Books, Audio, Video, etc. that I read and recommend (or not!)

Movie: The X Files, I want to believe

2009-10-08T21:51:00.000-07:00

There is rarely any true Science Fiction movie making going on out there. And so, I wanted to believe in "The X Files, I..." movie.

It hasn't helped. Remember those really bad episodes of The X Files on TV where the dude would ask Scully (I really can't keep their names straight in my head anymore), what she thought of a chemical (in that particular episode he shows her the formula for a compound), and she responds, "It's organic..."?

Well, yeah, that episode, is better, than this movie (too many commas, I know)!

Did Fox and Scully, er... together? Well, that mystery is solved.

Is there science fiction to be sought in the movie?

Absolutely none. The fiction doesn't even come close to the deliberately poor quality of Stephen King's god-awful tomes of coherent mish-mash.

And if you were misled by the trailer like me, you are in for a worse treat.

I really do not want to review the movie, but this self-castrated pedophile priest suddenly starts seeing visions of the future, and the movie leads to the eventual illogical capture of a modern day Frankenstein by Fox through a collection of random movies of detective-ness...

The clairvoyance of the pedophile is not captured in any form of science fiction, nor is the Frankenstein's work focused on. At the end of the movie, you feel like you just logged off a very bad episode and that's about it.

Rating: 0.5/5

Recommend: Only to the Taliban and such.

Video: Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder. Vol 1

2009-09-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

The Author:
I was really not well acquainted with Julain Fellowes, and the videos themselves do not offer an introduction to the person. The videos are based on the writing of Julian Fellowes himself.

A cursory examination, led to the following Wikipedia page (so take it with the usual pinch of rock and/or table salt it deserves):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Fellowes

The Video Review:

Volume 1 has two videos:

1. The Case of Charles Bravo, and,
2. The Case of Rose Harsent

Both scripts were based on true murders that apparently shook England at the time of occurance, 1876 and 1902 respectively. It is obvious that the nation took very little to be shaken.

The scripting is good, very British (that is the opposite of very Hollywood-ish), and gives you a good, classic sense of suspense and mystery, and is very true to it's time.

If you are expecting Mr. Poirot, Miss Marple or any other characters concocted by the likes of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh P.D. James or the almost venerable Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to pop out, you would be disappointed.

Why?

These stories are based on real life mysteries, which tend to be rather mundane. That said, the video, the content, the screenplay and Julian Fellowes' arguments as to what might come close to the plausible true solution are all of very good quality.

The Cons:

That said, the mysteries, not being so twisted don't present you with a mystery like that of Edwin Drood or others in the class with multiple solutions.

I was also a little peeved that, according to the BBC, two episodes constitute a "volume". This is a singularly irritating issue I find with British productions.

Look at Rowan Atkinson's "A Thin Blue Line". An excellent line-up, great modern unclenched British Comedy and you get what - 13 episodes in all?

One would wish they would really change that.

Rating:

Overall, I would rate this video at 2.75/5, more than how I rate most things I view, or read. To add more, I am looking forward to laying my hands on any other volumes these guys might have!

Bebe Moore Campbell: What you owe me

2009-06-19T16:40:00.001-07:00

Review of the Audiobook Version, Unabridged.

"What you owe me" by Bebe Moore Campbell starts off quite well, and carries on through most of the novel.

It is a historic two-generational novel loosely covering racial struggles of various minorities and their emergence in the latter half of the last century. It makes for a compelling drama and listening it on a tape (which is what I did) was easy.

The story revolves around an African American lady with sharp sales skills and her struggles in Post World War II Los Angeles to gain some footing in a "White" world. Her dreams are then picked up by one of her daughters and eventually leads to success.

But in a classic mirror of the Indian style of movies where the director looses his bearing in the second half, the book drops off into a ramble in the second half.

The ending is not particularly a cliffhanger, and there are definitely loose ends that never get tied.

While there are allegories galore throughout the work, sometimes it is just downright irritating, when you have to sit down and listen a rambling description to "Blair", one of the characters, a senior marketing or some gobbledygook executive spend a night hungry at home because there's no food left.

It's stupid - the character can't even think of going down to Safeway and picking up extra food. Some people may liken this to "realism" in characters, but that's just nonsense. Stupid people are stupid and they have no place in a novel, just like most body fluids have no place in a good photograph.

While the book starts off displaying all the hardships African Americans face in the "White" world, later on, there is a sudden, illogical transformation and things come to them with sudden ease, which is a little perplexing. It's like the authoress is trying to eat her cake, not being satisfied with just possessing it.

There are also a tad too many characters in the novel, and they get dropped of with a lack of deftness. One of them is Hossana's sister who suffers a great loss and then we never find out what happened to her. Instead, we are treated time and again with putrid details of Blair's narcotic jaunts.

Rating: 2/5

Worth listening once with your hands on the fast-forward button

Book Link: http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/what_you_owe_me.html

Kemelman, Harry -- Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet

2006-10-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

Titles can be catchy, and for someone who had never heard of the "Rabbi" in the mystery world, I was intrigued. I ventured to carry the unique book on flight and managed to shut myself off it. Later, I did venture reading the book.

Here is what you will gain from the book: You will learn a bit about Judaism, that is, if you are uninitiated.

It may also help you roll your eyes over Christians being referred to as "Gentiles". Considering how close the word comes to another word, this can sometimes just be plain funny.

The book itself is a ramble of about 280 some pages on small print, paperback and it is a wonder that I was able to get through the yarn.

The plot is thin, there is no humor, almost no investigation, and the criminal has really got no brains. Nor do most characters in the novel. One may be compelled to ask similar disturbing questions about the existence of even residual intelligence in the author, and more so, the publisher.

And the "Rabbi" is a really dull character!

Rating: 2/5

Recommendation: Read, if someone has a gun pointed at you.

Cook, Robin -- Chromosome 6

2006-02-24T10:33:00.000-08:00

Cook - a good last name for a guy who finds a thin plotline and wraps the same story again and again.

Historically, great novelists created great sequel characters, Poirot and Jeeves for example. What happens when sad authors try to do the same thing?

Jack, happens...

This is a dude, I am really sorry for. Apart from losing his family, he also gets the dullest characterization from his creator.

Moving onto the novel, "Run of the mill" doesn't say it enough. You have a guy who mysteriously manipulates, guess what, the sixth chromosome to, let's say do something. The writing is in such a way that the plot is supposed to be unobvious to you. How lame....

Well, shift bases between New York and some country in Africa for no good reason. And then mysteriously, Jack and his whole adult Hardy Boys and Nancy Girls band lands up in the jungle where they have a world class facility set up to run at a loss in anticipation of some future.

The book is full of unemotional codswallop, unbelievable behavior, sloppy villians, heroes and protohumans. Oh don't worry about me giving away part of the wane plot...your mystery book reading interests will not survive this book.

Srihari

Rating 0.5/5 If this was your first novel ever, you could look forward to much better books.

I hope Robin Cook stops "cookin' "

Wentworth, Patricia -- The Listening Eye

2006-01-26T00:05:00.000-08:00

Your eye might as well have been listening. The visual function it performs while reading this book only renders to dull your brain. That sums the tone of the review this book is about to get.

"Great British Tradition" - this is how the mystery is weaved in front of your eyes. So, there is everything - the murder, Scotland Yard (not the new one, for that, go to Er. J, P.D.), disgruntled family members, pancakes, thankfully very little tea, and pesto! the aging single detective-ess.

The problem? Not the pancakes, but the plot. If there is one, it makes itself clear as a crystal in the first few pages. For one, anyone worth their salt would expect murdery mysteries, especially written in the G.B. tradition to have a string of murders or murder attempts. That being the give away, how would you like it if the author goes into exquisite details of the personal lamentations of all the characters, while painting the suspects in every disgraceful shade possible?

The part about the deaf lady doing the listening through her eye was the eye - catcher for me, if you will excuse the pun (I wonder why!). That ends in the first five pages. To make matters worse, the love scenes are obnoxious, and the last five pages do not help. Yes, it does turn into a poorly written romance novel.

All in all, Miss Silver, you might have solved many cases, I don't think they were either exciting, or I suspect your ghost writer had any imagination whatsoever.

2/5 -- Not worth reading, unless you are embarked on the path to a PhD (permanent yada yada) on "Sloppy Mystery Novel Writing Exercises in 20th century G.B"

PS: Of course, there is a post script. What were you thinking? Given my recent poor reviews on British novels, please don't presume any antipathy towards the British. After all, I love the scribbles of the C.D., A.D, PGW and so on. If you are biting your nails for censure of bad American novels, you won't have to wait much longer....

Wodehouse, P.G. -- Piccadily Jim

2006-01-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

I did not read this book recently. It was read a few years ago, circa 2000. But you know how it is, some books just remain in memory forever.

Piccadily Jim is one of those books. Funny, hilarious, ridiculous, rumbunctious, this book is a must read. Not much needs to be said about the thin veiled plots and the repetition of cliches just to tick you off.

P.G. Wodehouse is definitely among the most skilled authors that ever wrote in English. He had a way to take words and meddle them in and out of context in a way that leaves your stomach aching and your lungs thirsting for air.

This one, is no doubt, 5/5

Crichton, Michael -- State of Fear

2006-01-15T12:24:00.000-08:00

This book is somewhere in between a research document and a work of fiction. To add an element of complexity, looks like Michael Crichton really wants someone to make a movie out of everything he writes.

Given that, this book is about climate change, global warming and related shebangs, and if you think reading about that extensively is burdensome, wait till you meet the haphazard set of characters.

There are a few too many people to be called handful, and so many things happen at the same time. That would be okay, if it resembled a Christie novel with 13 people whose characters are stripped naked for everyone to read. This novel, however discomombulates a mix of characters, theories, events, locations and timelines.

Its still not a bad read. If nothing, its slow, but the book is thought provoking. It offers different theories for the problem at hand, and once you put it down, it has you thinking about the foundations of some of the principles you believe in.

For this reason, I recommend this book, and ask you to bear Crichton's aging writing style.

2.5/5

James, P.D. -- Shroud for a Nightingale

2006-01-13T19:51:00.000-08:00

Books can be about murder. Books can also be about tea. It's in the eye of the beholder!

What, hoewver can you do, when the murder in the book happens, and then every other page you flip, someone is drinking tea? Well, you just put up with it. But what do you do when the plot is shallow and narrow?

I don't know. However, the book does offer a typical ornamental British discussion of everything from thin air to the London tower in exquisite imaginary detail. Oh, and don't forget the tea....

So the low down is, the plot is thin, not too easy to discern in say, the first fifty pages. After that you will probably read it for propriety, to just get done with it.

Not recommended, unless you never read a mystery novel before, and never want to read one again...

1.5/5

Adams, Douglas -- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

2006-01-12T10:59:00.000-08:00

5/5 - let's agree on that. Okay, it is probably biased, but there are few books that are so rare, so outrageous, that are funny even before the title begins, and the fun lasts through the last word and leaves you wondering, why all this had to end...

Sarcasm, cynicism, witticism and slap - stick are supposed to be different forms of comedy. While it takes a lot of talent to make one laugh, it takes a genius to combine all the different art forms of comedy into one book.

Very few authors ever reach this pinnacle in penpersonship (being politically correct here). Douglas Adams beats it all. In the lines of Charles Dickens (Pickwick Papers) and P.G. Wodehouse, came this brilliant author with his trilogy of five novels...

While there is no point in revealing any portion of the plot, which is thick and thin at once, I suggest you read "The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy first". I watched the movie instead, and people tell me the book is much better.

5/5

Definitely recommended for fans of sarcasm and humor!

Strieber, Whitley -- The Forbidden Zone

2006-01-11T09:12:00.000-08:00

The book thankfully, is not too deep into the forbidden zone! If you wanted to read a book that deals with the unworldly and a low level of references to the over - exhausted metaphor of good vs. evil, then you have a catch.

Tailor made in an attempt to become YASFM - Yet Another SciFi Movie, the book has all the necessary elements, an isolated town, yada and then more yada.

However, the description of events surrounding the characters is rich, and somewhat fresh. Its suspense wears off fast, but the thriller or the action part continues for a while.

The book does take a fall of two steps below commonplace towards the end of the story just before the plot rolls up when the author loses it.

It may be read by hardcore SciFi fans, and the author does try to keep you engaged with a very low key sexual attractor as the weapon.

All in all, the book is not too bad, did keep me wanting to know the finer details even if it was easy to figure out how it would end. Some of the most common, bizzare endings were avoided.

Rating: 1.75/5

Bagley, Desmond -- The Snow Tiger

2006-01-10T19:28:00.000-08:00

This is one of those run - of - the - mill action thrillers. However, it does have a yin - yang storytelling style, where the author takes you back and forth between the current and the flashback.

This means, there is a certain level of interest, and a certain plot involved, but its all thin ice. Read this book if all your books burnt and you had nothing else to read, except what you write.

I would say the book is a 2/5.