The bookshelves constitute the review. Though I paid only $2.98 for this smug little nugget of crap, I'm tempted to sue the estate of Muriel Spark jusThe bookshelves constitute the review. Though I paid only $2.98 for this smug little nugget of crap, I'm tempted to sue the estate of Muriel Spark just on principle. The characters don't even rise to the level of caricature; they are stick figures that Dame Muriel pushes around her chessboard for a while. Until she can't be bothered anymore. The mystery is why she bothered at all. Surely she didn't need the money, and why would she choose to have this piece of mincingly clever dreck be her last "novel"?
I appear to be in a minority of one on this book. So be it. But this is really nothing more than a case of a talented author phoning it in. Muriel Spark's conversion to Catholicism and its effect on her writing are well documented. Somewhere during that conversion process she should have learned the meaning of shame. Because this is a book to be ashamed of.
I could allow my righteous indignation to sputter on for several more paragraphs, but I think I've made my point. There is nothing in this book that merits your attention. ...more
This piece of pig manure is a good illustration of the dangers of following recommendations found on amazon.com. Described as a "comic novel" set in mThis piece of pig manure is a good illustration of the dangers of following recommendations found on amazon.com. Described as a "comic novel" set in my homeland, it has about as much wit as a lobotomized goldfish and lards on the blarney factor to nauseating excess. Other defects include lack of a discernible plot, grievously bloviated prose, and characters that don't even achieve the status of caricature. The following paragraph exemplifies its glaring inanity:
Remember the day he saved the four sons of Maggie Kerwin and the two sons of Sally Fitzgibbon, with their boat going down in the storm sent from the north. ... Lost in the waves and found and lost again, with the mountains falling right on top of him. Remember the seething water hissing at his valor, raging that he should defy them all -- the waves, the rocks, and all the nibbling fishes below. This was the day he dived down and brought up the four sons of Maggie Kerwin and the two sons of Sally Fitzgibbon, and only him still able to holler. And remember the rescue of Hanrahan's goat with the barn burning, and Kate's cat plucked from the high branches of the oak, and his clothes ripped open for all to see. Forget that his words were made of the night air and that he had the gift of transport like none other before him or since, that his closed eyes and open mouth were the surrender of all this world.... Remember what's there to remember and forget what's there to be forgot.
Kitty's face had turned from flesh to stone.
And so on, regrettably, until the reader throws up in his own mouth at the unmitigated dreadfulness of it all.
This style of writing might reasonably be termed "Blarney quaint". In my experience, most native Irish people find it ridiculous, borderline offensive, and incredibly annoying, while a surprisingly high proportion of non-Irish readers react positively (the word "charming" is often invoked).
This book was a "Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2008", and is the first volume in a so-called "pig trilogy". The mind actively boggles.
..... and all the nibbling fishes below. dear god....more
I've read somewhere that the main thing a novelist needs to accomplish in the first 10% of a story is to convince the reader to keep reading. John BanI've read somewhere that the main thing a novelist needs to accomplish in the first 10% of a story is to convince the reader to keep reading. John Banville obviously does not feel bound by this advice. Hell, no, with a kind of oblivious arrogance that might almost be admirable, if it weren't so irritating, he launches this grotesquely overwritten galley of pretentious claptrap, and let the reader be damned!
The domineering patriarch lies dying in the upper chamber. Assorted members of the family he's mistreated over the years are fluttering around ineffectively. Also fluttering around is the omniscient narrator to beat all omniscient narrators, Hermes, whose pappy Zeus may or may not be ravishing the in-laws, while Pan ......
Oh, never mind. Who can be bothered? Reading the reviews of other goodreaders, I notice that there is a certain type of reader that Banfield spurs on to a kind of semi-ecstatic, hagiographic logorrhea. I suggest you read their reviews, which are among the funniest things I've read in months.
Life is too short. I gave it 60 pages. That's enough.
Upon winning the Booker Prize in 2005, John Banville commented that "it was nice to see a work of art win.... There are plenty of other rewards for middle-brow fiction. There should be one decent prize for real books."
This pretentious git* is president of his own fan club. The fact that I think his writing is ridiculous bloviation aspiring to be high culture won't worry him a bit. But don't say you weren't warned.
*: the fact that he's a countryman of mine seems to make it worse, somehow....more
Reader, beware! With all the sweaty desperation of a couple of cheap strippers, here comes the distinctly unsavor You gotta have a gimmick
("Gypsy")
Reader, beware! With all the sweaty desperation of a couple of cheap strippers, here comes the distinctly unsavory father-and-daughter vaudeville team of David P. and Nanelle R. Barash, bumping and grinding towards you, tipping you a leering wink as they try to lure you with their patented gimmick - the special high-tech e-vo-lution-ary reading lens.
Gentle reader, run for your life! It's not just that this pair of brachiate mouth-breathers have nothing of interest to impart. Much worse, they are possessed of a sensibility so crass, a vocabulary so crude, cognitive deficits so far-ranging, that time spent in their company cannot end well. The severely limited cognitive ability of this pair can accommodate neither complexity nor subtlety, nor nuance of any kind. Which renders those fancy "evolutionary" lenses they are peddling as reductive as a pair of cheap 3D glasses from a 1950s creature feature.
Men just want to screw as much pussy as they can get away with, women are just looking for a sugar daddy who will provide for their babies, and blood is thicker than water. Because, as the Barassholes so charmingly explain: "Females are egg makers; males are sperm squirters."
And there you have it folks. In that crassly reductive nutshell you have the entire Barash key to literary interpretation. Sprinkle in assorted references to rutting stags battling it out for dominance, peacock's tails and other elaborate courtship rituals, repeat the terms "gene", "DNA" and "evolution" often enough to keep the humanities folks guessing - and they got themselves a gimmick!
The Barasshole's opinion of their readership is apparently not very high. They take care to point out that the "American writer Kate Chopin"'s name is pronounced like "that of the renowned composer". And the blindingly obvious is pointed out with numbing frequency:
"Aha!" says the reader: a mother helping out her own offspring. "Aha!" says the evolutionary biologist: genes helping themselves.
In other breaking news, parents find the death of a child incredibly upsetting. Oh, and the bond between a step-parent and a child is often more problematic than that with the child's natural parent.
So Othello is reduced to an enraged silverback, lashing out to maintain his alpha male status. Lady Dedlock seeks out her illegitimate daughter to effect a joyous reconciliation. The Dursleys are mean and spiteful to the stepchild Harry Potter. See how simple it is? Genes explain everything. All of literature is made clear viewed through the awesome prism of evolutionary psychology. The genetic advantage that accrues to the house of Atreus by having Agamemnon kill his daughter Iphigenia would be what, now? The stupidity and arrogance of these authors is simply breathtaking.
Equally disturbing is their vulgarity. The analogy of strippers in a titty bar is not inappropriate - the kind of leeringly reductive "analysis" that this knuckle-dragging duo specializes in leaves the reader feeling coarsened, if not actually violated, and in need of a cleansing shower. Other crimes to be found in this book include assorted atrocities against the language (please don't make me go into details), as well as a disturbingly cavalier tendency to blurt out complete plot details of books the reader might still have been planning to read.
This book is deeply offensive and insulting to the intelligence. These people need to be stopped.
This is another one for the "What were they thinking?!?" shelf. Doubly so, in fact. It's not just another lapse by the Booker selection committee, whoThis is another one for the "What were they thinking?!?" shelf. Doubly so, in fact. It's not just another lapse by the Booker selection committee, whose judgements we already know to take with a large grain of salt. But to be let down so abominably by Dame Iris, someone we know is capable of writing interestingly, though sometimes at the expense of prolixity. Regrettably, in "The Sea, The Sea" we see her giving free rein to her multiple vices, with little of the compensatory acuity that is there in some of her earlier books.
Poor writing choices all around. Or at least none that favors the hapless reader. So we are treated to the first person narrative of a monomaniacal narcissist. One who is delusional (sea-serpents haunt him when he swims) and who seems intent on tormenting us with the weird details of every bizarre meal he fixes for himself in his crumbling 'squalid to a degree only an English person would tolerate' surroundings. This kind of thing:
"Felt a little depressed but was cheered up by supper: spaghetti with a little butter and dried basil. (Basil is of course the king of herbs.) Then spring cabbage cooked slowly with dill. Boiled onions served with bran, herbs, soya oil and tomatoes, with one egg beaten in. With these a slice or two of cold tinned corned beef. (Meat is really just an excuse for eating vegetables.) I drank a bottle of retsina in honour of the undeserving rope."
i don't know about you, but a few paragraphs of this kind of drivel brings me to the end of my rope. Even if I could forgive Dame Iris and her editors for the astonishingly boring catalog of the dietary whims of a narcissist, those parenthetical comments ("basil is of course ...) are quite simply unpardonable.
Forty pages in. Not another character in sight? Righty-ho, then! Time to bale. Or bail.
In the words of a more talented reviewer than I: "This is not a book to be put aside lightly. It should be thrust aside with great force. "
In some hideous corner of the library of the damned, a doomed subcommittee is being forced to weigh the question: "The sea, The sea" represents a more shameless crime against innocent readers than "The infinities"; discuss.
Iris, Iris, Iris.... How the mighty are fallen....more
Bret Easton Ellis is an author who makes the (otherwise inexplicable to me) concept of the Finnish sauna appealing. After reading his vile 'brain'-droBret Easton Ellis is an author who makes the (otherwise inexplicable to me) concept of the Finnish sauna appealing. After reading his vile 'brain'-droppings, I wanted to spend hours in an intolerably hot humid cabin, there to sweat and be beaten with birch twigs until all of the vileness I had absorbed from contact with this dreck had been purged from my system.
I truly have a hard time understanding how anyone could consider this book brilliant. But then I also have a hard time understanding why people flock in droves to suffer the latest lientery with which Chuck Palahniuk continues to bescumber his readership.
Sometimes vileness is nothing more than that. There is no pony here - just a heap of stinking album graecum....more
Who knew jellyfish could write? I'd use the word "emasculated" to describe the author of this pathetic "short history of Chile" if it weren't obvious Who knew jellyfish could write? I'd use the word "emasculated" to describe the author of this pathetic "short history of Chile" if it weren't obvious that to do so would be a grievous inaccuracy. Sergio Villalobos Rivera never had cojones to begin with. Hell, on the evidence, SVR doesn't even have a backbone. Which may warrant the creation of a new bookshelf in my collection - one for "written by invertebrates".
OK, OK. Let me back up. All I was looking for was a "brief history of Chile", as the title of this execrable "book" promised. Enough to get me oriented, so that I wouldn't feel like a complete tourist-dickhead during my weeks here in the hellhole that is Santiago. Enough to distinguish Ambrosio O' Higgins from his progeny, Bernardo. And maybe to figure out just why the latter is known all about town as "El libertador", even to the extent of having Santiago's main drag named after him. (Understanding why and when the O' Higginses left Ireland would have been lagniappe, as would any available information about Viscount Mackenna, after whom the street where my school is located is named).
Now, believe me, I understand completely that your average goodreads member probably gives a flying Wallenda about the history of Chile. (Though if you were a U.S. citizen of voting age back in 1973, you might want to ask yourself if such insouciance is wholly justifiable, know what I'm saying?). But please bear with me here. If I don't get some of the incensitude that this "book" has provoked off my chest, I may just blow a gasket. And I shudder to think what Kaiser Permanente's coverage of gasket replacement in a Latin American capital might be.
What's so appalling about this book? Well, everything, really. Here's a short list:
* Despite its 200-page length, it's virtually devoid of information. There's a plethora of generic, meaningless, illustrations which help to take up space, but add nothing whatsoever. Examples: page 78, woodcuts of "mujeres chilenas" in quasi-national garb; page 73, drawing of generic pirate ships; page 66, peasants using wooden ploughs; page 67, a generic grain mill; page 117, drawing of a gentleman in the costume of the era; page 124 drawing of an impoverished peasant; page 114, a ball in the governor's palace; page 93, woodcut of the "building of the tribunal of the consulate", page 58, daily life under the conquistadors. Any of these freaking illustrations could be inserted into the history of any 'brief history" of any Latin American country and nobody would be any the wiser.
* Such text as there is in the book has the texture of cotton wool. Cliche follows platitude follows cliche follows platitude. After a couple pages, you have to stop, because you can actually feel your brain rotting inside your head.
* that spineless quality, alluded to earlier. the fall of the government of Allende is dispatched in less than a paragraph. the atrocities that followed under Pinochet get fewer than 3 lines, including the desultory observation that "more than 3000" people died. The closest Sergio ("Medusa") V-R comes to expressing anything approximating a point of view is to allow that the political situation in 1973 was "very confusing".
"Bah, humbug!", say I. If you are incapable of formulation an opinion, motherfucker, then you are not qualified to be writing history books.
On the plus side, I only paid $8 for this piece of basura. But, to put it another way - I PAID 8 DOLLARS FOR THIS PIECE OF TIME-WASTING RUBBISH?
Caveat lector. If, for whatever reason, you are interested in learning more about the history of Chile, be assured you won't find anything pertinent here.
Gaaaaah! Fade, to the sound of gaskets blowing....
(If you loved "Future Shock", and "The Celestine Prophecy" changed your life, this is the book for you)
But, wait! All those 5-star revi FUTURE SCHLOCK
(If you loved "Future Shock", and "The Celestine Prophecy" changed your life, this is the book for you)
But, wait! All those 5-star reviews gotta count for something, right? Well, let's take a look.
"We will have the requisite hardware to emulate human intelligence with supercomputers by the end of this decade."
Really, Ray. How's that coming along? You've still got a year, two if we're charitable. But, even despite the spectacular vagueness of the claim, things are hardly looking good.
"For information technologies, there is a second level of exponential growth: that is, exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth".
A breathtakingly audacious claim. Without a scintilla of evidence provided to justify it. Graphs where the future has been conveniently 'filled in' according to the author's highly selective worldview do not count as evidence, and are nothing more than an embarrassment. But then, most of the graphs in this book do not bear up under close scrutiny - their function is more cartoon-like. Even Kurzweil's more apparently reasonable claim - that of exponential growth at a constant rate - rests on a pretty selective framing of the question and interpretation of existing data.
"Two machines - or one million machines - can join together to become one and then become separate again. Multiple machines can do both at the same time: become one and separate simultaneously. Humans call this falling in love, but our biological ability to do this is fleeting and unreliable."
Say what now?
From a technical standpoint, as far as biotechnology is concerned (which is the area I am most competent to judge), there's hardly a statement that Kurzweil makes that is not either laughably naive or grossly inaccurate. Assuming that, indeed, drug delivery via nanobots and the engineering of replacement tissue/organs will at some point become reality, Kurzweil's estimate of the relevant timeframe is ludicrously optimistic. A relevant example is the 20 years it took to derive clinical benefit from monoclonal antibodies -- the rate-limiting steps had little to do with computational complexity. So the notion that, in the future, completely real biological, physiological, and ethical constraints will simply melt under the blaze of increased computing power is fundamentally misguided.
From a statistical point of view, things are no great shakes either. His account of biological modeling is such a ridiculous oversimplification it defies credulity. I'd elaborate, but frankly, the whole sorry mess is just starting to irritate me.
Given the density of meaningless, unsubstantiated, and demonstrably false statements in the first few chapters, it's hard to see the point in continuing. If one actually reads carefully what he's saying, and assumes that he is assigning standard, agreed-upon, meaning to the words he uses, then several possible reactions seem warranted:
* that sinking feeling that one inhabits a universe that is completely orthogonal to those who gave this a 5-star rating * heightened skepticism and aversion to Kool-Aid * bemusement at the gap between Kurzweil's perception of reality and one's own - in particular, the evident moral vacuum in which he "operates", as well as apparent ignorance or indifference to the lot of the vast majority of the planet's inhabitants * wonder at the sheer monomaniacal gall of the man
Grandiose predictions of the future, the more outlandish the better, appear to have an undiminished appeal for Homo sapiens. For the life of me, I have never been able to figure out why.
In response to several thoughtful comments that take issue with the nastiness of my initial review, I have come to the Further update, June 19th 2012.
In response to several thoughtful comments that take issue with the nastiness of my initial review, I have come to the conclusion that the comments in question are essentially correct. Please see my own response in comment #32 in the discussion. And thanks to those who called me on this, apologies for my earlier vitriolic responses. In general, I try to acknowledge the validity of other opinions in my reviews and comments, something I notably failed to do in this discussion. I should have been more civil, initially and subsequently.
Update:
WELL, CONGRATULATIONS, PAUL AUSTER!!
I wouldn't actually have thought it possible, but with the breathtakingly sophomoric intellectual pretension of the final 30 pages of "City of Glass", you have actually managed to deepen my contempt and loathing for you, and the overweening, solipsistic, drivel that apparently passes for writing in your particular omphaloskeptic corner of the pseudo-intellectual forest in which you live, churning out your mentally masturbatory little turdlets.
Gaaaah. Upon finishing the piece of smirkingly self-referential garbage that was "City of Glass", I wanted to jump in a showever and scrub away the stinking detritus of your self-congratulatory, hypercerebral, pomo, what a clever-boy-am-I, pseudo-intellectual rubbish from my mind. But not all the perfumes of Araby would be sufficient - they don't make brain bleach strong enough to cleanse the mind of your particular kind of preening, navel-gazing idiocy.
All I can do is issue a clarion call to others who might be sucked into your idiotic, time-wasting, superficially clever fictinal voyages to nowhere. There is emphatically no there there. The intellectual vacuum at the core of Auster's fictions is finally nothing more than that - empty of content, devoid of meaning, surrounded with enough of the pomo trappings to keep the unwary reader distracted. But, if you're looking for meaning in your fiction, for God's sake look elsewhere.
And, please - spare me your pseudoprofound epiphanies of the sort that the emptiness at the core of Auster's tales is emblematic of the kind of emptiness that's at the core of modern life. Because that brand of idiocy butters no parsnips with me - I got over that kind of nonsense as a freshman in college. At this point in my life I expect a little more from anyone who aspires to be considered a writer worth taking seriously.
Which Paul Auster, though I have no doubt that he takes himself very, very seriously indeed, is not. This little emperor of Brooklyn is stark naked, intellectually speaking.
The only consolation is that I spent less than $5 for this latest instalment of Austercrap.
Gaaaah. PASS THE BRAINBLEACH.
Earlier comment begins below:
My loathing for the only other of Paul Auster's books that I had read (the Music of Chance) was so deep that it's taken me over ten years before I can bring myself to give him another chance. But finally, today, after almost three weeks of reading only short pieces in Spanish, my craving for fiction in English was irresistible, so I picked up a second-hand copy of The New York Trilogy in the English-language bookstore here in Guanajuato.
So far so good. I'm about three-quarters through the first story of the trilogy and I'm enjoying it, without actually liking it, if that makes sense. Auster seems to owe a clear debt of influence to Mamet - there's the same predilection for games, puzzles, and the influence of chance. Thankfully, the influence doesn't extend to dialog, which Mamet has always seemed to me to wield clumsily, like a blunt instrument. Auster is more subtle, but he still holds his characters at such a remote distance, it gives his writing a cerebral quality that is offputting at times. Thus, one can enjoy the situations he sets up and the intricacies of the story, without quite liking his fiction.
Who knows, maybe I will feel differently after I've read all three stories?...more
I knew it was time to leave the corporate world when our vice-president, a friend who had been a truly smart woman when we first started to work togetI knew it was time to leave the corporate world when our vice-president, a friend who had been a truly smart woman when we first started to work together, bought 300 copies of this trendy 2006 business fable* (involving penguins and melting icebergs) for the entire division.
Not entirely coincidentally, the day that the invitation to the offsite meeting for an all-day training exercise based on the book showed up on my calendar, was the day that I gave notice.
I got out of there just in time. Another couple of weeks and I'd have been dressing up as Fred the visionary penguin, baking under the soul-destroying glare of the fluorescent lights of the Sequoia room in the South San Francisco Embassy Suites. And believe me, I have paid my dues as far as abusive corporate training sessions are concerned:
(*: Can you guess which expert on dairy products writes the foreword to the parable of the penguins? Hmmm. Can you?)
People who don't work in the corporate world often succumb to the temptation to believe in wild conspiracy theories about plans for world domination by evil corporate overlords. I don't lose much sleep over such theories. It's not that I think the corporate wannabe overlords are benign. I just ask myself how much domination can we expect from an executive class that tries to instill loyalty by humiliating employees through forcing them to attend motivational offsite meetings based on this kind of drivel.
One of the blurbs on Amazon tells us that some upper manager type in the Department of Defence snapped up 400 copies. I don't know if I should feel more, or less, secure as a result....more
I hope that Larry Ashmead puts more effort into his job as an editor than he bothered to put into this disappointing, totally shameless excuse for a bI hope that Larry Ashmead puts more effort into his job as an editor than he bothered to put into this disappointing, totally shameless excuse for a book.
Here is page 2, almost in its entirety:
here's a recent list of babies born in Upstate New York.
Caiden Lee Tyler Ryan carly Morgan Jeremiah James Jr. Sarafia Frances Brianna Darcie Hayles Tasha Sabryn Maura Bethanyann Busta Kai Nolan Autumn Elizabeth Ashlwyn Zoe Trinity Jade
Bette Harrison, who keeps an eye on new arrivals at O' Grady Hospital in Atlanta, spotted Vaseline Glass.
If you find this kind of thing riveting, then you'll enjoy this book.
Ashmead has to be one of the laziest writers on the planet. Incredibly, he stoops to the same device again on page 9 of the book, which consists entirely of names given to babies "born in Upstate New York". Most of the names listed are unremarkable in a multicultural society, leaving one with the distinct impression, not dispelled anywhere else in the book, that Ashmead is inviting us to join him in finding such names as 'Nayraha Dmarye, Tajae Nylei, Nyeerah Oqay-lyn, Kobe, Anief, and Kody Ryan' - well, what exactly? Insufficiently WASP-y? Too foreign? Hard to be sure, since he just lists them without comment and moves on.
NEWSFLASH: The phone directory is a veritable treasure trove of names, and it's free.
But then this is an author so self-absorbed that he devotes nearly two pages of the book's introduction to the fact that his employee badge misspelled his name on his first job. Fear not - his next employers managed to get it right. Hilariously, the moron provides pictures of both ID badges, presumably to eliminate any further worries you might have on the matter.
Ashmead's shamelessness doesn't stop at reproducing lists of names gleaned from birth announcements. Fully six pages of the chapter devoted to pets' names are a verbatim reproduction of a (not particularly interesting) newspaper article about Queen Victoria and her dogs. Then there are the interminably meandering, pointless anecdotes from, or about, various acquaintances of his. Introductions like this one are typical: "Mary Tobin Adams Hedges was a dear friend in the late 1960s and '70s when I owned a beach house in Sagaponack, a small town in the Hamptons."
I have my own name for lazy, shameless authors who produce books as appallingly dreadful as "Bertha Venation":
Larry Ashmead is a complete and utter ASSMARMOT ...more
OK. The first two books in the Vampire Chronicles series were actually kind of fun. Things definitely went south with 'Queen of the Damned', and this OK. The first two books in the Vampire Chronicles series were actually kind of fun. Things definitely went south with 'Queen of the Damned', and this fourth book was just completely superfluous....more
Consider the absence of stars here to be a deliberate zero-star rating. The only reason I own this ridiculous book is because of some kind of screwup Consider the absence of stars here to be a deliberate zero-star rating. The only reason I own this ridiculous book is because of some kind of screwup with the Kwality Paperback Book Klub, back in the days before I escaped their clutches.
Australian celery, peppermint oil, licorice, kava, kudzu, milk thistle, saw palmetto, cherry juice, bee pollen, Coenzyme Q, glucosamine, valerian - Jeanie has yet to meet a substance she doesn't consider therapeutic. The words 'miracle' anc 'cancer' are studded across almost every page in this shameful assemblage of anecdotes, vague claims, and irresponsible speculation.
On the upside, each miracle is conveniently (often alliteratively) labeled: "Matthew's Miracle", "Mollie's Miracle", "A Mother's Miracle" and so on. Ad nauseam. The onset of which was triggered, in my case, by reading the subheading for Mollie's miracle:
"If it cures racehorses, Why Not Me"?
Indeed.
One can only imagine the sleazy internet byways where Matthew, Molly & Mom get their snakeoil nowadays. ...more
Written in a half-witted patois by a shameless halfwit, for an audience of halfwits. I suppose we should be grateful that it took another century befoWritten in a half-witted patois by a shameless halfwit, for an audience of halfwits. I suppose we should be grateful that it took another century before another Oirishman inflicted a slur as grievous as this on Ireland and its people in the name of 'literature' (yeah, I mean you, McCourt!)
Even thinking about this vile 'play' makes me break out in hives.
I'd always felt that the term 'mental midget' was unnecessarily harsh and best avoided. Until I read this piece of crap. It's hard to imagine a more fI'd always felt that the term 'mental midget' was unnecessarily harsh and best avoided. Until I read this piece of crap. It's hard to imagine a more fitting description of Melissa L. Rossi, if this book exemplifies her work....more
I have a weakness for this kind of stuff. I don't necessarily really believe that an actual student somewhere really wrote that 'Joan of Ark was famouI have a weakness for this kind of stuff. I don't necessarily really believe that an actual student somewhere really wrote that 'Joan of Ark was famous as Noah's wife', but you'll still find me laughing like a drain.
In my defence, someone gave me my copy - I didn't actually, like, pay money for it or anything.
I promise not to send you e-mails with hilarious lists of similar bloopers, honestly. ...more
I think I bought this with the misguided notion I would give it to my goddaughter for her birthday. Once I got it home, I thought better of it.
Let's bI think I bought this with the misguided notion I would give it to my goddaughter for her birthday. Once I got it home, I thought better of it.
Let's be clear - the reason for not giving it to my godchild was not because of any fear of contributing to her moral decline. It was because of the overall witlessness of the book....more
Loading...
