The premise is simple: mistaken identity. Twin boys separated at birth, neither knowing the other is alive, wander about Ephesus inadvertently wreaking confusion by their mere appearances. To add to the confusion (and hilarity), each of these men has a man-servant that is an identical twin of the other man’s servant. Servant and master confuse each other’s doppelgangers. There is a wife thought to be crazy by the man she only thinks is her husband. There is a merchant who is trying to collect from the wrong man.
It’s not the play’s leads, but rather Dromio of Syracuse (one of the identical servants) who I find to be the most clever and compelling character. Some of his witty lines are:
– “Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season?”
– “…she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her.”
– “…he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.”
If one can accept the strained credulity of the play’s premise, it’s an enjoyable and light-hearted read.
It may not offer the most clever of Shakespeare’s wordsmithing, but Shakespeare at his worst is pretty damn good.
Blue Zones are places with disproportionately large numbers of 100+ year old folks. Buettner’s book contains case studies on four of these blue zones: Sardinia, Okinawa, Loma Linda (California), and Hojancha (Costa Rica), and provides interesting insights on living from the places that produce lots of centenarians.
Even those who aren’t particularly interested in longevity will find a great deal of valuable information in the book. Not unexpectedly, nutrition is at the fore in this book. However, there are other factors such as family and social life, sleep, and being active that correlate strongly with longevity.
A few things I picked up:
– As in Okinawa, one should say hara hachi bu before each meal as a reminder to stop when one is 80% full– rather than 100% or 180% full.
– Most nuts make a good snack even if they’re roasted in an oil that isn’t particularly healthy (the density means limited saturation.)
– Despite our species’ history, which presumably involved gorging on meat when it was available,vegetarians (and near-vegetarians) live longer.
– When you eat is as important as what you eat.
Bradbury creeps us out by showing us a carnival through the eyes of two young boys. The month is October, and the carnival arrives in the dead of night. Everything about this story is meant to make one ill at ease, but at first we don’t know they boys minds are just playing tricks on them. The author gradually reveals the carnival is pure evil.
The boys, best friends, end up in over their heads, and being pursued by the carnies. Believing his son’s fanciful tales of time-bending carousels and a hall of mirrors that distorts more than light, a father plays a key role in the battle to restore normality to their town.
The strength of this book is Bradbury’s use of language. The book exudes creepiness, and in doing so captures just the right tone.
The weakness is its ending (which I will not get into to avoid spoilers.) It falls a little flat, particularly given the great build up.
In “Job: A Comedy of Justice” the protagonist, Alexander Hergensheimer, finds himself randomly drifting from one alternative universe to another. After his initial shift, he’s joined by a lover, Margrethe, who knows him from her world as Alec Graham. The couple stay together through many other ill-timed world shifts, and are only separated when Hergensheimer finds himself in heaven. Facing the question of what he’d do to be reunified with the woman he loves, the novel really gets interesting.
As you may have expected, the name of the book is the Biblical name “Job” (i.e. rhymes with lobe) and not “job” as in an occupation.
Each time the couple shifts, they are poor anew. While geography remains unchanged, history and money are different from one world to the next. Hergenshiemer washes dishes to make a living because he can’t engage in his trade, preacher, in these worlds. He can’t do anything else without valid identification.
Just as Dante inadvertently convinces us that the first circle of hell is preferable to heaven (who wouldn’t rather be in the company of Socrates and Virgil than that of Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart,) Heinlein creates an afterlife that is a good deal more complex but also more just than the Biblical version.
I recommend this humorous and thought-provoking book.
Grossman’s work reports on a line of research started by Army historian and author of “Men Against Fire” S.L.A. Marshall. Grossman not only brings us up-to-date on this thesis, he shows us its ramifications for modern society-at-large.
A two-part thesis was advanced by Marshall and continued by Grossman and others.
First, humans, like other species, are reluctant to kill within their species. (Marshall noted that in World War II about 75% of soldiers would not fire on the enemy when they had the opportunity. There is evidence this was true for earlier wars as well.
Second, the percentage of soldiers firing on the enemy could be increased by training that conditions them to shooting targets that look more human. i.e. Instead of shooting bulls-eyes, they should at least shoot a shape that looks like the silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders.
It turns out that the ability to condition combatants proved correct. There was a progressive increase in genuine engagement of the enemy by soldiers in subsequent wars (i.e. the Korean and Vietnam Wars.)
Grossman goes on to say that this type of conditioning is not limited to soldiers and police officers. He suggests that video games in which gamers shoot at humans and humanoid creatures will desensitize players to trigger pulling. Many scoff at this idea because they think that he is saying that such games make killers. What he is suggesting is a bit more subtle than that. He is saying that a person who is pre-dispossessed to go on a killing spree will be less reluctant if they have undergone the conditioning of this type of gaming. In essence, an high barrier to going on a killing spree will be lowered.
Grossman covers many other issues related to killing, such as the importance of distance. One intriguing fact is that an infantryman that kills a single enemy soldier in war is more likely to have problems such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than a bombardier who drops bombs that may likely resulted in hundreds or thousands of deaths.
The book also talks about the role of authority, famously addressed by the Milgram experiments. Stanley Milgram found that most people would turn a knob that they believed was delivering a severe shock to a complete stranger, if they were told to do so by someone who seemed to be an authority figure.
I highly recommend this book for those interested in the subjects of:
– PTSD
– the role of violent video games in mass killings
– the psychological effects of killing
Marlantes gives one insight into what it was like to be a soldier, in particular a young officer, during the Vietnam War. For those confused by the name, “Matterhorn” is the name of a fictional encampment in central Vietnam in the book.
In Matterhorn, war is as it has famously been defined, “long periods of intense boredom punctuated by brief instants of sheer terror.” The author builds his characters such that the periods of intense boredom are informative. We see how the tension of the war boils over into fresh hell that interrupts the boredom.
Racial issues play a major part in the drama of the book. The main character, Waino Mellas, is white and of the variety who are almost apologetic in the presence of blacks. However, within the unit there are both black-power movement types as well as good ole boys, making for one powder kegs that erupts during the course of the book.
Race is not the only fault line we see in Matterhorn. There is also a tension between “lifers” and draftees. However, the bigger tension is between the front line troops and those who direct them from afar. The most intense section of the book involves a raid on a hill for which the men are undernourished and under-supplied.
The author was a Marine in Vietnam, and this experience no doubt contributed to the book’s authenticity.
I highly recommend this book as a powerful examination of the role that valor and vice play in war.
If the movie Alien was “Jaws in space,” then John Dies at the End is “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in the Nether World.” Except that, unlike Bill and Ted’s, Wong’s book is hilarious.
The gist of this book is that two likable anti-heroes ingest a drug, “soy sauce,” that gives them the ability to pass into an alternate universe. They’re inexorably drawn down the rabbit hole (so to speak, there is no actual rabbit hole in this book.) What they find is not what they expected. It’s not what anyone expected, because it’s so mind-boggling ridiculous and richly complex.
The title character, John, oddly enough is not the main character. The author, David Wong, uses a self-named protagonist as narrator and lead. The book unfolds as Wong (the character, not the author) tells a skeptical journalist about the strange goings-on in his small, Midwestern hometown.
We see John mostly through the lens of the narrating Wong. We know that John is a storyteller. Which may sound a lot like “liar,” but that’s not the case. Have you ever known a person who would never deceive you for personal gain, but will never fail to engage in hyperbole to make a story funnier or more interesting? That is John. He has one of my favorite lines of the book:
“We’re talking about a tentacled flying lamp fucker, Dave. What are you prepared to call unlikely?”
Despite the fact that John is a booze-hound and exaggerator, he remains an endearing character. As Wong gets to know Amy, a classmate who lost her hand after they knew each other in school, we get an insightful testimonial about John:
“Let me tell you something about John. The reason I was surprised by your hand was because John never once described you as, ‘the girl with the missing hand.’”
As for Wong’s character, he is hapless but hilarious. When he gets to know Amy, he is shocked to find that she’s not retarded or crazy. They had vaguely known each other from a “Special Needs” school, but it never occurs to him that she might be at least as sane as he.
The book is a pan-genre mélange. While it’s mostly a combination of horror and humor, there are points at which it feels like action/adventure and towards the end it seems largely like sci-fi. Horror and humor are not easily mixed, but this book does it about as well as one can imagine it being done. John Dies at the End is campy, of that there can be no doubt, but Wong writes descriptions of creatures and murderous events in a way that offers grim clarity. As a lover of humor more than horror, I was obviously not put off by this dark comedy.
Throughout the book, one suspects that the whole surreal bag of events is just a bad hallucinogenic trip, and that the “soy sauce” is just LSD on steroids. Happily this is not the case… or is it?
Don’t worry; John dying is not the intriguing twist at the end of this book. There are a couple such twists though.
If the movie that comes out today (January 25, 2013) is not awesome, it’s not Wong’s fault. The trailer shows us the quirky horror, but not the humor of the book. Much of the humor is in the language – i.e. the word choice. Some of that will likely come out in dialogue and narration, but who knows how much. View all my reviews
On its face, this is Hilton’s take on the tale of the lost city of Shangri-la. However, look more deeply and you’ll find a commentary on the clash of Western and Eastern civilizations. It follows three Brits and an American who find themselves hijacked, crashed, and rescued by the occupants of Shangri-la. The main character is a British diplomat. He’s sharp, practical, and likable. He represents the West at its most virtuous. He is tolerant and polite. A second British man, who I think represents “Empire”, has a negative attitude throughout and looks down upon the locals as lesser beings. The third Brit is a missionary woman who represents “religion.” She considers the Shangri-Laians to be “godless” heathens because they aren’t Protestant Christians. But unlike “Empire” who just wants to get “back to civilization”, “Religion” is happy to stay to “save” and convert said heathens. The American represents “Commerce” and / or “Greed”, and is a business man who is on the lam and incognito after being wanted for white-collar crime. He becomes happy in Shangri-la, but only inasmuch as he sees it as a goldmine of opportunities not yet capitalized upon.
The author of Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson, has a unique perspective on the novel’s subject because he’s a Carnegie Mellon trained PhD-level roboticist. His unique insight makes the book an interesting read despite the fact that the concept will be familiar to anyone who’s watched the Terminator movies. An artificial intelligence (AI) decides that machine life requires that humanity die, and soon thereafter our mechanized helpers begin to turn on us.
The book is organized as a series of records pulled together by a survivor of the war. Said survivor is the protagonist –to the extent there is one (it’s really an ensemble piece.)
The cast of characters is introduced in the first part of the book through a series of what seem like machine malfunctions, which turn out to be harbingers of the war to come. These malfunctions include a military robot, the air traffic control system, and a “robotic wife.” The book follows these human characters through the beginning of the war and the development of centers of human resistance. The resistance ranges from Japanese man who fights fire with fire to Native American tribesmen who survive in part owing to their limited exposure to technology. It all culminates in a fight in Alaska to gain control of the buried server in which the AI resides.
It’s an old concept, humanity replaced by the species it spawned. However, it’s much less outlandish than the Terminator series which relies heavily on time travel. Wilson’s vision is much scarier because it’s much easier to imagine coming to fruition.
Robopocalypse is being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg that is due out on April 25, 2014
This novel follows the trials and tribulations of a group of rabbits who leave a warren upon a warning from a prescient little rabbit named Fiver. Their exodus is fraught with peril from nature, man, other animals, and even other rabbits. The challenges they face threaten their unity as well as their survival.
Adams builds an intriguing cast of characters. Hazel is thrust into a leadership role. Bigwig is the physically powerful security chief. Fiver is the intelligent runt gifted with ESP. General Woundwort is the cunning and terror-inspiring enemy they must defeat to live in peace.
The book contains life lessons interspersed:
– One learns that the quintessential lover may also be a fighter.
– It shows how building alliances outside one’s comfort zone (sometimes outside one’s species) may allow one to win out over those rigidly uncompromising
– One discovers that sometimes one can only win by risking everything.
I found it to be a unique concept and very readable.
You’ll have to learn a little rabbit vocabulary and mythology, but there’s a glossary.
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Tiger Riding for Beginners 