FG: Extinct by Charles Wilson

Extinct, once bound for a miniseries on NBC, was dropped due to its price in effects. As a result, this rare book in a very small market (Megaladon Thrillers) got lost in the shuffle of time and publishing.

I didn't have to look hard to learn about this book, but getting my hands on it was a pain. I would up finding a copy on a small-time used book seller's website and having it shipped to my apartment. I wondered as I opened the packaging if this would be any good.

I no longer worry that I wasted the money I had spent on it. Extinct fills a void I've had in my monster story bookcase (not kidding, I really have one case just for them. I have a $#!T-ton of books!) where the best go. And I'm saying that without even finishing it!

There are flaws, of course, and you could easily call this a B-movie if it were on film instead of paper, but I love my books with a little cheese in them from time to time, and this on feels good. It's actually a lot like Jurassic Park or Meg in its pacing and creative story telling with regards to the monster.

You get some hints very early (the cover) that a megaladon or great white is featured, and the story really does play with your head, too. The people in the book learn after the reader what is happening, and at first throw around all kinds of theories to explain the mounting body count. The book has a bit of good suspense with a bunch of boys fishing near the middle of the story, and the reader keeps getting lead on until the moment arrives, but otherwise the suspense is light and airy, like a good beach read might be.

Actually, here is where the book shines: Clues constantly disagree and the people take all sorts of avenues to the right conclusion in the end. Some people go monster crazy right off, while others are unwilling till the end to accept the truth of what is happening. but everyone in the story is haunted with a growing fear of what they can't see just below the surface. It's an interesting feeling, being pulled into the story, and yet not feel the tension that everyone else does (all though you will sometimes). I wouldn't, before reading this book, think that was a good way to write, under any circumstances. Since reading Extinct, though, I've come to see that in the hands of a skilled writer, you can get that odd sensation and the book can be better for it. If I had to summarize how that feels, I'd say it feels like you're watching a movie inside your mind. Its odd, but not problamatic in the hands of a good author.

If you're a hard-core science type, you'll feel a little peeved with this book, which is pretty dated in terms of 2000's science, but isn't all that bad, really, when you put yourself in the mindset of the day. I'm totally fine with old science, as a Jules Verne fan, so I was able to ignore the tiny foibles and follow the story. If you can too, that take this as a hardy encouragement to seek out this book for yourself and enjoy a good summer read.

FORGOTTEN GOLD (FG For Short)

This is something new I'm going to try out. I love to peruse the Strand in New York City, Rainbow Books in Michigan, and any other forgotten used book store I can find, and sometimes I stumble on a real treasure... or not.

Either way, if I find a book that is amazingly good or lovably bad, I'll bring it up here to share it with anyone who stumbles on this blog.

The Top 10 Book-based Movies

So I read a lot. Obviously. And I also hear this line (or say it) a lot: "Sure, it was good, but the book was better."

But the question remains. what were the best movies based on books? Well, to answer that, I rotted half my brain for 23 years in front of a TV (or at least, that's my excuse), and here is my top ten list of the greatest movies based on novels:

10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Love it or hate it, Harry Potter is one of the greatest storybook characters of the modern world.

The first film flashed onto the big screen around the same time as my little sister began to get into the books, and she turned to her big brother to read the books to her (I make funny voices when needed). When the first film came out on DVD, she was given it as a birthday gift, and I was still young enough to take an active interest (since I was reading number 4 to her at the time) to watch it with her and our parents.

I thought that it was a very loyal rendition of the novel itself, cut for time, of course, and some of the elements that wouldn't work on screen as well as in writing, but otherwise very loyal to the book. So, of course, it earns a spot on this count down, and might have gotten a higher spot if it hadn't been edited for time as much as it was, losing much of the pacing of the original J.K.R. work.


9. Jurassic Park. Although this book was amazing and went far beyond the scope of the film (READ IT! You will thank me!), I would still say that some of the best features are here, and this movie can also stand almost side by side with the novel on its own merit.


8. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This one is actually the brainchild of the author, but it still gets a low spot for some of the more dramatic alterations it has, such as the inconsistent (but absolutely wonderful) opening musical number.


7. Nosferatu. We all know about this one, the 1922 silent film that mirrors (in many ways) the novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker.

I loved the film and I loved the novel, but like the last two movies on this countdown, it earns its place here on its own merits as an adaptation over a true reflection of the novel itself.

I am, however, bothered by the grotesqueness of the figure, which, while true to the book in part, cannot allow for his undeniable handsomeness at other times in the novel, following his feedings (another thing that changed). There were some other parts, of course, that I missed, but I know that sometimes audiences are more ready to read things than see them, so I will forgive this movie a lot. Besides, I'm a Texan by birth and won't forgive them the Texan's absence from the great classic film.


6. The Hobbit, the cartoon. Every kid of my generation saw this one on a children's network at some point, and those old enough to be inspired are some of the great game designers (or D&D nerds) of today. It was a fantastic book that I feel was wonderfully portrayed in this particular film.


5. Jaws. Ah, but this is an amazing book and an awesome film. But, like many, it was plagued by the times in which it was made. N betrayal, no affairs, all the human drama is shrunk down from half the book to the sum total of a pair of scenes, one with the sheriff and his kid (how many does he have, exactly? two or three?), and one of the thee guys singing on a boat. Other than that, though, the story is very good, and the only thing I noticed that was dramatically different was that no dolphins or shark experts died in the movie.

Still a great film, and earns this spot for how much it got right, and how well it made up for what it got wrong. Plus the great cameo for the author.


4. The Dark Night. You could say I'm cheating with this one, because this is an original concept, and not based on a book,, exactly, but the characters are the best I have ever seen for recreating the spirit of the original comic creation.

The portrayal of every single comic book character in this movie is spot on to their original characters. The joker is, in fact, the exact psychotic figure he is in the comic, who would willingly kill people without offering the bat chance to save them, something that hasn't been seen up until now. And batman is much more of a martial-artist and detective in this film than he ever was in movie flops like Batman and robin.

I feel a little bad picking out such a commonly top-tened movie for the number 4 slot on MINE, but it is a truly accurate representation of literary characters who have gotten royally boned by Hollywood in the past.


3. Congo. Another by the master of modernized monsters, Michael Crichton. In this case, I have to say that film version, while a bit campy, was in many ways less tedious and more straightforward than the novel.


2. The DaVinci Code. I thought the book was good, but a bit basic, repetitive, etc. However, everything that makes it "just another" novel makes it a great film. The sweeping visuals, the interesting to look at and hear about characters, and the exciting chases. I will have to give the creators of this one props, they did one of the most accurate adaptations I have ever seen. Bravo.


1. Spider Web Castle. Never heard of it? I'm not surprised. I was very very lucky to catch this on a night of insomnia playing on TCM. But it still must earn the number one spot as the greatest adaptation for film I have ever seen, as well as the best castle built by US marines!

This is a Japanese film that is actually based on a Shakespearean play. Macbeth! I wouldn't call this cheating, since the film features samurai and emperors in place of the European motif, an thus took a masterful rewrite to accomplish.

If you get the chance, I would highly recommend this actually rather haunting rendition of a tale of horror, murder and insanity. Even if only for the army of attacking trees.


And there you have it.

I wish I could have added some of the others I have seen in the past, like a wonderful rendition of The Orient Express, a great version of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and many others, but I just can't remember enough about the films to place them on this list.

Perhaps in time I'll make a second list that covers the topic more accurately, or I'll shrink it down. I also intend to make some top tens of novels.

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, PART 2

Sorry for the delay, I was busy with a move (literal, not computer lingo for changing some website server or something, I'm really hauling my $#!+ across the country to *DUH DUH DUUUUH!* New Jersey, home of the shark attack.

Texas to Jersey is a bit of a press on the nerves, so please excuse my absence. Finally, it is time to write up part two.

Chemistry does not work that way. Physics does not work that way, and all of SCIENCE does not work that way! E(=mc^2 all times gamma and friends) gads! ... give it a minute, you'll get it, and think I'm really dumb for making that joke... This is like hearing about how a subatomic particle could make a black hole (see below), it is the worst kind of bad science.

*sigh* okay. So I'm going overboard maybe? maybe not.

My copy of the book is still in shipping to my new home, so bear with me. As I recall, after doing as much tampering as possible with crime scenes (no wonders Interpol is happy to go after the man in Davinci Code! He's already been an international criminal!), the wheel chair guy, who is done up like a super villain by the author in a manner so obvious that you know right from the start that it would be too cliche for him to be a villain, brings Langdon down to the underground lab of a scientist-cum-priest. The stiff they met in the Eureka-esque place in part one of this review.

Oh, and on the way (or was it afterwards? I forget, and don't have my copy in front of me... [yes, I did buy it. I don't think it is fair to judge a book I didn't buy. The author deserves the money for getting published, I will still grant that that is a major feat {and yes, I stack brackets.}]) the dead guy's daughter, another scientist, is shown. She has all the hallmarks of the token hottie.

So they get to the basement-cum-accelerator, there is a short bit of dialogue that shows that somehow, Langdon is a genius in like 20 fields of literature, history and culture, and yet never learned the first thing about science. Apparently he didn't take his required science classes in High School of Undergrad. Then comes the worst part:

SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED THAT OUT ALREADY.

Antimatter.

Really? The big breakthrough is antimatter?

I mean, sure, there is a hell of a lot in the containers (which have an amazing power system that allows their batteries to last EXACTLY 24 hours), for subatomic matter, but still. It seems rather scifi-inspired. Then again, Star Trek used "red matter" so I will support the book first and scifi second for now.

...More to come...













....Black holes used to be called black stars. If you watch the original Star Trek, they actually call them that. this is because that is exactly what they are, stars. They just happen to be giant balls of fire heavy enough to suck in photon emissions. They are not the kind of quantum singularity thought up for media hype in loosely circular equations every time they turn a supercollider on. That is all media bull. No legitimate physicist gives such things credence. The equations don't go to infinity and zero for a quantum singularity, they do that because they are ignoring one or more rules of physics needed to keep our equations on the right track.


"...in a quantum finish" - race results announcement
"No Fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Proffessor H. J. Farnsworth

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. PART 1

Alright, the guy is a good writer, I admit that. In fact, for the most part, I loved this book's action, and am also a fan of a few of his other books.

However, and this is a big however, there is a lot wrong with this book.

It starts out with Robert Langdon, our would-be hero who spends most of this book... um... sort of following people around and learning things, who is dreaming. In his dream, he is in Giza, the place with the pyramids, and is actually trying to climb one! At the top is a beautiful woman, who turns into a cadaver or something, screams at him and cue the cliche wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat scene. Foreshadowing!? ...well, no. This is never brought up again, and has very little, if anything, to do with the plot.

So he gets a call from an amazing science institute that, although I, as an astrophysics degree-holder, have never heard of it, apparently holds like 90% of the world's scientists. This place may exist, since there are supercollider facilities all over europe, but somehow I doubt they are secretly creating ever invention on earth other than the Honda robot.

I digress. They send out a plane to get him, because he has to see something (anyone want to bet it's the body of guy with something cryptic written on or around him in blood? I'll bet $100 it is, since that seems to be the Langdon special.)

Naturally, it is. But before we get to that, let me just point out that there is absolutely no organization, private or government, that can afford to use a sub-orbital shuttle to transport people. I'm sorry, nothing short of nuclear holocaust would inspire anyone to fly a single person halfway around the planet in a spacecraft without any profit.

So, the guy who meets our skill-less hero is basically Cheney-In-His-Wheelchair. He shows Langdon the requisite cryptic corpse, and does what any good novel character does: EVERYTHING WRONG!

He froze the location with science, which I'll accept given the setting, but certainly a scientist knows that freezing a corpse causes it and all the organic material around it to rupture at a cellular level. In other words, he destroyed evidence such as hair and skin. Then, although the freeze might have destroyed skin oil marks anyways, he and Langdon take some time to touch everything and disturb as much of the scene as possible, including the victim.

Now, through all of this, remember that the point of freezing the chamber is to preserve the scene. (To this end, I'll accept that he may have kept the room just above the rupture point, but I won't accept that either man would not realize that fiddling with all sorts of things with their bare hands and even moving and adjusting things is NOT good preservation procedure.)

Corpse disturbing done with, they go to the man's lab. You see, this corpse, of course, is a religious figure, but is also a quantum physicist.

Here is where I nearly screamed...

Angels and Demons

I will be adding a full review to this post when I get up in the morning for my glorious day off, but as I am in a mood to point out the flaws of this book right now, let me say this, for now: PHYSICS DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! SCIENCE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! AND DESTROYING UNIQUE. ANCIENT, AND UTTERLY PRICELESS WORKS BY GREAT PHYSICISTS IS NOT SOMETHING A HISTORY PROFESSOR WOULD EVER DO!

Curious? well, stay tuned. I'll explain all in a few hours.

Rogue Warrior: Designation Gold by R. Macinko and J. Weisman. PART 2

Holy Crap! Part 1 just got deleted!? wtf?

okay, lets sumarize: the cover is wierd, with an odd choice of imagery involving a pair of grainy photos photo-shopped together.

The author reads his book like a robot until he starts getting into it, but most of what he says is just daydreaming about the glory days or preening with phrases like "...pipe almost as thick... and long... as my dick."

Since part one of this review didn't publish because of an internet flicker, I'm mad and am not going to finish reviewing this extremely dull audio tape right now. I'll try to come back to it later.
Instead, just keep an eye out for my Angels and Demons (the book) review.

--Ro'Tor




Rogue Warrior: Designation Gold was written by Richard Marcinko and John Weisman, and was read on Simon Schuster Audioworks tapes by Richard Marcinko.

Ever Heard of Rogue Warrior?

Rogue Warrior is a series by (at least) author Richard Marcinko.

I've actually heard a lot of good things about this author, but I also have heard a lot of bad. basically, I hear that it's the army-theme equivalent of a Clive Cussler book series. And I like a lot about Clive Cussler. But, for the hell of it, I dug up an old audio book of Rogue Warrior to listen to, it's even read by one of the authors (this one having two, so it should be doubly-good, right?).

Well, I won't find out tonight, but tomorrow evening, after a hard day's work, I intend to pop it into my long-neglected tape player and comment as it goes. It may be worthless drivel I write, or (and I doubt this...) comic gold, or (most likely) just a series of plot points utterly spoiling the book for readers.

Well, keep an eye out tomorrow for Richard Marcinko and John Weisman's Rogue Warrior: Designation Gold.

Fukuzawa Yukichi by Helen Hopper Part 2

I can't believe it, page 12 and I'm already bored with this book. Let's get through this as quick as possible, then.

Holy crap! All I get is MORE background.

Osaka... no, that isn't about Fukuzawa. ... Tokugawa... again, not about him... *sigh* still looking...

Ah, back at the bottom of page 14 we come back to Fukuzawa, for a few sentences. Just long enough to introduce the new background subject: The F*#(@ng DUTCH!

So, we go over how the Dutch are more bff with Tokugawa Japan than other countries are, once again forgetting who this biography is about. Naturally, we won't be coming back to the point for a while. We get back to the hard work of... Yukuchi? When did you start calling him by his other name!? Ay Carumba! Oy Vei! Ai Ya! [Other Shouts of Exasperation]!

It isn't hard enough when I can't tell cities from people, you're going to switch the name you use for the main figure on me? This is going to be a long 150 pages, isn't it?

So let's skip ahead, a bit, and just jump into chapter 2.

THE LURE OF THE WEST.

Oh dear god, what is with these titles!? Well, let's keep reading...

Well, now Fukuzawa is being called by his full name. So, after pages of background to lead up to Fukuzawa's life, we cover less than ten pages for him to go from a first time student in a Dutch Learning school, and now he's TEACHING one!?

The pacing in this book is rediculous. Oh, and now he's in Edo (modern day, Tokyo), for those keeping track.

Okay, no problem, let's just turn the page and find out more about his life in edo and... what the hell? now we're back in time to the year of his birth? why? what possible... oh, I see. Now the author has brought us back, AGAIN, for more background.

You know what, I think that's enough. Let me just sumarize the rest of this for you, reader.

Fukuzawa makes a living being a teacher and a total prick to anyone in power in Japan, pretty much flipping off the man until he becomes the man, then living a life of ease. blah blah blah. In fact, the last chapter of this book, almost 10% of the pages in it, is devoted to his descendents.

In total, more than fifty percent of the book was background for the subject matter. It read like a history book, and from the little I let you in on, you can tell it read like an ill-paced and disorderly one.

You missed a lot of it. EVERY CHAPTER jumped to a different time, often to ancestors or descendents of Fukuzawa, with little or no information for the first few pages as to who is being discussed or what is going on.

Take my advice, if you're a history buff looking to learn about a famed figure in Japan, don't pick up this book, leave that for the students. I suggest just going on Wikipedia and searching him, instead.

THE COMING LINEUP

So... Yeah.

I will be moving in around a month, but before then, I plan to start in on a few books. So let me list off some of the ones I'm going to start with:

Fukuzawa Yukichi (sorry, but I should have at least one biography)

Angels and Demons (YOU might not have been depressed by this one, but I was, so I'll share my pain)

Star Wars: Millennium Falcon

Monster by Frank Perettie

and who knows what else. So stay tuned, and enjoy.

Fukuzawa Yukichi by Helen M. Hopper Part 1

From the outset, I want to say that I have infinite respect for authors, whether they write fiction or nonfiction, and no matter their beliefs, but sometimes the mistakes, lazy editing, etc. must be addressed. (And if I misspell things, please don't let that take away from opinions... I don't pretend to be an author... unlike some of those to come.)

*sigh* Alright, with that out of the way... I think it's time I actually talk about a book, huh? Well, I'll start with a simple, short biography (since it's on the bookshelf closest to my computer).

Fukuzawa Yukichi: From Samurai to Capitalist.

...Fukuzawa Yukichi. Hard to spell, fun to say.

Now as far as historical figures go, Yukichi isn't a well known figure, and one with a convoluted history, but is that an excuse for writing a book with so little focus on the reader?

The chapters loosely follow the subject they are about, but tend to wander dramatically from their original topic, and get pulled violently back to a forced set of conclusions that don't flow well together, and end up skipping through the man's life so often that I spent most of the book flipping back and forth like I was reading a "choose your own adventure" novel desperately trying to find out what's going on, who this person is, and what job Fukuzawa has at this point, and where he is.

Okay, there is another problem: A writer HAS to have a common name they call their character or subject. Especially when the person's society has a different naming convention than the reader's!

In Japan, the family name comes first, followed by the personal name. In fact, the author has a section right after the preface where she vows to write names in the Japanese manner, and yet throughout, Fukuzawa Yukichi occassionally becomes Yukichi Fukuzawa, just Yukichi, or just Fukuzawa. This is a name that a westerner has trouble keeping track of, especially if they haven't had much experience with Japanese names, which tend to be long and dificult to pronounce for english-speakers. Now amplify this issue by adding dozens of other people being named and occassionally even being the center of attention for page after page and yu'll come to understand why my copy of the book has rugburns from being thrown to the floor in frustration so much.

Alright, preface over (and that wasn't as long as Helen Hopper's acknowledgements for her 138 page book.) Let's take a look at this book, chapter by chapter.

As a biography, naturally the first line of the book begins with the place and date of Fukuzawa's birth. This, naturally, is followed by absolutely nothing about him.

I'm dead serious. He's born, then the author seems to forget about him. She talks about his father's life, yada yada yada, and I get that it's neccessary to have some backdrop for all of this, but how many lines can you possibly need to say that he was part of a samurai family that was of a samurai class incapable of attaining wealth honorably, because low-level samurai, well, sucked. They didn't do anything except carry swords and inspire a generation of cloistered white guys in america to think they understand Japanese culture by watching animes about them.

So, then, shouldn't that be pretty much all she says about that? Really! In fact, I'll grant her an entire page to cover definitions (even though those are also covered in a glossary in the back, with such hard-to-defne words as Geisha, Sensei and Samurai being fully explained) and Japanese-history-in-a-nutshell.

So, then, how many pages in your 138 page book are taken with this filler, Ms. Hopper? 7 and a half.

...

That's around 5% of the book, just as an introduction. And I'm not counting the INTRODUCTION. Or the start of every chapter and subchapter where 90% of what she just went over will be covered again and again until you are totally sick of seeing the word Bakufu starting another swing at traditional Japanese society.

So.... let's have a look at some of these subchapter titles (because there isn't enough filler in a book thinner than my callendar without them, is there?):

"Breaking out of Nakatsu," "Sidetracked in Osaka," ... what the hell? These sound like titles for hair metal ballads or, at best, chapters from an R. L. Stein novel. Unfortunately, they're pretty fitting titles, though, because almost every parapgraph begins with the name of an island or city in Japan.

I'm now 11 pages into this book, and am litterally falling asleep... more to come when I can stand to read more of it.

Welcome. An Intro

I have been a fan of online reviewers for a few years now. I watch videos and read posts for video game reviewers like the Angry Video Game Nerd (www.cinemassacre.com) of the Spoony One (www.spoonyexperiment.com), comic book reviewers like Linkara (atopfourthwall.blogspot.com), and movie and television reviewers like The Nastalgia Critic (thatguywiththeglasses.com), but I haven't seen anyone do that sort of review (cruel, yet comical... sometimes) on novels.

I, on the other hand, spend more than an unhealthy amount of time surrounded by books, and have taken it upon myself to critique some of them for readers.

My tastes range into the science fiction realm, for the most part, and so I have a lot of them to comment on, but I also have a good selection of comical writing, horror, and classic novels to examine as well.

Anyways, I don't want to get preachy... yet. So read on as I post, and enjoy.