Book Review: Earth (the Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race [2010]

I confess, I picked up the audio version of Earth (a production of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart) because I was curious about how well they could translate such an image-heavy, textbook-style package into an audio format. It turns out that a huge amount of the content got lost in translation, but the audio book is a bite-sized (only three CDs) bit of humor that goes down easily and leaves virtually no lasting impression.

Earth is addressed aliens visiting our planet at some point after we have finally killed ourselves off by (in decreasing order of likelihood): ecological catastrophe, nuclear holocaust, pandemic, robot rebellion, rapture, black hole, shark-bee mutation, or alien invasion. My favorite other possibilities included "rising nitrogen levels leading to simultaneous mass auto-erotic asphyxiation" and "chocolate." Topics covered include geography, life, society, commerce, religion, science, and culture. The printed version is stuffed full of a dizzying variety of infographics, pictures, captions, bulleted lists, call-outs, and diagrams. In fact, the print version might best be consumed in small doses; I can't imagine trying to read it all the way through as if it were a normal book.

The audio version, on the other hand, is narrated with enthusiasm by Jon Stewart and the rest of the Daily Show cast, and it delivers the excerpted material with the flair and wit (wry asides + low humor) characteristic of the show. Some of the narration seemed so spontaneous that it was difficult to imagine reading it as printed text. A few of my favorite moments:

"Saturn: God liked this planet. So he put a ring on it."

"North America was Earth's newest continent, formed c. 1492."

"Mountains were the features on topographical globes that made our fingers feel all tingly. But in person they are foreboding death-towers that offered us little but hardship and, three months of the year, excellent skiing."

Grade: B- (in other words, better than I'd Rather We Got Casinos)

Random Thoughts:

This is the first time I've read a book where the audio version and the print version were almost completely different animals, and I'm not entirely sure I approve. I would really like to know the thought process behind what was stuck in the audiobook and what was left out, because paging through it seemed puzzlingly random.

Book Review Index
Dead Mother: No, the Earth is the only one left alive

Book Review: How I Became a Famous Novelist [2009]

I really couldn't stop myself from reading a book about a guy who decides to become a famous novelist in order to completely humiliate his ex-girlfriend at her wedding, the aptly titled How I Became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely. Pete creates his best-seller, The Tornado Ashes Club, by assembling every hackneyed convention and tired metaphor he can muster and meshing it all together with overpoweringly "lyrical" prose. Pete's list of rules for best-sellers (hastily assembled during a research trip to Barnes & Noble) include: "Abandon truth," "At dull points include descriptions of delicious meals," and "Evoke confusing sadness at the end." Hely primarily uses Pete's transition to author to provide a searing criticism of the publishing industry. Publishers are portrayed as having no idea how to recognize quality writing:

You know like when a kid is just screaming and screaming, and the mom just keeps throwing toys at it, but the kid keeps screaming, and it looks like the mom's about to cry, too? . . . That's what it's like! The editors are the mom! Readers are the kid. And the editors just keep throwing stuff at them, but they don't know what to do!

Readers buy poorly written books by the millions, and literary masterworks are consigned to the pulping machine. Hely opens almost every chapter with an example of wince-inducing prose from a "best-selling" author.

In retrospect, it probably would have helped if I'd been able to identify the real bestselling authors that no doubt are represented by the broad caricatures with whom Pete finds himself interacting. However, I've read enough books to be amused by the faux bestseller list (including A Whiff of Gingham and Pecorino: On a hilltop villa in Sicily, an American divorcee finds new love with a local cheesemaker involved in a blood feud.), and these lines alone made me laugh out loud (after Pete expresses his views on the "con game" of writing on national TV):

"You might have to apologize to Oprah."
"What'd I do to her?"
"She's just--that's who you apologize to."

Although the book didn't hang together as well as it could have, and ended with a whimper rather than a bang, it was worth a few laughs as a reminder to appreciate literature (but never take anything too seriously).

Grade: B-

Book Review: I'd Rather We Got Casinos [2009]

I'd Rather We Got Casinos and Other Black Thoughts, by the Daily Show's Chief Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore, isn't something that I would have spent money on, but I did check it out from the library and got a few hearty chuckles. The book is a collection of essays, (completely fake) interviews, and random thoughts on race, some of which are amusing, some of which are a little head-scratching, and most of which go on a little too long. However, there are some hilarious moments, such as Wilmore's repeated attempts to get the NAACP on board with his plan to change "African-American" to "chocolate" ("At least four out of five black people like it and an impressive five out of five nonblacks do. In other words, everybody loves chocolate!") and the intriguing essay "How Come Brothas Don't See UFOs?"

Grade: C+