There, it’s October already! Damn this time thing…can someone please secure it to the ground? I’ve had enough of it flying around all over the place. October means that another three months have passed, and that I have another set of interesting books to summarize. Why? Because they’re there! And because I love telling people what they ought to read. My previous two book summaries can be found here (January to March) and here (April to June).

Curiously enough, this is also the Banned Books Week! How many of these have you read? I’m just at seven or something like that. Mea culpa!

Anyway, let’s get it aaoooouun!

Johnny and the Dead – Terry Pratchett

Description: Johnny Maxwell is a normal kid…no, never mind. He’s not normal. And this is not a normal children’s book! Mr. Pratchett is a very strange fellow, but I applaud his approaches to kids’ literature: the book is slightly dumbed down, but not condescending. And it brings up interesting topics. Johnny talks to the dead, and the dead talk back. This comes in very handy when the council wants to sell a neglected cemetary, and the dead become quite annoyed at this. In my last book post after reading Only You Can Save Mankind I mentioned that I probably would have gotten irritated even as a kid at the relatively silly conversations in the novel. I’m still of the same opinion regarding the Johnny books, but I still would’ve devoured them – just as I have now.
Rating: 3 googleplexes of sulphur out of 5.
Recommended for: Young people in search of witty and innovative fantasy.

Johnny and the Bomb – Terry Pratchett

Description: This time Johnny deals with time and the past and causuality and compassion and lots of other things. Oh, and a bomb. I quite liked this book; I think it’s very noticeable that Pratchett wrote this years after the other Johnny books. It feels more…real. Fleshed out. Possibly aimed at a slightly older clientele. It’s quite obviously a children’s book, but I enjoyed it a whole lot more than I did the other Johnny books. The race through the woods toward the end was actually pretty exciting!
Rating: 3.5 nosebleeds out of 5.
Recommended for: Young people in search of witty and innovative fantasy. And some childish adults like myself.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J. K. Rowling

Description: Seriously, do I have to write this? Everyone knows what this book is about! Heroic deeds and tying up the knots and fighting evil and coming of age and darker writing than the other books in the series and Dumbledore stays dead and so on. The Deathly Hallows items themselves are absolutely ridiculous in my not-so-humble opinion, and I get a strange vibe of monster of the month. Although strange magic item(s) of the year would be a more appropriate comment. I bet tons of wee kiddos find the Potter novels logical and well-thought-out, but meh. Good for them, then. Still, it is a good read!
Rating: 3.5 wangs out of 5. (But it felt like 4.5 when I read it, ’cause it was gripping at the time!)
Recommended for: Just about everyone who likes some light fantasy and don’t mind cheese.

Biology and Human Behaviour – The Teaching Company

Description: Much of human behaviour can be explained by neurobiology. A bit too much for some, the lecturer warned at the beginning of this book. I was eagerly awaiting something shocking, but it was just pretty common things. Maybe he was adressing Americans. Anyway, I learned some interesting things from this course, such as the fact that women produce around 5% of the male amount of testosterone…which is then converted to Östrogen in the fat cells. This explains why athletes and starving females may find their reproductive thingies malfunctioning. I love understanding more about…everything, and this course is excellent for learning more about the magical biochemistry of a human body. It was a tad bit technical now and then though.
Rating: 4 cell membranes out of 5.
Recommended for: Natural science nerds. And just maybe people who want to know more about how LSD and other interesting substances work.

Last Chance to See – Douglas Adams

Description: It’s such a pity that Mr. Adams died so young! I completely adore his writing. I couldn’t help grinning at the sarcastic wit he displayed all throughout this book, despite the hearth-wrenchingly serious topic – that of animals threatened by extinction. To be honest, I’m a cynical bastard who doesn’t really care about extinct animals all that much. I also don’t care very much about the environment. (”You bastard!” some people exclaim now. “Yes, that’s what I already called myself earlier,” is my immediate response, followed by “You see, despite what activists of different kinds claim I really think that the Earth is old enough to take care of itself and that new species will emerge no matter what we do to the poor planet. So sod off. Pun intended.”) Despite this, I loved this book and I couldn’t wait to hear about what new endangered animal they would visit.
Rating: 4.5 gallons of ear wax out of 5.
Recommended for: Everyone. Yeah, seriously, I think that everyone imperatively must enjoy Douglas Adams.

Deception Point – Dan Brown

Description: I’ve read The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, so I might as well continue down this slippery slope toward mediocrity. This was a decent read but nothing special at all. Popcorn literature. Fast food literature. Good enough and interesting while it lasts, but not satisfying in the long run. Scientists discover fossils that prove that life exists Out There(TM), but it turns out that they’re fake. No one’s surprised, and the plot twists appear rather feeble.
Rating: 2.5 starving lemurs out of 5.
Recommended for: Someone who wants a light read. It’s damn light, but you won’t be disappointed if you’re not expecting much.

3001: The Final Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke

Description: I don’t really know why this book was written. It must be to cash in on the success of the other ones – ’cause it really serves no purpose, in my opinion. It doesn’t explore many new ideas or concepts, and sometimes it feels like it was written on autopilot. Frank Poole is rescued and resurrected in the year 3001, and he meets up with the monolith. Then they plant a virus into the monolith and save mankind. The end. I get a strange deja vu from Independence Day regarding the ridiculousness of computer virii on alien computers…
Rating: 2 window shades out of 5.
Recommended for: The sci-fi nerd who really wants to know how the 2001 book series ends.

Understanding the Universe: What’s New in Astronomy – The Teaching Company

Description: Damn, there’s a lot of information in this course! And I must honestly say that I should have paid more attention, ’cause I think I missed a lot of the interesting details. Interestingly enough, this course brings up some concepts already mentioned in the Particle Physics for Non-Phycisists one, which feels great. (Such as how they detected neutrinos.) It’s great to get a sense of continuity like that! Another interesting topic was the age of the universe, and the various ways that are invented to measure it. The good thing about this course is that it brings up state-of-the-art results and not just ol’ bookstuff.
Rating: 3.5 rabid dogs out of 5.
Recommended for: Nerds who wish they had studied more astrophysics.

Gödel, Escher, Bach – Douglas Hofstadter

Description: To sum this book up in a paragraph is impossible. It really is amazing! In the starting chapters it brings up pretty mundane concepts in numerology and computer science and math and biology and art, but as more pages get turned it starts to act like the energizer bunny. It just keeps pouring out more and more! The ideas get deeper and deeper, the dialogue gets twisted in strange and wonderful ways, and the author’s knowledge of a wide variety of scientific areas seems virtually endless. I don’t get impressed easily, but this book impresses me immensely…and almost scares me a bit. I don’t agree with everything Mr. Hofstadter writes but it’s kind of hard to argue against this avalance of intertwined wit and knowledge…or should that be braided? Ah-hah, ah-hah. (The book’s subtitle is an Eternal Golden Braid.)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5. It’s just hard to give it something else.
Recommended for: Not people with a phobia for math and numbers, that’s for sure… But the rest of you: give it a try! It’s definitely a worthwhile experience.

Ancient Greek Civilization – The Teaching Company

Description: Starting with the Minoan civilization and the rest of the Greek bronze age settlements, this course mentions just about everything one could possibly wish to know about the ancient Greek world. And the fun doesn’t stop there – the lecturer brings you on a thrilling journey through battling city states, Persian invaders, Classical Greek culture, tyrants, the birth of democracy and all the way to the birth of Alexander the Great. In fact, the lecturer moves on to mention some of Alexander and his father’s exploits as well, despite the fact that it doesn’t strictly belong to the Greek civilization. Great lecturer, great course, great contents. Yay!
Rating: 4 sonic booms out of 5.
Recommended for: History buffs and other weird nerds!

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams

Description: A few weeks ago at work we started discussing this book, and a workmate told me to be careful during my upcoming move. “Make sure your sofa don’t get stuck!” “What?” “It’s from the book, you know.” In fact, I didn’t know. I had last read this book some 12 years ago and just recalled the excentric character of Dirk, and an electric monk. So, of course I had to refresh my memory. And what an awesome experience it was! Mr. Adams, you’re a twat for dying like that! I want more of this! I love it even more now than the last time I read it as a youngling. (And to give you a hint of what’s coming sometime around January 3: I’ve started on The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul right now – I just can’t stop!)
Rating: 4.5 polar bears out of 5.
Recommended for: Anyone! Everyone!

Eleven books in three months. That’s three and two thirds of a book per month. That’s less than a book per week. Which is rather awful! I really need to try to read more often, but I think I’ve gotten rather attached by this game development thing with Sheeplings and Truth, Justice and Spandex. Sure, it eats my spare time and isn’t all that rewarding…but it feels so good to produce something! Oh well! I definitely must make sure that I read at least one book per week for the remainder of 2007.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.