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Maurice Reads a Book from His Time
These books are all those books which can't actually be classified as literature, becase they're not, or those books which will only have a curiosity value in a decade or so after their publishing.
If you can't find the book you're looking for here, try Filmed Books, Academic Books or Literature.
- Douglas Adams Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
- Douglas Adams The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Go Ask Alice (Anonymous author)
- Dennis Cooper Frisk
- Brett Easton Ellis American Psycho
- Stephen Fry Making History
- RL Stine The Cheater
- RL Stine The New Girl
- RL Stine The Prom Queen
- RL Stine The Stepsister
- RL Stine The Surprise Party
- RL Stine The Wrong Number
- Irvine Welsh Ecstacy
The 'Reviews'
Ecstacy is a collection of three short stories, two very short and one slightly longer (encompassing about half the book). As the title suggests, drugs (and XTC in particular) are about bountiful, but also sex, aggresion, love, hate and frustration are present. Indeed, for those who read Trainspotting there is little new. I know this is a pretty old book, and I heard that his latest, Filth is apparently quite good. Maybe I'll read it, but if you hated Trainspotting, skip this right away. Hm, even if you liked Trainspotting you could skip this unless you're a die hard fan.
Back to top.Stephen Fry's Making History is a brilliantly entertaining book. Perhaps not very 'cultural' or whatever, but just plain fun to read. A young history graduate (Michael Young) writes a thesis (meisterwerk) on the youth of Adolf Hitler and accidentally meets up with Leo Zuckermann, whose father was an SS officer in Auschwitz, and who's developed a kind of time machine. Together they decide to change history by making sure Hitler is never born. However, the implications are rather disastrous. Young is also a kind of film buff, but it's interesting that there's one film which is never mentioned in the book: Back to the Future, with which the book shows some uncanny resemblance.
Back to top.Dennis Cooper's Frisk was, I believe, supposed to be shocking. You know, the gay sex & violence schtick, but apart from some backward towns in Texas I don't think anybody will be really shocked or morally outraged by this book. As a matter of fact, the story (for as far as there was a story) didn't interest me a single fuck, but the style that Dennis Cooper uses is really very good and in itself enough reason to read the book. It's only 128 pages, so even if you'd hate it you haven't lost too much time by reading it.
Back to top.Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho is shocking. Honest. I don't get shocked easily, but this novel managed, which is worth a recommendation in itself. Add to this that all the characters are highly unsympathetic, and that Easton Ellis does everything he can to make them unsympathetic; the main character keeps telling the reader what everyone's wearing - very annoying - and he also murders quite a lot of people, which doesn't help. Ah yes, the title character! The American psycho, Bateman, is truly one character which you cannot identify with… and if you can, please warn me so I can keep away from you. SICKO!
The novel is about yuppies in the 80's (don't believe the blurb, it's not in the 90's) who have everything and act like total bastards/bitches (depending on gender) and one of them, the main character who is also the narrator quickly develops into a coke-addict, Xanax-addict, Halcion-addict and, most importantly, a viscious murder-addict, killing women (and a couple of men as well as a number of animals) in truly gruesome ways ranging from drowing to stabbing to sawing them in half to drilling their mouth out with a large drill (as used in Body Double, Bateman's favourite film), with God knows how many other methods in between. Find out new things to do with your lighter and coathangers! Be inspired by Bateman's use of rats! Learn the effect of popping an eyeball with a knife!
One of the most wonderful gimmicks in this book is how the characters in the novel keep confusing the people they hang out with with other people, which has of course beautiful implications concerning individuality, identity and the urge to be 'hip' and thus like everybody else. Read it.
Back to top.Douglas Adams' The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the second piece of science fiction I've read. Ever. That is, if you don't count "Slaughterhouse 5". Let's get to the facts before we get to the fiction (i.e., the review), and since no-one cares how many pages it is (besides, I don't remember), let's start with that ever-so-important aspect of any book, the thing it's judged by, it's cover.
Now the cover of this novel seems... fragmented, which is no surprise as it's meant to be a part of 'a trilogy of four', and the covers of all four books together do make sense. Of sorts. I mean, there's a fish, a towel, a spacecraft and a 'self-portrait' by Adams himself. This self-portrait, however, is so mutilated that it's practically unrecognisable. From this we could deduce that Adams, or the publisher, does understand that it can be a bad idea to have a picture of the author on the cover. However, I won't (the photo / no photo thing's getting old now).
One more piece of useless info before I start: the print's too thick - the small 'a' has no insides, just like the small 'e' - it's just a black dot. This made reading the novel trying at times, especially with the sun out, whicih makes reading harder as it is anyway. Very, very annoying.
So now we come to the novel itself. That culty-type thing from which people have derived names, ideas and other useless information that, sensibly speaking, doesn't really amount to anything. But that doesn't answer what the story's about. Well, here it is, in a nutshell. Earth's destroyed to make way for an interstellar hyperspace bypass and there's only one survivor (Arthur Dent), whose alien galactic hitch-hiking friend (Ford Perfect) shifted him off the planet as it was destroyed. At the same time Zaphod Beeblebrox, the president of the galaxy, steals a experimental spacecraft, powered by an improbability drive. The three accidentally meet up somewhere in space and they go out to find a legendary planet, which is rumoured to be very rich (though its existence is doubted). Naturally, they find the planet and find out one or two things about Earth in the process, leading to a rather open ending (making space for the rest of the 'trilogy of four', no doubt).
Question: Where does the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy fit in? Answer: Well, the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is indeed what it says to be, a guide (a kind of computer book) for people who want to hitch-hike through the galaxy and Ford happens to be in the process of helping revise the information contained in it. Apart from that, the book doesn't play much of a role, really.
So what did I think of it? Let's say I was glad to see Douglas didn't take it all too seriously, but decided to keep the book more or less readable through use of idiocy, which I fortunately could appreciate, although it's doubtful whether I'll read the rest of the 'trilogy of four'. This means that, on a scale of recommended to not recommended I'll give this a 'central station waiting room'.
Back to top.Go Ask Alice is the true account of an adolescent American girl who just cannot cope with being impopular and takes her refuge into drugs.
The Classic American Fears are all worded here, starting innocently, sliding further and further down the line to harddrugs and never really being able to kick the habit fully. Interestingly enough, the style is really quite good, considering a) she's fifteen years old, and b) it's apparently an actual diary (much like the Anne Frank one).
Personally, I had difficulty relating anything in the story to anything I know - American and Dutch societies are so very different in so many aspects that things like social status of the parents or 'incrowds' just don't have much of a meaning, more like words, or concepts, which might as well belong to the realm of science fiction. Nonetheless, these things happen, and I was surprised that this autobiography (of sorts) manages a totally different point of view than, say, Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson or Junky by William S. Burroughs.
Mind you, I've only read this because my pupils are reading it so I can check the work they do on it when it's finished. Maybe that's why it turned out to be a pleasent surprise (most of the secondary school literature I've read is nothing much), reading it in just under a day.
So, coming to the recommendation I'll give this a 'better than the average secondary school literature'.
Back to top.I read RL Stine's The Suprise Party only because I have to make a 40-hour module concerning younf adult fiction, centered around a writer or a theme. I chose a writer and now I'm stuck reading 3 omniba (or is it omnibuses?) of Fear Street stories by RL, while I'll never be able to finish the assignment in time. If only because I have no idea how to go about it. So if anyone has an idea or info about either RL Stine or about the Fear Street series, please mail me!!! (I'm rather desperate - my degree depends on it and I'm wasting my time away reading Star Wars screenplays).
Right, back to The Suprise Party. The story is really quite simple: someone was killed some time ago and now there's a chance people are going to find out who it is, so the killer tries everything in his powers to stop them. And so enter the classic horror-things: funny phonecalls, threatening notes, creepy happenings, stalkings, attempted murders and the lot. Plus your usual assortment of teenagers (girls, of course, as they scream louder - even in books), red herrings and parents who don't really understand what's going on at all.
I was rather suprised (har har) when I read this novel as I thought it'd be full of impossible-type stuff, you know, like in A Nightmare on Elm Street or Night of the Living Dead and stuff, but it was pleasent to discover it was all more or less within the realm of the possible (excusing one plot-twist which sounded implausible). I hope the other stories will be along similar lines (i.e. logically possible, rather than occult, and entertaining) as there's eight more to go through (not to mention the writing of the whole module).
If asked to rate this book, I'd say it'd deserve a 'pleasent way to waste your time'.
Back to top.RL Stine's The Wrong Number is not much different than the other one I read by him, "The Surprise Party", although the killer here is revealed sooner and there's no real red herring suspect.
The story is as follows (commercial writers to be, take heed - his is a short 'how to'). Two girls make prank calls but are found out by the half brother of one of them (the main character), who is generally quite the weirdo and he makes some not-so-funny calls. One of them resulting in them listening live to a murder taking place. Woa!
So, as you do, they go investigate and promptly get caught by the police who lock them up, being convinced that the half brother is the killer.
This leaves the two girls to find out who the real killer is, which they promptly do, but the police doesn't believe them and they cannot gather enough evidence to substantiate their suspicions. That is, until it is too late and they burgle the killer's house, he comes home, locks them up, wants to kill them and then the police arrive and everything is okay and there's the end joke.
Pfffff! 7 more of these to go. Anyone know a good 'urban legends' website?
Back to top.RL Stine's The Cheater is no different from the previous two stories I've read by him (and probably no different from the following 6 I'll be reading). There's a girl, Carter, who dates a guy, Dan, and who has a judge for a father, who's working on some case or other at the time. Now, the father is the instigator in a way. Carter has to perform well in advanced math, but she can't and so she is offered the chance to let someone else, Adam (from the 'wrong side of the tracks'), take the test for her in exchange for one date.
Yeah, right. Adam turns out to be a demanding little bastard, not being afraid to stoop low enough to blackmail her. She receives all kinds of threats and horrible things happen to her. Horrible! Get a grip! I've lived in the worst parts of England for quite some time and what she's having to deal with is just fun, really, nothing that serious - it's just that the little rich girl cannot handle herself outside of the beauty parlor, but that's another matter.
Then Adam turns up dead. Shot. Uh-oh! Now who did that? Of course it wasn't Carter (she's rich & female & the main character so no way), so who was it? Well, the only other person who it could be - Dan. Enter moral of the story about honesty & all and the end joke and everyone's happily playing chess.
In short: Read one, read all & I wish I had chosen Pike now (but it's too late).
Back to top.Fourth in the series of nine is RL Stine's The Stepsister. If you're wondering why I'm still briefly summarising these stories, it's because I need to be able to distinguish between them at a later date, and if I don't write 'em down I'll be sure to mix 'em up. And why bother you with it? Playing for strokes (positive or negative), of course. ;)
So what's The Stepsister about? Again, it's more thriller than horror as this one too is within the realm of the logically possible (i.e. no ghosts, ghouls or monsters). The main character, as always a teenage girl, is called Emily and lives on the infamous Fear Street (oooh! spooky!) with her mother and older sister, Nancy, when her stepfather brings home his two kids to come and live with them. One is sullen and withdrawn, Rich, and one is Jessie. A rather weird kid, all in all, but not too unpleasent at first.
Of course, this is where the trouble starts. First Jessie pulls off the head of Emily's favourite teddybear and then she does someother peculiar stuff, like making late night phonecalls and sneaking out late at night. (The plot thins.) We also find out that Emily's biological dad died some time ago when they were camping, which is why her mother got remarried. Weird stuff starts to happen then. Emily feels more and more threatened by her stepsister who at all times claims she's innocent and has nothing to do with, for example, the murder of Emily's dog, the putting of peroxide in her shampoo, locking her into a burning bathroom at school or pushing her down the stairs.
Then the whole family goes camping and we enter the climax of the story, when Emily, Nancy and Jessie are asked to gather wood for a fire. At one point Emily and Jessie are alone and Emily gets so frightened without Nancy there that she runs away, entering, of all places, an abandoned cemetery, where she's pushed inside an open grave and is attacked with a shovel by... Nancy!!! (Well, of course it's Nancy, she's the only one you were never supposed to suspect, so she must be the one.) Jessie then comes to her rescue and all is well. Even Nancy doesn't die, but instead gets help (isn't that wonderful?).
Surprisingly, the story doesn't have an end joke. Perhaps because there's little to joke about, but perhaps also because RL Stine doesn't want to be too predictable (har har).
On the ever-tipping scales this reads 'read one, read all'.
Back to top.Thundering on through what seems like an endless amount of RL Stine books we now arrive at The New Girl. The back of the book reads, 'She's pale as a ghost, blonde and eerily beautiful - And Anna Corwin seems to need Shadyside High's star gymnast, Cory Brooks, as much as he wants her. But he can't get her out of his mind - he's losing sleep, skipping practice, and acting weird. Only Cory's friend Lisa knows the truth: Anna Crowin is dead and living on Fear Street.'
Yeah right. 1) Dead people don't live. 2) Ghosts don't come to school (they have better things to do). Conclusion: 1) Anna isn't dead, or 2) Anna isn't Anna at all but someone else.
So what happens? Well, RL Stine changes tactics once again and instead of the main character being a teenage girl, this time it's a teenage boy (major departure, I'm sure you agree). And this teenage boy, Cory Brooks, is a star gymnast, but he keep screwing up because of Anna, whom he's spotted one time and cannot get out of his head since.
After doing some investigative work he discovers that Anna is dead - she doesn't have a permanent record, and when he calls her number there's a voice who keeps telling him that there's no Anna living with them. Even when he comes to her house he's told that she's dead by a rather peculiar character called Brad (who, because of his peculiarity can't be bad because he's suspect). Still, he keep seeing her, wants to see her and some weird stuff happens, as it always does. This time it's threatening phonecalls and a dead cat. And someone (Brad) pushes Lisa down the stairs, although that's an accident.
So what happens next? Well, it turns out that Anna is indeed that, which means that Anna isn't Anna at all, but her sister, Willa (with such a name it's not that strange to want to change it to something normal). Willa may or may not have killed Anna, and then started taking on her personality, acting weirder and weirder all the time until she totally loses it and attacks Cory with a letter opener.
Of course, all's well that ends well, so here too everything turns out okay and apart from poor Willa and the innocent cat, nobody gets killed. Indeed, we have another happy ending with Cory dating Lisa. Aww!
Interestingly enough, there's sentence in the book that reads the following: 'A small Toyota, jammed with a [sic.] least six teenagers, honked as it sped past him.' (p.41) Now comes the interesting bit. This is what can be read in The Stepsister, 'A white Honda Ciciv roared past them, at least six boys crammed in like sardines.' (p.124)
Later on in The New Girl it says, 'He put on the brights just in time to see a large gray animal scamper out onto the highway. Whump. There wasn't time to slow down. A single bump told his he had run it over.' (p.73) And the following can be read in The Prom Queen, 'I gasped as I saw a shadow dart into the road. I slammed on the brakes. But not in time. I felt the car jolt. I felt a bump. Something was under my tires.' (p.78)
Paint by number much? There's of course a dozen more similarities (Gary Brandt and Lisa Blume keep popping up, every story mentions Simon Fear's burnt mansion, phones ring, notes are passed, opets get murdered, etc.), but these have nothing to do with the story in itself - the teenagers/boys just speed by and the whump/bump lead to nothing special at all. It's not even a proper cliffhanger!
I wonder whether Robert Lawrence just has a rolodex with 'ideas' which he randomly takes out and makes into a story. One can imagine one of the cards reading 'car with 6 drives past', and another card reading, 'driving over an animal(?)', along with cards that say, 'Lisa Blume', 'threatening phonecall', 'pushing someone down the stairs', 'kill a pet', 'enter weirdo', etc. One of the most terrible of the cards must read something like 'big blue eyes & long blonde hair'. God! Next time I see someone with big blue eyes and long blonde hair I'll have to kill her just because they're the ever-willing victim in every one of his stories. Then again, it might break the concentration of my class is I start teaching with bloody hands and a dead person in one of the desks.
Back to top.RL Stine's The Prom Queen.
From the rolodex of RL Stine:
[enter: silver dagger-shaped letter-opener with sharpened edge] -- sometimes used as a weapon, sometimes used to incriminate an innocent character. (cf. The New Girl and The Prom Queen)
[compare one of the characters to a movie/pop star] -- 80's movie stars, actually. Thusfar we've had: Molly Ringwald, Daryl Hanah, Madonna and Cher. (cf. The Surprise Party and The Prom Queen)
[one of the characters must wear jeans and a green top] -- these can be sweaters or tank tops or T-shirts. Obligatory useless 70's fashion statement. (cf. every story)
[let main character (if girl) suspect boyfriend or other girl's boyfriend] -- this is a must, as there have to be as many red herrings as possible, but the killer must be acquainted/well known to the main character.
[always make sure the real killer is never suspected] -- here too, the killer must be a friend of the main character or family or an acquaintance.
[name make and type (if known) of car] -- if car is used.
[check difference between LCD and LED] -- oops! He forgot that one. LCD is a liquid crystal display, used in calculators an digital watches. LED is a light emitting diode, like the light that flashes when your harddisk is being accessed or the light on the tv to indicate it's on or off. LCDs don't flash red. LEDs do. 'The red LCD light blinked twice, then faded out.' (The Prom Queen, p.138)
[story must never be more than 170 pages] -- preferably somewhere between 158 and 168 pages.
Shall I go on? Well, no, but let's look at the differences between The Prom Queen and the other stories:
-- It's written in first person perspective instead of the usual third person point of view
-- There's more than one death - in fact, there's 4 all in all, and 2 almost deaths. A gorefest almost!
-- It's loosely based on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers - the first one to apparently die, in this case, is the one who's bumping off the rest.
-- There ar no other significant differences.
Conclusion: now it's easier than ever to write your own RL Stine story and make millions overnight. Just follow these handy rolodex pointers, mix in a bit of a well respected suspense writer if the plots really start running thin and - hey presto - you have a story!
Back to top.Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was, in the words of the author, 'A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic.' Where exactly the romantic and the musical bits fit in I'm not sure, but what the hey.
This story is too elaborate to start to summarize, or even to name anything without having to link it to everything else (hence the holistic in the title), but there's an Electric Monk (who believes things for you, so you don't have to believe them yourself), Richard MacDuff, employee in some computer company whose boss is shot dead and a ghost, a centuries old, highly peculiar don, many more characters and, of course, Dirk Gently, whose Holistic Detective Agency isn't introduced until we're halfway through the novel.
Now try to think of the connection between all these and another ghost who is 4 billion years old, stir it for a bit, reverse the logic, mix with some quantum mechanics and let Douglas Adams do the rest while you're wondering how on Earth he came up with the things he comes up with.
On the whole, a very nice stepping stone towards John D. Barrow's Impossibility, which is about the limits of science and the universe, and one highly entertaining book, so on the scale of recommended to not recommended I give this a 'yes'.
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