BOOKS: Lowered Expectations

I think the missing ingredient in better enjoying the two books I read this week is lowered expectations.

For example, the first book was called Heroics for Beginners, by John Moore. It's a comic fantasy; not quite Terry Pratchett, more like Robert Asprin, or Craig Shaw Gardner. Light comic fantasy. How high could my expectations have been?

Well, back in college, I read a book by John Moore called Slay and Rescue, and it was very funny indeed. I decided this author was going to be one to keep an eye on for frequent entertainment. I figured he'd be cranking out two or three books a year, like the above-mentioned Asprin or Gardner. Or Pratchett, even. Instead, he didn't publish another book until Heroics, twelve years later. After twelve years, I thought, this had better be one hell of a book.

It was all right. It's about a prince who has to infiltrate an Evil Overlord's fortress with only the Handbook of Practical Heroics (kind of a Heroes for Dummies) to guide him. It's often hilarious in its deconstruction of the villain's obligations to tradition (he has to learn a menacing laugh, and shake his fists in the air in the pose called "milking the giant cow"), and the roles his lead minion and sexy assistant play (the minion is supposed to be tricked and the assistant seduced by the hero; things go wrong when one hero tricks the assistant and seduces the minion). It's a quick, funny, enjoyable satire of heroic conventions. But I might've liked it more if I hadn't been waiting twelve years for it. Hopefully Moore's next book will be out before 2016.

The other book is Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away. I picked it up at the used bookstore after reading an online review raving about how hilarious Bryson was; further, at the store, the owner (I think) told me Bryson was far better than David Sedaris. (Then again, he also told me, in Comic Book Guy-like earnestness, that Bryson was for smart people and Sedaris was not, even after he had asked me if I liked Sedaris and I had told him yes. That's the new ownership of Ojai's Bart's Books, folks: douchebaggery on parade!)

Bryson is no Sedaris. Bryson is not even Dave Barry. He's neither as incisively brilliant nor as gut-bustingly hilarious as had been suggested to me. But he is smart, and he is funny. He's a comedic travel memoirist, is perhaps the best way to describe him; he's written about the Appalachian Trail, and small-town America, and of course England, where he spent those "20 Years Away". I'm a Stranger Here Myself collects the columns he wrote on his return to the U.S., and is filled with many sharp and funny observations about American life we natives have grown to take for granted, like the surprising (to him) benevolence of Post Office workers toward their customers, or the general over-emphasis on signs and rules. In one passage, he ignores a "Please Wait to Be Seated" sign:

After a couple of minutes, the hostess... came up to me and said in a level tone, "I see you've seated yourself."

"Yup," I replied proudly. "Dressed myself too."

...She sighed. "Well, the server in this section is very busy, so you may have to wait a while for her to get to you."

There was no other customer within fifty feet, but that wasn't the point. The point was that I had disregarded a posted notice and would have to serve a small sentence in purgatory in consequence.

I'm enjoying this book a lot, and will most likely seek out other books by Bryson, but I think I'd have an even higher impression of him if I hadn't had my expectations raised.

Lowered expectations, by the way, are also key to the enjoyment of this blog.

POTPOURRI

I recently borrowed the DVD of the animated version of Terry Pratchett's Soul Music from Dorian. I'd like to give it a detailed review. I'd like to, but I can't, since I could only get through one of the seven episodes on the disc. Here's my review: it's awful. Bad animation, bad voice-acting, and the things that are funny in print just don't translate into funny on the screen. But thanks, Dorian! I promise I'll return it today.

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I've been catching up on some of the Saturday Night Lives that I've missed over the past couple of seasons, in repeats on E!, and I just saw the Lindsay Lohan episode. You know, the one where she plays Hermione in a Harry Potter sketch, and everyone keeps staring at her massive cleavage? Yeah, that was a good one. It's very difficult to feel guilty about looking at a 17-year-old girl's boobs when she voluntarily appears in a skit based entirely around looking at her boobs.

What? I'm just sayin'.

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Speaking of Lindsay Lohan (and let's see, by the way, if talking about her boobs gets me as much search engine traffic as my post about a certain Olympian's posterior, which, seriously, has gotten me dozens of very creepy hits), it's time for another installment of This Week in IMDb Chatboard Idiots! Let's see what we can find on Lindsay's page.

So much to choose from! We have one thread titled "Damn girl, your orange!!!" which I can only assume from the use of "your" rather than "you're" is all about Lindsay's choice of citrus products. Then there's "this picture is real!" which includes a link to a very obviously fake picture of Lindsay and Hilary Duff smiling together, which is intended to disprove the two of them are feuding. But I think my very favorite is this thread in which, I swear on my life, these no-life trolls are ripping on her for having, in their opinion... an oddly-placed belly button. I swear to you.

From lookatthisboys, the originator of the thread:

She has such a LONG waist line, and her bellybutton is places to high, or from her belly botton to her privates there a HECK of a long distance there.

From G-Unit_Pimpette624:

And she has the strangest, highest belly button I've ever seen in my life...its like in the middle of her stomach! Ewww!

From 50_Cent_N_Eminem:

JESUS CHRIST I WOULD CONSIDER THAT A BIRTH DEFECT!!

From OrlandoBloomRoxMySox:

omg! i've never seen that pic before, and i'd say i'm more concerned about her belly button! MAN that's weird!

And my favorite, from JAKEGYLLENHAAL16:

I totally agree about her long waist line because when i saw her in her bikini and low rise jeans and her belly button is like about 8 or soo inches away from the middle of her boobs i mean that can't be normal i thought i was abnormal cuz my belly button is normal now i guess cuz i wen i wear low rise i can't wear the jeans how she does cuz my butt would show lol and when she wears them its nothing its so perfect and her thighs r big i think she is that type of person who is thin at the top and huge and the bottom and oo ya she has a big ass!!

I'll bet talking to JAKEGYLLENHAAL16 in real life would sound like an exact transcript of that post. Only more annoying.

BOOKS: A Hat Full of Sky

Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky, the sequel to last year's The Wee Free Men, is "a young readers novel of Discworld". Which, as far as I can tell, simply means, "a novel of Discworld that doesn't use the words 'arse' or 'bastard'". It's not like the usual Discworld novels are horribly profane; anything even remotely dirty is usually disguised with innuendo, anyway.

The young readers Discworld books (three, so far) do suffer slightly from a smaller scope, though. They involve far fewer characters than usual, fewer plot threads, and fewer digressions. Especially these last two books, which both feature Tiffany Aching, a young witch-in-training. They're basically a straight shot through from introduction of problem to solution of said problem. A Hat Full of Sky more so than The Wee Free Men, because Men at least had to take the time to introduce both Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegle (the Wee Free Men of the title), tiny belligerent fairy creatures which aid Tiffany in her troubles.

In Hat, the enemy is a Hiver, a non-corporeal intelligence which takes over the minds of powerful creatures and people -- like, say, a young witch-in-training. But the book never really succeeds in making the Hiver a credible threat. It's defeated fairly early in the story, with relatively little difficulty. And then the story drags on, and the Hiver has to be defeated again, but in a different way. And then the story drags on after that, with a long wrap-up sequence at the Witch Trials (a competition, not a burning) and beyond, delving a little too tediously into the nature of being a witch, ground which Pratchett has tread many times before.

The book was enjoyable enough (no Discworld book has ever been bad), with several good laughs, and Granny Weatherwax, a great recurring Discworld character, makes an extended appearance. But the book feels like a contract fulfillment more than anything else, padded with rehashed ideas and themes from other Discworld books, including Wee Free Men. It was too soon to revisit Tiffany, although the Nac Mac Feegle were every bit as entertaining as last time out (even without the return of my favorite, Not-as-big-as-medium-sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-wee-Jock-Jock). A lesser but still readable entry in the series.

BOOKS: Monstrous Regiment, The Wee Free Men

Have you ever been reading a book, and enjoying it a great deal, but then, when you set it down one night, you feel absolutely no desire to pick it up again the next day?

That's happened to me with Lolita, which thankfully I eventually forced myself to pick up again and finish, and Infinite Jest, which maybe someday before I die I might get back into. But I never thought it would happen to me with Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the most entertaining series of books I've ever read. Especially not two books back-to-back.

The first was Monstrous Regiment, what you might call a proper entry in the series, about a woman who disguises herself as a man to join the army, and discovers that she's not the only one to do so. It was very funny, with even more than the usual complement of colorful characters (a troll, a vampire, a zombie, a werewolf, an Igor), and a bevy of satisfying confrontations and resolutions, and it featured Commander Vimes, perhaps my favorite recurring character in the Discworld universe. And yet, somehow, I set the book down and didn't pick it up again for months.

The second was The Wee Free Men, which I bought the week it came out, in April 2003, and just finished tonight. The delay in finishing is all the more embarrassing when you consider this is the second of Pratchett's Discworld books for children. It took me fifteen months to finish a children's book.

Not that I spent fifteen months reading it. It took about a week, with a fifteen-month pause in the middle. I can't explain why, but again, I just set it down and couldn't pick it back up. It's a fun book, about a young girl, Tiffany, a witch-in-the-making whose brother is kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies. She must rescue him with the help of the Wee Free Men -- the pixies, here called the "pictsies", tiny blue belligerent creatures who accept Tiffany as their leader. The pictsies are the most entertaining part of the book, with names like Rob Anybody and Daft Wullie and (my favorite) Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, and their thieving, drinking, fighting ways accented by their deep and sometimes unintelligible Scottish burr.

I love Terry Pratchett, and I love Discworld. I can't understand why I'm having such troubles finishing his books of late. Maybe it's because I've slowed down on all my reading; the internet's probably at least partly to blame for that. After spending an hour or two online (which I do most every day), I'm more inclined to want to rest my eyes than pick up a book. Also, I blame TiVo. Sweet, wonderful TiVo. You should see a list of the books I've started and not yet finished, or, worse, bought and never even opened.

There's a new Pratchett book out right now, A Hat Full of Sky, which is apparently the sequel to The Wee Free Men. I'll pick it up soon -- I have to; as slow a reader as I may be these days, and as many books as I have stockpiled, Pratchett is still a must-buy. I just hope I finish it sometime this year.