This was embarrassingly bad, and the news that it has met with broad critical acclaim is infinitely depressing. Take two "damaged" stick figures, defiThis was embarrassingly bad, and the news that it has met with broad critical acclaim is infinitely depressing. Take two "damaged" stick figures, define each only in terms of their 'abnormality', surround them with the standard tableau of distant parents, cruel classmates. Make liberal use of facile, offensive stereotypes, for instance that the only conceivable career option for the emotionally retarded male basket case is to become a mathematician. Because this will allow you to sprinkle in some mumbo-jumbo about prime numbers which will then be taken for some kind of hugely deep meaningful symbolism.
Really, people? This write-by-numbers dreck actually appeals to you? Or did you just give it stars because the author is young and cute? That, at least, I could understand.
This book is formulaic pretentious drivel. My actual rating is closer to zero stars....more
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 the second collection of "short stories" by Lydia Davis that I've tried, and it will be my last. The other collection, "Samuel Johnson is IndiThis is the second collection of "short stories" by Lydia Davis that I've tried, and it will be my last. The other collection, "Samuel Johnson is Indignant" had enough flashes of genuine wit to make it almost tolerable, despite Ms Davis's predilection for microscopically short "stories" (sometimes no more than a sentence long) and a preternaturally detached prose style. The kind of writing that garners raves from the usual suspects - "The best prose stylist in America" (Rick Moody), "one of most precise and economical writers we have" (Dave Eggers), "few writers now working make the words on the page matter more" (Jonathan Franzen).
Well, allow me to differ, Herr Franzen. "Break it Down" is as dismal a collection of bleak, emotionally constipated, tales of misery as I've had the misfortune to read in the last ten years. And let's be clear, Ms Davis's trademarks - "dexterity, brevity, understatement" - are not necessarily virtues. Not when they lead to passages like these, which are ubiquitous
"She stands over a fish, thinking about certain irrevocable mistakes she has made today" "My husband is married to a different woman now, shorter than I am, about five feet tall, solidly built. Next to her I feel bony and awkward .." "I moved into the city just before Christmas. I was alone, and this was a new thing for me. Where had my husband gone? He was living in a small room across the river, in a district of warehouses." "He said there were things about me that he hadn't liked from the very beginning." "Though everyone wishes it would not happen, and though it would be far better if it did not happen, it does sometimes happen that a second daughter is born and there are two sisters. Of course any daughter, crying in the hour of her birth, is only a failure, and is greeted with a heavy heart by her father.." "She can't say to herself that it is really over, even though anyone else would say it was over, since he has moved to another city, hasn't been in touch with her in more than a year, and is married to another woman." "The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes i can figure out that it's not the truth and sometimes I don't know and never know, and sometimes just because...."
Oh Christ, why don't I just slit my fucking wrists right now? It would surely beat reading this kind of drivel. At a guess, at least half of the 34 'stories' in this book consist of a 3rd person or 1st person narrative, centring on a clinically depressed doormat of a woman either in, or trying to recover from, a toxic relationship with a man who psychologically abuses here. None of these women has a name - they are all just "she". And Davis writes about them with a detachment that borders on the clinical.
In contrast to Jonathan Franzen, I can't imagine how a writer could make the words on the page matter less. The dreary 'stories' in this volume adhere to the dismal prevailing conventions of the late 1980s - tales of narcissistic or bipolar protagonists in which nothing much ever happens, served up in a kind of minimalist prose with that knowing ironic detachment. The kind of tripe that drives me up the wall, in other words.
(on edit, after posting this review: I notice that many of my good friends here on GR don't share my opinion - well, bring it on, Jessicas!)
I just found out that she was at one time married to Paul Auster. Why am I not surprised? ...more
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
(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.
A sloppily written, profoundly irritating, book. Brohaugh obviously believes himself to be enormously witty; in fact, he's a crashing bore.
Nothing to A sloppily written, profoundly irritating, book. Brohaugh obviously believes himself to be enormously witty; in fact, he's a crashing bore.
Nothing to see here folks. Trust me. Unless you'd care to witness the usual suspects* poked and prodded by someone who is neither particularly bright nor articulate, and whose writing style is strongly suggestive of ADD, do yourself a favor and give this dismal effort a miss. There is nothing in this book that hasn't already been discussed, with far greater wit and insight, by Bill Bryson and Richard Lederer, among others.
The only thing even remotely noteworthy about this book is Mr Brohaugh's stunning lack of any semblance of wit.
* You know: those fake etymologies for 'posh', 'golf', and 'f**k'; the usual defense of split infinitives, singular data and criteria; several amazingly banal observations along the lines that a peanut is not a nut, there is no toe in mistletoe, no cow in coward, and so on at tedious length. All delivered in smirkingly dreadful prose.
Updated review on November 2nd
I generally enjoy books on English word origins and usage - this book was a notable exception. The author covers generally familiar terrain - the kind of material that one might reasonably expect in a book of this kind. This means, of course, that it has also been covered by several other authors already.
Roughly speaking, the material in Brohaugh's poorly organized book falls into two categories - discussion of word origins and advise on usage. Virtually all the etymological material has been discussed, more clearly and with far greater insight, in David Wilton's excellent "Word Myths : Debunking Linguistic Legends", and by Richard Lederer, as well as on a variety of word-related websites. As far as usage is concerned, one would do infinitely better to consult the excellent Garner's Modern American Usage, or Martha Brockenbraugh's hilarious "Things that make us Sic".
As a guide to usage, Brohaugh's book is completely unhelpful. For one thing, as a kind of extended, stream-of-consciousness rant, it lacks any kind of organization, structure, or discipline. Then, sentences like the following are regrettably common: 1. 'And a nother thing' is not necessarily bad grammar. 2. 'Giving someone a kudo' is not bad English. 3. 'I am here to defend the downtrodden, the outcast, the hopefullys and the ain'ts and the possessive it'ses and the banished double negative'.
To which I can only point out that 1. Yes it is. 2. Yes it is. 3. here the author is just being unhelpfully provocative, since he never offers any kind of coherent defense for it's as a legitimate possessive form.
Ironically, the results of Brohaugh's professed disregard for the rules of English usage are evident on every page of this rambling, poorly written, idiosyncratic rant. Whole sections are completely incomprehensible - for instance, the page and a half of text following the bizarre statement that Z is not the final letter of the alphabet, or the five rambling pages (188-193) about vowels.
Brohaugh's undisciplined prose is not improved by his insistence on scattering a variety of words of his own invention, along the lines of "bullshitternet", "babblisciousness", "catapostrophe", and "persnickitor", throughout the text. A kind of juvenile belligerence, aimed preemptively at anyone who might disagree with him* is the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and convinced me that this is not a book that deserves to be taken seriously.
*: He refers to them as "persnickitors" and offers the following defence against their "whining". "Stop your crying or I'll give you something to cry about. If you're going to play by those rules, let's follow them to their logical conclusion. In other words, we are here going to fully exercise to the fun game of Xtreme Etymological Stasis (sic)." The preceding sentence could mean almost anything, of course, but in practice it appears to amount to nothing more than the tired old trick of ascribing (incorrectly) an exaggeratedly extreme position to anyone who dares to disagree with the author, then using that extreme position as a straw man to attack. ...more
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 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
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 hope the system allows me to enter a review without entering a rating, because there is no way that this dreck is getting a star from me.
Reader, beI hope the system allows me to enter a review without entering a rating, because there is no way that this dreck is getting a star from me.
Reader, be warned! Take care to avoid the interminable scribblings of Neal Pollack*, who appears deadset on exercising his constitutional right to bespatter the internet with his noxious drivel, much as a particularly pestilent skein of Canada geese might choose to befoul a suburban office park. Ingesting that goose guano won't do you any good; similarly, even threshold exposure to the inanities perpetrated on an innocent world by Neal Pollack is likely to kill brain cells. In significant numbers.
The reasons for Neal's inclusion in the Pantheon of authors who are not just bad, but detestable and obnoxious to boot, are straightforward:
Neal Pollack is not funny. Neal Pollack is not clever. Neal Pollack is delusional; specifically, he apparently believes himself to be both clever and funny. Neal Pollack writes. Far more than he should.
In an unfortunate quirk of fate, at some point, something moved the folks at McSweeney's (perhaps a desire to burnish their image as "fresh" "risk-takers") to publish a collection of Neal Pollack's scribblings in book form. This single appalling lapse in taste and judgement appears to have spawned the monster that currently goes by the name of Neal Pollack; since the publication of that McSweeney's book, a veritable tsunami of drivel has been unleashed, attributed to Neal Pollack.
None of this material is good. What is hard to convey here is just how bad it is. Perhaps the best analogy is Drew Carey - a "comedian" who not only is incapable of ever being funny, but is guaranteed to suck all possible humour out of any room he infests. Add to the complete absence of wit, the complete absence of even the remotest clue and Neal's apparently boundless self-infatuation and you've got a self-aggrandizing, fatuous buffoon.
Flee, gentle reader, flee! Make for the higher ground.
* The possibility must be acknowledged that "Neal Pollack" is not a real person, but instead represents some kind of overly clever experiment being perpetrated by those brainiacs at McSweeney's. It hardly matters. Drivel is drivel, and if it is some kind of fancy McSweeney's experiment, it would hardly be the first superficially clever notion of theirs to backfire into tedium. ...more
sweet lord Mother of God, what was I thinking? Hard to imagine that there's a worse insult to the intelligence out there than the 'Who Moved my Cheesesweet lord Mother of God, what was I thinking? Hard to imagine that there's a worse insult to the intelligence out there than the 'Who Moved my Cheese?' scam, but this book may just qualify.
I may actually burn this book, in some kind of ritual immolation sacrifice.
Updated Feb 15th. I posted the following, more detailed review on Amazon.com. Only to receive a creepy e-mail from Seth Godin, the editor, offering me a refund of the purchase price. I declined.
I don't know what came over me in the bookstore. Mysteriously, when I got home, this book was at the bottom of the bag. It's an embarrassment.
I would have thought it impossible to come up with something more stupid, more openly contemptuous of the very managers purportedly being 'helped', than the horrendous "Who Moved My Cheese?" of a few years back. You remember, the one which portrayed employees as mildly retarded rodents. But one shouldn't underestimate the intellectual arrogance of the consultant class, nor the gullibility of corporate management.
This book is infinitely worse. It turns out that there is no apparent limit to the degree of atrocity of the rubbish that can be generated (and printed) in an "unprecedented collaboration of the world's smartest business thinkers". Despite the separation of material in this book into separate chapters, there is no individual attribution of responsibility for the individual chapters. This is not a good sign.
Seth Godin, the nominal 'editor', obviously sees no problem in publishing a book which, for any concrete piece of strategic advice that is included, hedges its bets by also advising the diametrically opposing strategy. Thus, to succeed companies should:
1a. Stick with what they know and do it well. (Focusing on your specialty is key). 1b. Not get stuck in the rut of what they know, they should branch out. (Focusing on your specialty is fatal) 2a. (page 23) "ignore your customers" (the customer is ignorant and wrong). 2b. (page 64) the customer is always right. 3a. (page 31) "Every organization that gets into trouble falters because it waited too long to change...". (urgency is crucial) 3b. (page 136) "Remarkable doesn't always mean right now" (urgency is detrimental).
And so on. Because chapter authors are not individually identified, should your coin toss happen to choose the wrong option between 1a and 1b, 2a and 2b, 3a and 3b, there can be no assignable blame.
However, at least the examples above have the virtue of giving concrete, specific advice. If that makes you nervous, there is also plenty of this kind of gibberish:
Plant rocks. Embrace the power of storytelling. Ignore the regulations. (I'm trying to imagine how this would play out in, say, the pharmaceutical or biotech industries). Imagine there's a tiger loose in your office. Breathe the fear. Fear is good. You are not a cog. You are not ordinary. In fact, you are remarkable.
But if you're dumb enough to buy this book, you're a complete moron. Even by the extraordinarily lax standards for business advice books, it sets a new low.
From the unassailable heights of the MORAL HIGH GROUND, the author manipulates the reader from the very first sentence. Though I have no doubt that atFrom the unassailable heights of the MORAL HIGH GROUND, the author manipulates the reader from the very first sentence. Though I have no doubt that atrocities were committed in El Salvador, it seems entirely probable that this happened on both sides, a complication that this book never even contemplates. I despise this kind of agitprop masquerading as literature, wherein the reader is manipulated to feel badly for not having the appropriate reaction to the author's button-pushing.
If you enjoy being played like a cheap violin, this shameless exercise in emotional manipulation may be for you. If you ask for a little more in your reading, then give it a miss....more
The only reason I own this piece of idiotic dreck is because QPBC sent it to me as the book of the month and I wasn't quick enough off the mark about The only reason I own this piece of idiotic dreck is because QPBC sent it to me as the book of the month and I wasn't quick enough off the mark about sending it back - OK?
I just needed to make that perfectly clear. I do actually have a brain, and this book is clearly aimed at those who do not....more
But the worst offender of the last twenty years has to be the uniquely meretricious drivel that constitutes "Angela's Ashes". Dishonest at every levelBut the worst offender of the last twenty years has to be the uniquely meretricious drivel that constitutes "Angela's Ashes". Dishonest at every level, slimeball McCourt managed to parlay his mawkish maunderings to commercial success, presumably because the particular assortment of rainsodden cliches hawked in the book not only dovetails beautifully with the stereotypes lodged in the brain of every American of Irish descent, but also panders to the lummoxes collective need to feel superior because they have managed to transcend their primitive, bog-soaked origins, escaping the grinding poverty imagined in the book, to achieve - what? Spiritual fulfilment in the split-level comfort of a Long Island ranch home? And Frankie the pimp misses not a beat, tailoring his mendacity to warp the portrayal of reality in just the way his audience likes.
No native Irish reader, myself included, has anything but the deepest contempt for this particular exercise in literary prostitution and the cynical weasel responsible for it.
{my apologies to the fine people of Long Island, for the unnecessary vehemence of the implied slur in the above review: clearly it is not meant to be all-encompassing}...more
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