Order of the Stick books, Rich Burlew

Title:		Order of the Stick (see below)
Author:		Rich Burlew
Rating:

If you play D&D, you need to read Order of the Stick.  If you don't play D&D, but like character driven graphic novels, then Order of the Stick is for you too.  And finally, what the author is doing is telling a good - and funny - story.  If that appeals, then you'll enjoy it as well.  You'll miss a bit of D&D related humor, particularly early on in the story, but the rest holds together well and will appeal.

Here's a link.  Get started:  http://www.giantitp.com/Comics.html

That may keep you occupied for days.  There are years of the story to read out there, for free.  Knock yourself out.

In fact, in book form, there are now 7 volumes.  They are named and numbered thusly:

• D: OOTS: Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tails
• -1: OOTS: Start of Darkness
• 0: OOTS: On The Origin of PCs
• 1: OOTS: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools
• 2: OOTS: No Cure For The Paladin Blues
• 3: OOTS: War And XPs
• 4: OOTS: Don't Split The Party

Burlew published these books one at a time, and the older ones gradually went out of print, but he got a lot of funding via a famous Kickstarter, and now they are all back in print and available from his distributor.

There is a lot of fun wrapped up in these books, and some very good story telling.  Six main characters drive the plot, with numerous supporting characters and quite a few villains as well.  The story arc is large and complicated, involving dragons and magic and quests and, well... it's a D&D campaign told in pictures featuring stick figures.  That might sound lame, but it really isn't.  (The Kickstarter campaign was supposed to raise about $58K.  Instead it raised $1.2 million.  Yes, really.  It's not lame at all, and the proof is in over 14,000 backers of that campaign who love with Burlew does.)

As I write this, Burlew is recovering from a hand injury, so he isn't updating the web site with new content right now.  I am guessing he will start back up again sometime after the beginning of the year, and I will be thrilled to see how the story continues.  I'll also be buying new books as they come out.  This is great stuff.

Give it a shot on the website, from the link above.  If you like it, the books are definitely worth owning, and now you can.

The Art Of Demotivation, E. L. Kersten, PH.D

Title:		The Art of Demotivation
Author:		E. L. Kersten, PH.D
Rating:

What to say about this book?  It's a tough one to review.

I've seen bunches of business fads come and go in my time in the high tech industry.  I have seen offshoots of the human empowerment movement, various ways of categorizing people by communication style, and a zillion pep rallies of various forms.  They were all, in a word, crap.

I am a cynic, though, and I admit it.

When I learned of this book from the chief of Despair, Inc. - the makers of Demotivators (tm) and other amusements - it seemed like it might be a funny read.  I wish that had been the case.

Kersten's tome comes across as all too serious.  I think it's supposed to be humor, but if so it didn't work that well for me.  His thesis - that management is better off creating a demotivating work environment in which employees will resign themselves to their fate, thus costing the company less in benefits (and related expenses), taking fewer chances, and even being so paranoid about keeping their jobs that they won't leave as often - sounds all too real to me in this day and age.

Personally I've been lucky in much of my work.  I've had a few enlightened employers and some good managers, so I have seen how a good work environment can function.  In my own time in management I've done my best to make things work like that for my employees too.  But I have also seen some of the darker side of things, and I know many who have seen far worse.  Kersten's suggestions could be marching orders in far too many cases.

While I suspect his tongue really is firmly in his cheek, that only came through effectively (for me) when he briefly discussed how senior management should be treated, and how they need to be kept apart from employees.  A couple of those sections caused me to smirk, at least.

But nothing caused a belly laugh, and I can imagine someone who isn't in on the joke thinking this is a real blueprint for how to manage a company.  It's that dry and straight in its presentation.

As a result I am not sure this book is successful.  Maybe if you've read a bunch of books on management theory the jokes are more obvious, but I found myself cringing too many times at how close to reality his "recommendations" are in far too many cases.  Ever since the MBAs starting running the zoo companies are less human and less caring.  Squeezing every last dime out of an operation doesn't leave room for anything as simple as having fun in the office.  The Art Of Demotivation could easily make that worse as far as I can tell.

Bear v. Shark, Chris Bachelder

Title:		Bear v. Shark
Author:		Chris Bachelder
Rating:

I have no idea now where the recommendation for this book came from, but I am afraid I am going to disappoint someone.

I had the same reaction to this that I have to some modern art, like a canvas painted all one color. I thought "I could write this. I could write a lot better than this guy did."

Nearly the entire book consists of very short (1-2 page) chapters describing the story of the Norman family as they travel to watch the second bear/shark battle. This is a parody of America, though, so while most of what we see is familiar, it's all deliberately exaggerated to the point of silliness.

In an attempt to heighten the effect, most dialog isn't quoted, characters talk past each other, and all kinds of events aren't really explained. Then end result is a ball of semi-related things that sort of make up a story, but a story without any reasonable ending. In fact, it's rather like the author couldn't come up with one, so he decided to leave it open and let the reader imagine his own.

In any case, I didn't find it funny, though others apparently do. It does contain a lot of social commentary, but only of the most blunt kind.

This is the author's first novel. I have no desire to read anything else by him, and I can't imagine why a publisher would spend money on this book. Not recommended.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard

Title:		Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Author:		Tom Stoppard
Rating:

Somehow I found the movie a while ago and I love it. The extras on the DVD told me it was a play first, so I dug up a copy of that. It's quite good.

For me, though, reading a play - any play - is tough. There's less context than in a novel, so (of course) more depends on the dialog. For me to really understand a play requires reading it many times, preferably aloud, and with different people on different parts if that can be arranged.

In this case I never got that far. I did read the play twice, and though I really enjoyed it and can clearly see at least some of the evolution from play to movie, I still don't get a couple of things. More re-reads - particularly good ones as described above - would help.

If you haven't seen the play or the movie, you're in for a treat when you do. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the story of two characters from Hamlet, entirely from their point of view. They are minor characters - almost bit parts - in Shakespeare's masterpiece, so we have very little to go on for background and their actions when they are off stage in Hamlet itself.

What we get is an existential romp, almost a farce. No one - not even Rosencrantz & Guildenstern themselves - can remember which is which, for example. They have no history, and the world is strangely out of kilter for them. There are interesting discussions of death and musings on just how predetermined things are. Of course, since we know what happens in Hamlet, their futures are ordained to end in a particular way, but the play is a discussion of our own futures too, and to what degree we are stuck playing parts.

The dialog is quick and witty, and the ideas presented are interesting and challenging.

I think everyone should become familiar with this one. See it in a theater, read it, or watch the movie. Whatever it takes. It's both funny and deep. Highly recommended.

The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker

Title:		The Mezzanine
Author:		Nicholson Baker
Rating:

I'm not at all sure what to make of this one.

Is it philosophy? It examines the meaning of life through the study or our simple, daily activities and thoughts, so perhaps.

Is it humor? It clearly points out some of the oddities of human nature in ways that make the reader laugh, or at least crack a smile.

Is it satire? Certainly some bits - like the long footnote about footnotes - can be thought of that way.

Is it meditation? Nothing "of the world" discussed here is particularly important, and yet, something about the presentation makes the whole something greater than the sum of its parts.

Is it some kind of high art? Well, maybe, but I'm not sure I could defend that description.

In my opinion, The Mezzanine is a novel written in the style of Jerry Seinfeld, only extended. Seinfeld's comedy has been described to me as being "about nothing", or at least about nothing important.

The Mezzanine - in which the entire plot revolves around the author's thinking over one escalator ride, with extensive diversions into things related to those thoughts - is Seinfeld's comedy on steroids.

Instead of a few lines about broken shoe laces, we get whole pages with footnotes and later references. We get an interesting discussion of the frequency of the author's thoughts about various topics, and the idea of comparing that data with similar charts for others. We get expositions on cashier efficiency and polishing the handrails of escalators. In all, it's a disordered and unrelated group of chapters, very loosely bound together by the author's occasional reference to his return from lunch.

But in the process of writing these un- (or barely) related blurbs we actually examine the way people think. There is amusement, at a minimum, in these pages as a result.

In all honesty I don't know that I learned from The Mezzanine. I already assumed that everyone had crazy thought patterns similar to my own, but different in their specifics. Still, I did enjoy it. Recommended.

The Dangerous Book For Dogs, Joe Garden

Title:		The Dangerous Book For Dogs: A Parody by Rex and Sparky
Authors:		Joe Garden, Janet Ginsburg, Chris Pauls, Anita Serwacki, and Scott Sherman
Rating:

This is - as the title suggests - a parody of The Dangerous Book For Boys. Fortunately, it's much better than that, since the original was junk. (I read and reviewed it some time ago. I hated it. I'm not even going to give it a link here. It was awful.)

This is funny, at least. And that makes it worthwhile. The authors are all contributors to The Onion, which gives you some idea of the kind of humor involved. They've also got a similar volume out for cats. I suspect we may be taking this entire concept way too far, but what the heck.

It's light reading - I got it for xmas, had to wait for my wife to read it, mostly recover from a cold, and deal with other issues before I could start on it, and still I finished it today. As you can tell, it's not all that long or that deep.

Still, it was amusing, though not laugh out loud funny most of the time. If you're a dog lover you'll probably enjoy it. If not, it won't make much sense to you.

And with that my first review of 2009 is done. I just hope it isn't also my last. There are far too many things going on in my life and my reading has been impacted in too many ways. Still, I'll be here reading and learning.

Gaudeamus, John Barnes

Title:		Gaudeamus
Author:		John Barnes
Rating:

Gaudeamus was reviewed back in 2006 by Malabar, another of Doug's book review forum participants. Her review was short & sweet. I liked the sound of it, so I eventually got a copy.

I'm glad I did. This was a fun read. Not all that serious - almost a farce - but it was a good time.

The narrator is John Barnes himself, SF author of some note. In here he encounters a story about industrial espionage, unusual machines taking advantage of weird properties of physics, aliens, a strange new drug, intergalactic law, flying saucers, a really bad band, and a few other oddities. The author doesn't actually tell the story, though. Instead it is mostly told to him by another character, Travis Bismark, private investigator and college buddy of the author.

That odd story structure worked for me. I found the story fun and light hearted in ways that held it together. Some reviews on amazon.com haven't been as positive, saying it has essentially no plot, or that the entire thing is just too silly. I disagree, but I can see their point to some level. This is science fiction humor. If you take it that way, it's fine. If you're looking for something deeper, it's probably not going to interest you.

Love And Other Near-Death Experiences, Mil Millington

Title:		Love And Other Near-Death Experiences
Author:		Mil Millington
Rating:

I love reading Mill Millington. If you haven't already done so, go check out his website: Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. While there be sure to move your cursor over the picture of Margret in the upper left corner and read the caption.

Love And Other Near-Death Experiences is Millington's third book, and it's a great read. Quite funny, and yet there's a hint of seriousness to it that may cause you to pause and consider the meaning of life.

Without giving anything important away, the main character - Rob - is a radio presenter who was nearly killed in an explosion at a pub. Actually, he wasn't injured at all, as he'd been late for a meeting at the pub thanks to having to return some towels he'd purchased. For Rob, that was a turning point, and now he's got a problem deciding on how to proceed - or what choice to make - when a question appears trivial. Should one get out of the shower with the left or right foot first, for example. Call it a mental block, but he can't get past it, and it's wrecking both his life and his impending marriage.

Eventually he goes on a quest to figure out what his problem is and get it resolved. In the process he meets others who are like him in various ways, and they accompany him to...

Just go read the book. Mil will get a buck or two from your purchase, and you'll enjoy it. I'm keeping my copy to read again in the future, if that gives you any sense of how much I liked it.

Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn

Title:		Ella Minnow Pea
Author:		Mark Dunn
Rating:

Back in 2007 I read Doug's review of Ella Minnow Pea and thought it sounded fun. I was right, and I thank Doug for pointing it out.

This little gem of a book will keep you reading from start to finish, probably without stopping. It's light hearted fun with a serious message as well, about authority and conformity.

In more detail, Ella Minnow Pea is an epistolic book - one written as a series of letters between the characters - about the island nation of Nollop, just off the eastern coast of he US. The citizens there owe a debt to Nevin Nollop, who created the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." And you know what that's famous for, right?

In the main town (named Nollopton, naturally) a statue of Nevin Nollop and his famous sentence begins to drop letters on the ground, and as it does so, the governing council decrees that those letters may no longer be used. At all. Anywhere. Those who do are punished severely.

The inhabitants of Nollop are a literate bunch, but they suffer from normal, human foibles. Some support the new order while others oppose it. Some of those work against it quietly, others go out in a blaze of linguistic glory. The novel is entirely composed of their correspondence, and it gets progressively funnier as letters continue to be deleted from the language. By the end I was sounding out words out loud to figure out what was going on, and I loved it!

This book made me laugh out loud many times. I read it in just a few hours, on a day that I also spent time at the DMV, something we all love so much. It's sweet reading after the horror that was The Satanic Verses. I will hand it off to my wife next, and I have a couple of friends who need to read it as well. Maybe my mom too.

Read it if you can. Highly recommended!

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams

Title:		Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Author:		Douglas Adams
Rating:

As promised in my review of The Salmon Of Doubt, I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency next. And you know, it was a fine read. It wasn't like reading Hitchhiker's, but it was good. I hate to damn it with faint praise, but that's what I think.

So what is it all about? Well, I guess you'd call it a comedy about several individuals whose lives (and one death) all interact in various improbable ways. The story takes place mostly on earth and mostly in the now that was present in the late 80's (when there were car phones but not cell phones), though there are some excursions to far away points in both time and space. There's also a couch stuck in a hallway in such a way that it cannot possibly be removed and could not have gotten there in the first place.

If there's a problem with this novel, it may be that there are too many plot lines that converge in too many convenient ways for me to suspend my disbelief completely. I know it's the whole point of the Dirk Gently mythos - everything is tied together in improbable ways that only Dirk can ferret out - but I just couldn't quite swallow it all. That may have limited the impact of some of the humor.

Oh, and despite the title I don't think that Dirk Gently is actually the main character. In fact it's hard to say who is in that role. There are several to chose from, and some never meet Dirk himself in the course of the story.

In the end I'd say this was a fun book, but didn't contain the laugh out loud humor that other work by Adams - like the Hitchhiker's series - is known for. At some point I'll reread Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul and see how it has held up. I recall there were some funny bits about Thor in that one.

The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem

Title:		The Cyberiad
Author:		Stanislaw Lem
Rating:

I originally thought this would be the last book I reviewed in 2007, but several chapters at the end didn't get finished until today, so it's the first in 2008.

To the best of my knowledge, The Cyberiad is Lem's most famous book. I've read it before - years ago - and remembered almost none of it. Now I know why. It's not a bad book by any means, but it isn't the type that is going to stick with me in any detailed way.

This is a book of fairy tales set in a very, very vaguely science fiction setting. As fairy tales, I guess they are supposed to have morals, but in most cases I don't see them (I admit to being notoriously dense, however) which just makes them oddly written short stories in to me. Add to that some of the dated technology mentioned (the book was originally published in 1967, so vacuum tubes are in while transistors are not, for example), a plethora of made up words, and a wanton disregard for the laws of physics and rational story-telling and you get a recipe for stories that don't remain in my memory for long.

They're fun as you read them, though, and the last couple are better than the rest, as they bring up philosophical issues with some meat to them. All but the last feature one or two "constructors" - Trurl and Klaupacius - who are robots famed for their ability to create machines to solve problems. With only a couple of exceptions, the stories aren't even related, and make no mention of each other, so they mostly stand on their own.

The most interesting thing to me, though, is that the book was originally written in Polish. The translation to English must have been a nightmare, and Michael Kandel - the translator - deserves a lot of credit for making things come out as nicely as they do. There is wordplay and rhythm in these sentences that must have been a challenge to translate, particularly when combined with all the made up words.

If you're interested in some basically silly short stories that claim to be SF but are - in reality - stretching the limits of even fantasy, check it out.

America: The Book: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, Writers of The Daily Show

Title:		America: The Book: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
Author:		Writers of The Daily Show
Rating:

I've been slogging through this one for a long time now. Others have given it glowing reviews. Alas, I must be hugely out of touch with modern culture. I didn't laugh aloud even once while reading this. I rarely even cracked a smile.

To say the humor is heavy handed would be putting it mildly.

To say it made me sad - on a number of fronts - would be accurate.

I guess my biggest problems were (a) just how often the book descended into bathroom humor and (b) how often the non-bathroom humor was too close to the truth for me to be comfortable. An example of the latter issue: chapter 3 is titled "The President: King of Democracy". Has anyone actually watched the Bush administration accumulate power?

I found the book's layout - parodying high school civics class textbooks - to be mildly amusing, but only in that it showed me just how bad the layout of my old textbooks was. How I read those books - with all those asides and distractions - I'll never know,

Anyway, I found America: The Book to be somewhat repetitive, not particularly funny, and sometimes too close to reality to even be considered humor. I'm glad I got it through http://www.paperbackswap.com/ so it didn't really cost me anything. I'll send it on to someone else.

Marley & Me, John Grogan

Title:		Marley & Me
Author:		John Grogan
Rating:

My wife was given this book for Christmas, and spent a fair bit of time howling with laughter while she read it. Then she set it down on the top of my TBR pile, so I picked it up next. The story covers the life and times of Marley, a huge, goofy, and borderline psychotic Labrador Retriever owned by John Grogan and his family. The subtitle is "Life and love with the world's worst dog" and that gives you a pretty good idea of what is coming. Marley lived a long and full life, and I can assure you that parts of it are amazingly funny. Of course, any story of this nature covers the end as well, and I spent the last two chapters bawling my eyes out as I read about Marley's failing health and eventual end.

I love my dogs. They mean more to me than almost anything, and I do my best to take them everywhere I can. Sometimes they drive me crazy, of course, but that's all part of the package deal. I won't recount their stories here - though I still need to write them up for posterity - but I will say that Nikki suffered one of the same issues that Marley did: a horrible fear of loud noises, particularly thunderstorms. If you read this book and learn what Marley was like, you've also learned about Nikki in that case, though she was a lot lighter than Marley, which reduces the damage potential somewhat.

Grogan covers more than Marley's life, though. This is basically an autobiography. He's a good writer, and the stories are good, but they are at their best when Marley is on the center stage.

Recommended reading if you're an animal lover, or want to be one.

The Princess Bride, William Goldman

Title:		The Princess Bride
Author:		William Goldman
Rating:

If you've seen the movie The Princess Bride then you know the story: grandfather reads to sick grandson a story about a beautiful but poor girl who falls in love with a handsome but poor farm boy. The farm boy has to make his fortune in the world before he can marry the girl, so... oh, wait. Anything more would be a spoiler for those who haven't seen the movie or read the book. And I don't want to spoil it for you.

Let me say this, then. The book, which was written before the movie (book: 1973; movie: 1987), has many of the same devices in it that the movie does. I found that very amusing, actually. It (the book) is a bit of fluff, to be honest. It's a fairy tale, and it reads very quickly. The same plot holes that exist in the movie also exist in the book. However, it, like the movie, is a lot of fun. It's a very quick read, and kept me in my chair and chucking, so I'd call it a success.

What I found most interesting were the differences between the book and the movie. This isn't an "internal" story, where the author gets into the heads of his characters in any depth. It's an action-adventure-comedy, and that makes the transition from book to screen much easier, I'd guess. That said, there are differences between the two, and noting them as you read this is interesting. As an aside, the author - William Goldman - also wrote the screenplay for the movie.

If you've ever considered writing a screenplay, I suggest watching the movie and reading this book, then sit down and carefully analyze the differences. If you note what had to be changed to turn a 283 page paperback into a 98 minute movie, I suspect you'd learn a lot. The movie is #120 on IMDb's current top 250 list, so it's probably a good movie to study, if that's your thing.

In short, a fun, quick book, and a chance to learn a bit of craft if you so desire.

Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book & Album, Terry Jones & Brian Froud

Titles:		Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book & Album
Authors:		Terry Jones & Brian Froud
Rating:

Two books:

• Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, by Terry Jones & Brian Froud
• Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Album, by Brian Froud

These were an unexpected loan from someone at my local gym. They are both funny and sick.

Pressed fairies, like pressed flowers. How? Simple: fairy lands in open book, SLAM!, and voila, you have a pressed fairy. Now imagine a whole book of them, like a diary, with a running story line about a girl in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (The first book is about one girl, the second about two, actually. Any more details would be a spoiler, so you're on your own for that.)

If you search on amazon for these books, you'll find out there are more. In addition, some brief digging on google will also get you to this web site:

http://www.worldoffroud.com/

at which you can learn that the Terry Jones credited with the text in the first book is the same Terry Jones that was in Monty Python. You can also learn that the Frouds (Brian and his wife Wendy) appear to be artists who've made careers out of fairy art of various sorts.

Interesting, funny, sick, and worth the time if you can get ahold of a copy of these books. They are still for sale, as far as I can tell, with a 10th anniversary edition of the first book (Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book) coming out this year.

A Certain Chemistry, Mil Millington

Title:		A Certain Chemistry
Author:		Mil Millington
Rating:

Just completed this one. It wasn't what I'd expected to read next -- I still have 2 others going on as well and thought I'd finish one or both of them before moving on to this book. Ah well.

Without spoilers, it's the comedic story of an author going through an affair. It is funny, and reasonably well written, though at times it borders on pornographic, and it certainly doesn't skimp on the profanity. For me it was a real challenge to read because I am too empathetic with the main character. Not that I'm going to have an affair or anything like one, but I still found the situations that the character was put in very uncomfortable. My reading behavior was strange here. Often I'd read a few pages, and then put the book down, unable to go on for a while, thanks to the continuing torment the main character suffers. I empathize with many main characters in novels, but this was worse for some reason. Perhaps because it felt closer to something that could actually happen than most of the other novels I've read lately

In any event, the book is amusing, particularly the interludes between some of the chapters. Millington has a way with words and certainly does his best to keep things true to life. If you want to know more about him and his writing style, you can check out his web site:

http://www.mil-millington.com/

What you'll find there is very funny, though less well edited. He's famous for the page "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About." He has a novel of the same name, but (apparently) different content, which I will try reading in the not too distant future.

If anyone else reads this book, I'd really like to know what you think of it.