Book Reviews continued

Thanks to Hanukah break I've been too busy to clean the house or do math homework. But fortunately, I haven't been too busy to eat several hundred latkas, write Curious George fanfiction (more on that later) and read new books, which I'll review here for your convenience.

A Feast for Crows (Fantasy)

Book four of the Song of Ice and Fire series.

Yes, I read book four almost immediately after finishing complaining about book three. I'm like that.

A lot of people like this book less than the others, because it has a bit less action and fewer plot twists (only a few dozen murders, compared to the usual one per page or so). But I loved it. It took the books from an amazingly detailed fantasy series to an insanely detailed fantasy series.

I can see why people are comparing George Martin to Tolkien. Tolkien invented languages for his books; the history and religions of Martin's imaginary world could be the subject of several college courses.

There is one fairly major downside, though, at least for me. Martin's ability to keep track of his roughly 30,000 characters surpasses my own, so new plot points not infrequently go over my head. The book will be following Asha (one of the several dozen characters followed in at least one chapter) and suddenly Tristifer says something important, and instead of thinking, "Woah! What a crazy plot development!" I'm thinking, "Wait, who's Tristifer?"

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Angelina’s Birthday (Fiction)

A plot summary, for those of you who aren't familiar with this literary masterpiece: Angelina is messing around and breaks her bike. Her parents suggest she earn money to buy a new one. Angelina and her friend Alice work hard, but don’t earn enough money for the bike she wants. In the end, her family surprises her by buying her a new bike for her birthday.

My review: This book is nicely paced, well illustrated, and teaches children a valuable lesson about hard work. Namely, that hard work isn’t nearly as important as your ability to dupe people into buying you things by looking cute and pitiful.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Ten Apples Up on Top (Philosophy) 

Plot: A lion, tiger, and dog (?) compete to see who can balance the most apples on their head. For whatever reason, this involves breaking and entering. When they are discovered the entire town turns out to chase them away, only to run into an apple cart. There is a surprise ending.

My review: This is a nice, gentle way to introduce young children to Objectivist philosophy. Competition spurs excellence among the talented, while the non-talented seek only to tear down the "apple carriers'" success, all on a level even a preschooler can understand.

This could be an alternative to Randian classics for adults, as well. Not only is the entire book shorter than any single sentence in Atlas Shrugged, making it something you might actually read and not just Google, but the surprise ending (*spoilers* - all of the villagers end up with apples perfectly balanced on their heads and decide to join the apple-balancing fun) is far more realistic than that whole thing about geniuses abandoning society in favor of their own private paradise (because if there's anything rich businessmen dream of, it's escaping from all those younger, poorer, far more attractive female hangers-on and going off to live independently with their overwhelmingly male associates).

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Pride and Prejudice (Awesomeness)

Plot: It’s semi-complicated. Luckily, it was made into about a kajillion movies, so you can just look it up on IMDb.

I love this book. I love it from the first chapter, where we meet a beautiful, demure, kind-hearted young woman – who isn’t the main character. It’s her less attractive, overly critical sister who’s the main character. 

I don't know why this book seems to be consistently described as a romance. The breakdown is more like this:

15%: Hmm, Mr. Darcy may not be so bad after all.

2%: England being pretty

3%: England being all old-fashioned

80%: Oh dear lord, I'm surrounded by idiots.

It's less of a standard romance and more of a "if The Catcher in the Rye and a Katherine Heigl movie had a baby and it grew up reading the thesaurus, it might look something like this."

It's a fun read if you feel like you're surrounded by morons. It was fun for me even though I suspect I may sometimes be one of the morons.

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

If You See a Cow (Language Instruction)

Plot: If you see a cow, say “mooo.” If you see a sheep, say “baaaa.” Etc.

This book gets credit for teaching children about our diverse world and the importance of learning new phrases in order to greet new friends in their own language.

However, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that my attempts to speak Cow were wildly unsuccessful. I don't know if my pronunciation was off, or if "Moooo" doesn't translate the way the authors think it does, but the cows seemed more hostile than happy to hear a human speaking their language.

Saying "Cockadoodledoo" to the chickens produced similar results. From their reaction it seemed that perhaps chickens view this word as appropriate only when it is used by cultural "insiders," but find it offensive when used by Homo Sapiens.

It's a good concept, but ultimately this book needs a major overhaul. An audio guide would be a good start.

My rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars.

******

My Curious George fanfiction in which I reimagined the mysterious Man in the Yellow Hat as a cold-blooded killer-for-hire using his monkey as a cover and occasional partner in crime was, unfortunately, not a critical success. Some (like my darling stistar) even found it inappropriate.

I can only hope they will feel more kindly toward my upcoming Angelina Ballerina fanfiction, in which the real reason for Angelina's ballet lessons was to allow the nymphomaniac Mrs. Mousling the opportunity to pursue her illicit affairs.