book club

The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was another book club selection, and since I miscalculated (the number of hours I’d be working the week prior), I did not finish the book before the club discussion. That was pretty sad.

However, since I’d gotten close to 60% of the way through the book ahead of time, I didn’t feel too much out of the loop during the discussion.

I really enjoyed this book. A few fellow book clubbers did not like the author of the book (I believe the descriptive term was “asshole”), but I really liked him.

The book revolved around AJ Jacobs’s quest to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica from A-Z. Perhaps that appealed to me because I, too, have a love for encyclopedia reading (although I was stuck with the inferior World Book encyclopedias growing up). And perhaps it’s because I view myself as an occasionally poorly-adjusted person with tendencies towards aggrandized views of my own intelligence liberally sprinkled with just a bit of condescending pretension for good measure. I was, much like the author, much smarter when I was younger, and there are days when I worry that my gray matter is slowly leaking out of my ears, never to be used again.

Much like our last book club selection (Kingdom of Fear by Hunter S. Thompson; these two are not likely compared a lot), I enjoyed the way the narrative was woven. The author went through the salient facts he recalled (or, more likely, wrote down) in each section, and in some cases related that to his life, his parents and family, or his work.

The main story line was his quest to become a father, and I really liked how that was interspersed into the story throughout. I felt that he did a really good job referring to it often enough to keep us interested without overdoing it.

This book, more than any of the others we’ve read as a club, sparked some excellent discussion. We talked about the relationship between knowledge and wisdom; about our preferences for team vs individual sports; how we set and achieve goals, and what that means to us; and who we would invite to dinner along with AJ Jacobs and Alex Trebek (okay, that one was just me, and the answer is Stephen Colbert). I really wish that I had time (damn you grad school!) to sit down and read ye olde EB from cover to cover; I love facts and dates and stories of all the ways people can end up defenestrated, but alas! That is not likely to happen right now unless someone calls and offers me a book deal with a large enough advance to quit my job and devote myself to reading.

I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone with a love of learning and knowledge.

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No paranormal romance books to review today. Sorry!

Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century by Hunter S. Thompson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my book club’s most recent selection. Not only that, but the book club member who selected the book was my husband, so I felt obligated to like it.

I’ve also been a fan of Hunter S. Thompson for ages, so I felt that I would probably enjoy it, regardless of who chose the book. I was not wrong. I read it in one sitting.

Reading HST makes me simultaneously feel happy that I never did the drugs and sad that I never tried those drugs. He does seem to have had such a good time.

Although some book club members thought that the way the main story (how he was charged with sexual assault when a porn producer came to his house) was interspersed with all the other stories was distracting, I thought it was great. I felt that the style would be exactly like listening to his story in person, and that made me happy.

I loved all the side essays and letters and recollections. I, too, would love to prank deliver an elk heart to Jack Nicholson and go to Cuba with Johnny Depp. I would NOT enjoy the sheep incident and subsequent drug-addled travels with the crazy Judge, however.

The best part of the book was the way the theme consistently came back to the importance of the Fourth Amendment and HST’s constant good fight to keep authority from encroaching upon it. I think that, especially in this digital age, it’s easy to lose sight of “unreasonable” is, especially if one is in a position of power.

So – buy it for the stories and amusing anecdotes but don’t lose sight of the true message.

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Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories about People Who Know How They Will Die by Ryan North

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise of this book is pretty much given away in the title. It’s a bunch of short stories written about people who have found out how they are going to die via a blood test given by a machine.

I was not familiar with the editor (Ryan North), nor any of the contributors, I don’t think. This was a book club selection. Overall, I quite enjoyed it – this was definitely not something I would’ve picked up on my own.

However, the quality of the story telling varied widely from tale to tale. Some were definitely more polished, and the authors had a better grasp of what makes a good story (including the writing style, rhythm, and in a few cases, grammar).

During the book club discussion, however, it was determined that what I consider a good story is not always echoed by all (shocker, right?). For example, one story entitle Love Ad Nauseum, was a series of personal ads placed after the Death Machine had been loosed on the world, each ad placing greater restrictions on who the woman would date based on cause of death. I thought it was boring & a cop-out, others found it to be fairly clever.

Many of the stories dealt with the inevitability of the cause of death & the way people reacted. Those reactions ranged from living in fear of whatever the cause was, and doing their best to avoid it as long as possible, to taking up activities that would’ve been scary before (such as sky diving) knowing that they’d die of something else (lung cancer or something), to reveling in the planned death (most notably in the story entitled Torn Apart & Devoured By Lions.

There was some discussion at my book club about fate (with one member in particular hating the whole concept of these stories based on his complete lack of belief in fate and inevitability), and it was determined that the stories did start to become a little repetitive after awhile.

Overall, however, the concept was interesting, many of the stories were well-written and interesting, and it’s always nice to pick up a book that wouldn’t have otherwise caught my eye.

Some of my favorite stories from the collection included:
Heat Death of the Universe
Torn Apart & Devoured by Lions
Killed By Daniel
Firing Squad
Not Waving But Drowning
Improperly Prepared Blowfish
Exhaustion From Having Sex With a Minor although the twist at the end of this one almost ruined the whole story for me. It felt like a cop-out.
Nothing and
Prison Knife Fight

I would definitely recommend this for anyone who enjoys short stories, a little morbidity in their reading, thinking about predestination, or all three.

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Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu by J. Maarten Troost

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was so great! A fun, humorous, and still mildly educational look at the culture & residents of Fiji & Vanuatu. Compared to the only other book I’ve read about that region (The Happy Isles of Oceania), this was a definitely treat.

In fact, there was even a passage in the book that referenced “The Happy Isles” and summed up that book completely.

“When Paul Theroux, the world’s greatest living Travel Writer, visited Port Vila some years ago to gather material for a book about the South Pacific, he stopped by the local library…and discovered, to his evident pleasure, that the stacks were flush with his books. I know this because shortly after we arrived in Port Vila, I too could be found inside the library, idly perusing the scattering of books written by Theroux, one of which was “The Happy Isles of Oceania.” I opened it up, turned to his chapter on Vanuatu, and read his account of visiting the library in Port Vila, which left me feeling very happy indeed, for here I was now, doing exactly what Paul Theroux was doing: standing in a library looking at the books written by Paul Theroux. This pleased me immensely. Theroux didn’t have much else to say about Port Vila, and he soon moved on to to Tanna Island, where he engage in an epic battle with fire-and-brimstone Christian missionaries. I couldn’t blame him. For itinerant travel writers, Port Vila is the worst kind of place. It is captivatingly pleasant.”

Those last two sentences made my laugh out loud – that is the exact reason Theroux wouldn’t stay.

Overall, this was a great book; exactly what I was hoping for. I loved the author’s obsession with kava and his terror of flying (I, too, might consider taking a rusty ferry on a 14-hour journey rather than a rusty prop plane for just one or two hours). The descriptions of the life, the author’s excitement with his new discoveries, and his dealings with his neighbors were well written and made him a very likable person.

I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who really wanted a glimpse of something Happy in the islands of the South Pacific (i.e. all my fellow book clubbers!).

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