved for so long. I can't imagine the effect on an audience who had almost exclusively only seen black and white movies.
Second:
The Ruby Slippers. The issue of the shoes is one of the things I've most heard complained about from people that love the book, wherein the shoes are silver. But, well, I get the desire to make them red for the movie since they were doing the big color shift in Oz, and I think going with the red was the better choice. Visually, it just stands out more. So, no, there was "no good reason" to change the color of the shoes... except that there was, and there is no significance to the shoes being silver in the book except that that was the arbitrary color that Baum chose. Or not really color, because I think he was just going with "silver shoes" to contrast against the "golden cap."
Third:
And speaking of the "golden cap," it's completely missing from the movie, so why not change the slippers to red since there is no golden cap to go with the silver shoes. I get dropping the whole "golden cap" thing from the movie, because that was a plot thread that the movie didn't need. That's just what frequently has to happen when you adapt a book to a movie: you have uncomplicate the book, so leaving the golden cap out of the story makes sense.
Beyond all of that, I liked the book. It has a more careful attention to plot than either Dahl or Carroll put into their stories while keeping the whimsical "you have no idea what might pop up next" quality. Bad things happen to the characters, and, if I hadn't seen the movie, I might have wondered what was going to become of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman during Dorothy's captivity. I also like that Dorothy is actually gone from Kansas in the book rather than seemingly just waking up like in the movie.
The book does, however, have one great flaw which keeps me from liking it more: Dorothy has no real motivation to go home to Kansas other than that she ought to want to go home to Kansas. It's clear at the beginning of the book that she doesn't like Kansas. She has no joy there other than her dog, and the dog goes to Oz with her, so, really, there's nothing that ought to make her want to go back, especially since she loves Oz. But she does want to go back, and it is her unwavering desire to go "home," for going home's sake, that drives the story. I found that, along with the lack of growth on Dorothy's part that accompanied that, to be rather inexplicable. Other than to make the story happen, why did Dorothy want to go back to a place she didn't like to people that, as far as we can tell, she had no true emotion for.
And, speaking of the lack of growth on Dorothy's part: Dorothy doesn't grow as a character during the story. She's the same girl going back to Kansas as she was when she got to Oz. However, she does serve as the catalyst for all the other character growth in the novel, which was interesting to watch and not often done, so, whereas I would normally dislike a story where the protagonist is static (see my review of Brave), I found that I didn't mind that so much in Wizard. Well, except that I really did wish she would have realized, "Hey, I don't have to go back to Kansas."
Mostly, though, I found the book most interesting in how it and the movie deviate from one another. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it so much just all on its own. At least not, now, as an adult. I wish I'd read it when I was a kid, though. However, I found it enjoyable enough (and Baum himself interesting enough) that I want to read more of the Oz books, so, I guess, you can't really ask more from it than that. Making me want to read the next one is its job, right? And it accomplished that. I'll have to wait and see how the rest of the books are.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Being the white rabbit...
Now that I've titled this the way I have, I feel like going into some long thing about Alice and Lewis Carroll, but that really has nothing to do with this post. Carroll was a great imaginer, and I admire that. But he wasn't the greatest story-teller. Of all of his characters, I feel most like the white rabbit. I always have. In fact, I don't really feel any connection to any off the other characters, but I can totally relate to the rabbit. Especially lately. It's like 2012 is the year of the busies. I just want to slow down and get some writing done. I feel so behind...
So I don't really have much of a post today. Mostly just saying "yikes!" I'd like to breathe, now, thank you, but we have at least one more weekend that's going to be all full of stuff. Maybe after that...
A couple of little things though:
1. Briane Pagel has posted his review of The House on the Corner. It includes his famous 10 1/2 question interview, so there may be some tidbits of information that I haven't admitted before. Probably not, but you will get to find out why people in the future wear white jump suits. You can find the interview here.
2. Since we're already talking about Briane, and you're going to go over there and read the interview, anyway, right? (You are, right? because you know you want to know why people in the future wear white jump suits and what, exactly, that has to do with Elvis.) You should sign up for the great Star Wars blogathon! There are still more than 75 questions to go, so, even though I'm in the lead at the moment, it's still anyone's game. Remember, tell him I sent you and get 50 POINTS just for signing up! Here's the link to sign up for the 'thon.
3. We had to attend the third memorial service for a close family member in the last just over a year yesterday. Yesterday's service, in particular, really made me think about what we leave behind. Both the tangible and the intangible. How our lives affect the people around us. I know, back in high school, when I first thought about being a writer, a large part of my desire was to write something that would be remembered. Something that, you know, kids would be hating to have to study hundreds of years in the future. I don't know that I still have such lofty goals but the idea of what we leave behind is a pretty heavy one. It's possible that you should expect an actual post about this sometime soon.
I guess that's it for today. I really am very busy and have to get onto other things even though I'd rather be writing. I need a bumper sticker that says that... except it would have to go on my butt or my bike since I don't sticker my car.
heh
So I don't really have much of a post today. Mostly just saying "yikes!" I'd like to breathe, now, thank you, but we have at least one more weekend that's going to be all full of stuff. Maybe after that...
A couple of little things though:
1. Briane Pagel has posted his review of The House on the Corner. It includes his famous 10 1/2 question interview, so there may be some tidbits of information that I haven't admitted before. Probably not, but you will get to find out why people in the future wear white jump suits. You can find the interview here.
2. Since we're already talking about Briane, and you're going to go over there and read the interview, anyway, right? (You are, right? because you know you want to know why people in the future wear white jump suits and what, exactly, that has to do with Elvis.) You should sign up for the great Star Wars blogathon! There are still more than 75 questions to go, so, even though I'm in the lead at the moment, it's still anyone's game. Remember, tell him I sent you and get 50 POINTS just for signing up! Here's the link to sign up for the 'thon.
3. We had to attend the third memorial service for a close family member in the last just over a year yesterday. Yesterday's service, in particular, really made me think about what we leave behind. Both the tangible and the intangible. How our lives affect the people around us. I know, back in high school, when I first thought about being a writer, a large part of my desire was to write something that would be remembered. Something that, you know, kids would be hating to have to study hundreds of years in the future. I don't know that I still have such lofty goals but the idea of what we leave behind is a pretty heavy one. It's possible that you should expect an actual post about this sometime soon.
I guess that's it for today. I really am very busy and have to get onto other things even though I'd rather be writing. I need a bumper sticker that says that... except it would have to go on my butt or my bike since I don't sticker my car.
heh
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Unexpected Applause: The Missing Link
In my last post, I interviewed the guys, Bryan and Brandon, from A Beer for the Shower about their new book, The Missing Link.
Okay, so the interview was less about the book and more about them, although we did talk about the book. Now, I'm going to talk about the book. First of all, the Kindle edition is only $0.99, and, at that price, it's an absolute steal. Don't let the cover fool you.
Oh, the cover... I love the cover! Back in the 80s, I used to play Rampage upon occasion, and this cover, which is reminiscent of that game, is totally appropriate for this book. It might look kind of goofy, but, considering the book is about technology and rampaging monsters, it totally works.
The Missing Link is probably not a book for everyone. Not that any book is a book for everyone (although there are two books I think everyone should read), but this book is even less a book for everyone than most books. Mostly, I just think a lot of people won't "get" it. A good test to see if it might be for you is to follow the above link over to their blog and read a few of their posts. If the humor doesn't grab or turns you off, the book is not for you. However, if you find yourself laughing despite yourself, even if you hate yourself afterwards, you should give the book a chance, because it's full of the same humor and crassness as their blog.
The technicals: The front half of the book is marvellously edited with hardly a misplaced comma. Well, except for that pet peeve of mine with commas following a sentence starting conjunction and an independent clause behind. This seems to be a fairly widespread error in comma usage, and I'll browbeat the boys about it later. Other than that, though, the front half of the book is almost squeaky clean. Definitely "A" work, and there were hardly any red marks on their paper when I got finished with that portion. However, the further through the book you go, the more errors crop up. Missing words or mistyped words, like "than" instead of "that." A few incorrect tenses here and there. Unstable formatting, mostly in that the indentations start wobbling back and forth. It's enough to drop the technical grade down into the high "B" range. Still, everything considered, it's a pretty good job and nothing that should give anyone any real problems. Especially the commas. There aren't a whole lot of other people out there that are likely to notice any problems with them.
As for the book, well... I don't like to actually talk about what the books I'm reviewing are about, because you all are quite capable to read that stuff for yourselves. However, I feel compelled this time. Bryan and Brandon give us a look at the chaos that could result from a technological collapse in society. My feeling is that most people looking at the book will think that their take is a bit extreme, outrageous, and over-the-top. I'm not so sure...
Just within the last couple of weeks, I was reading about some problems at some hotel chain or other (I forget which one, and, honestly, it's not important). At two of their hotels (one of them was in Hawaii, the other somewhere on the main land), they had a computer issue which caused all of the guests to be locked out of their rooms for several hours (6-8 or something like that). The hotel uses key card locks, and the computer locked down all the rooms, and no one could open them (this should be a lesson to have manual back-ups available for the staff). Really, this should just be a minor annoyance. Yes, an annoyance, but nothing worthy of violence. Within the first hour (maybe half hour?), police had to be called in because of brawling in the hallways. Widespread brawling. Not, like, just one fist fight. People freaked out and started beating each other up because they couldn't get into their hotel rooms. What the crap? Seriously. What the crap?
So, when violence breaks out in The Missing Link over the loss of the Internet, I can hardly say that the boys have exaggerated.
The characters in the book are largely stereotypes, but they're not the kind of stereotypes that happened because the authors didn't know what they were doing. They're there to give the readers something easy to latch onto, "oh! I know what this character is like!" And, as they said in the interview, they are more caricature than cliche. They're magnified examples of people, but, also, they're there to show us that people are capable of going beyond our stereotypes for them. I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favorite. (Although, I have to admit, I have a lot of empathy for Brent and the blank looks he gets any time he tries to explain anything.) Okay, I'm lying, I love Sir McAffery. Not so much his character within the book, but just the concept of his character. It's genius. And I would say more, but I can't do that without ruining elements of the story.
Also, I love the Alice in Wonderland elements of the story. Admittedly, I was bit put off by it right at first. Molly's experience in going down her laundry chute follows Alice's trip beat for beat, but, as you get into the story and see the analogy at work, it does. Work. And it's a great analogy (as they said in the interview). The Internet is a Wonderland, but it's not a Wonderland that's a paradise. It's insane. Even more insane than Lewis Carroll ever could have imagined. The melding of Carroll's work with other familiar pop culture phenomenon like World of Warcraft and The Wizard of Oz is pretty clever, and I really enjoyed it.
So here's the thing: go over and check out their blog. Do that now. If you like it, buy the book. It's only a buck. It'll make you laugh. Yeah, there are some parts that seem a bit absurd, but, you know, like the deal with the hotel I was mentioning? I'm not so sure that they are. Bryan and Brandon have actually offered up a fairly powerful piece of social commentary, and I think people should really stop and take a look at it. How dependent are you on your iGadget? Is your dependency healthy? Maybe think about spending some time away from it. In fact, put it down right now and go download the book. Oh, wait, you need it to download the book? Curse you Internet!
My grade? I give it an "A-." It's clever. Well told. Interesting. The only thing that drags it down a bit is that they do sort of run a few of the gags a bit too hard. And there are a few redundancies toward the end, but it's just a few. Overall, it's a very enjoyable read with an actual message trapped in there. I'm sure they tried to hide to keep their reputations intact.
Twiddledum loves this!
Oh, the cover... I love the cover! Back in the 80s, I used to play Rampage upon occasion, and this cover, which is reminiscent of that game, is totally appropriate for this book. It might look kind of goofy, but, considering the book is about technology and rampaging monsters, it totally works.
The Missing Link is probably not a book for everyone. Not that any book is a book for everyone (although there are two books I think everyone should read), but this book is even less a book for everyone than most books. Mostly, I just think a lot of people won't "get" it. A good test to see if it might be for you is to follow the above link over to their blog and read a few of their posts. If the humor doesn't grab or turns you off, the book is not for you. However, if you find yourself laughing despite yourself, even if you hate yourself afterwards, you should give the book a chance, because it's full of the same humor and crassness as their blog.
The technicals: The front half of the book is marvellously edited with hardly a misplaced comma. Well, except for that pet peeve of mine with commas following a sentence starting conjunction and an independent clause behind. This seems to be a fairly widespread error in comma usage, and I'll browbeat the boys about it later. Other than that, though, the front half of the book is almost squeaky clean. Definitely "A" work, and there were hardly any red marks on their paper when I got finished with that portion. However, the further through the book you go, the more errors crop up. Missing words or mistyped words, like "than" instead of "that." A few incorrect tenses here and there. Unstable formatting, mostly in that the indentations start wobbling back and forth. It's enough to drop the technical grade down into the high "B" range. Still, everything considered, it's a pretty good job and nothing that should give anyone any real problems. Especially the commas. There aren't a whole lot of other people out there that are likely to notice any problems with them.
As for the book, well... I don't like to actually talk about what the books I'm reviewing are about, because you all are quite capable to read that stuff for yourselves. However, I feel compelled this time. Bryan and Brandon give us a look at the chaos that could result from a technological collapse in society. My feeling is that most people looking at the book will think that their take is a bit extreme, outrageous, and over-the-top. I'm not so sure...
Just within the last couple of weeks, I was reading about some problems at some hotel chain or other (I forget which one, and, honestly, it's not important). At two of their hotels (one of them was in Hawaii, the other somewhere on the main land), they had a computer issue which caused all of the guests to be locked out of their rooms for several hours (6-8 or something like that). The hotel uses key card locks, and the computer locked down all the rooms, and no one could open them (this should be a lesson to have manual back-ups available for the staff). Really, this should just be a minor annoyance. Yes, an annoyance, but nothing worthy of violence. Within the first hour (maybe half hour?), police had to be called in because of brawling in the hallways. Widespread brawling. Not, like, just one fist fight. People freaked out and started beating each other up because they couldn't get into their hotel rooms. What the crap? Seriously. What the crap?
So, when violence breaks out in The Missing Link over the loss of the Internet, I can hardly say that the boys have exaggerated.
The characters in the book are largely stereotypes, but they're not the kind of stereotypes that happened because the authors didn't know what they were doing. They're there to give the readers something easy to latch onto, "oh! I know what this character is like!" And, as they said in the interview, they are more caricature than cliche. They're magnified examples of people, but, also, they're there to show us that people are capable of going beyond our stereotypes for them. I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favorite. (Although, I have to admit, I have a lot of empathy for Brent and the blank looks he gets any time he tries to explain anything.) Okay, I'm lying, I love Sir McAffery. Not so much his character within the book, but just the concept of his character. It's genius. And I would say more, but I can't do that without ruining elements of the story.
Also, I love the Alice in Wonderland elements of the story. Admittedly, I was bit put off by it right at first. Molly's experience in going down her laundry chute follows Alice's trip beat for beat, but, as you get into the story and see the analogy at work, it does. Work. And it's a great analogy (as they said in the interview). The Internet is a Wonderland, but it's not a Wonderland that's a paradise. It's insane. Even more insane than Lewis Carroll ever could have imagined. The melding of Carroll's work with other familiar pop culture phenomenon like World of Warcraft and The Wizard of Oz is pretty clever, and I really enjoyed it.
So here's the thing: go over and check out their blog. Do that now. If you like it, buy the book. It's only a buck. It'll make you laugh. Yeah, there are some parts that seem a bit absurd, but, you know, like the deal with the hotel I was mentioning? I'm not so sure that they are. Bryan and Brandon have actually offered up a fairly powerful piece of social commentary, and I think people should really stop and take a look at it. How dependent are you on your iGadget? Is your dependency healthy? Maybe think about spending some time away from it. In fact, put it down right now and go download the book. Oh, wait, you need it to download the book? Curse you Internet!
My grade? I give it an "A-." It's clever. Well told. Interesting. The only thing that drags it down a bit is that they do sort of run a few of the gags a bit too hard. And there are a few redundancies toward the end, but it's just a few. Overall, it's a very enjoyable read with an actual message trapped in there. I'm sure they tried to hide to keep their reputations intact.
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