Classic Book Reviews for You – Read what I think of famous books you may have read. Do you agree with me? Whether you do or not, let me know here (click) or by emailing me at [email protected] and I’ll send you a free book.
Classic Book Reviews – You begin with ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’
The greatest novel of the 20th century, a true 5 star book, one that’ll be read in another hundred years.
My latest re-read was in the single volume edition with Christopher Lee’s artwork. His art is detailed and complex, with hidden elements that tell the story.
In this re-read, I saw the close connection between the start of the book, which is often called dull, and the end of the Hobbit. One dovetails into the other. The hobbit background is necessary for those who didn’t read the Hobbit, and provides additional detail on them, including their three races: the Stoors, the Harfoots, and the Fallowhides.
I also noticed in my re-read the masterful way Tolkien built tension and prolongs conflict and threats. He also increases the risks and dangers throughout the book. These details jump out at me more since I became an author.
This was the first time I’ve re-read ‘The Little Prince’ since the first time, about 31 years ago.
It was nothing like I remembered. I remembered it as a great children’s book, but I never read it to my children, that I recall. Rather, it was a book I skimmed through, thinking I understood it.
I didn’t.
I thought it was about the difference between adults and children. It was, but much more. Somehow I missed all the discussions about friendship. There were many friendships in the book. There was the one between the little prince and the author. There was one between the little prince and a fox. And the most important one was between the little prince and his flower.
It taught an important truth about friendships. They are valuable because of the time you spend together. And it told another important truth. The important things of consequence are not what you can see.
But you may think this is a boring, moralizing book. It isn’t. That’s why the book is still read 80 years after it was written. It’s an adventure of the author, an aviator and artist, and the little prince.
I couldn’t find my review of 1984, but I found a review I agree with.
I read Nineteen Eighty-Four when I was eleven years old. School had just let out for the summer, and my family spent that first Saturday down on Lake Moovalya on the Colorado River. It was my first time out in the sun, and I seriously overdid it, spending all day in the river and getting severely sunburned. The next day I could barely move. My mom told me I was “sun poisoned.” The weather turned ugly, too–we were hit with a howling dust storm, so strong and thick I couldn’t see across the street. I wasn’t going anywhere, so I looked for something to read. Our next-door neighbors’ son had gone off to college and his parents, knowing I was a bookworm, gave me a box of paperbacks, mostly science fiction. And in that collection was a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I don’t know why I picked that particular volume–I could have selected Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot or Andre Norton’s The Sioux Spaceman–but Orwell was what I went with.
Wow. When I finished the book a few hours later, I had never been so bummed in my life. I think maybe being so sick and miserable must have had something to do with it, but the experience of reading about Winston Smith’s futile, hopeless fight against Big Brother was so overwhelming, for years afterwards–until I read Robert Cormier’s I Am the Cheese—Nineteen Eighty-Four was my nominee for most depressing book ever written.
But even though I was thoroughly depressed after reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, I still rate it five stars. The total despair the book engendered in me is a testament to Orwell’s skill as a writer. As with all of Orwell’s work, fiction and non-fiction alike, Nineteen Eighty-Four is well-written–Orwell certainly knew his craft. It also captures perfectly life in the Stalinist Soviet Union. The utter bleakness of life, the omnipotent repression by the government, the controlling of the very language to restrict the ability of the populace to think, and the futility of rebellion, all were features of life in the USSR, and all are portrayed truly and vividly in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
It’s so depressing (I read it at about 17) that I rate it 2 stars, despite being still read seventy years after it was published. Normally I would give it 5 stars for that feat.
The real horror of the book is that Orwell was describing conditions in Soviet Russia at the time and that nothing has changed in human behavior since then. The same conditions exist in North Korea.
I understand where you’re coming from. And in reading your comment, I realize I need to amend, or add to, my review–I should have included why I rated it five stars.
Hank, I can make a strong argument to rate it five stars. 1) It’s a historically accurate portrayal of Soviet Russia and current North Korea and Cuba; 2) It provides an ominous warning against socialism and communism; 3) It’s still relevant 70 years after it was published; 4) It is extremely well written with gripping characters.
But ultimately my rating is subjective. I read it twice and hated both experiences.
You’ve Gotten to the Bottom. Claim Your Free Books
Fantasy Fuel! What is it? It’s those books, articles, pictures, and videos that spark the creativity that leads to fantasy stories. Let’s start with this one:
There are a LOT of castles in Europe–and there are more in Asia and Africa. Castles lend themselves to fantasy settings. I’ve dreamed of living in one and defending one from attack.
Which of the castles in this article is your favorite? Tell me and I’ll send you a free book. Just click here.
Fantasy Fuel – How about fantastic creatures?
Squashmingos! They remind me of the flamingos used by Alice in Alice in Wonderland. In case you’re not familiar with the reference, here is one of the original illustrations by Tenniel:
Alice in Wonderland Illustration by Sir John Tenniel (28 February 1820 aa 25 February 1914) 19th Century Illustration
Here’s a snippet of the Disney movie:
I haven’t written a fantasy yet, but I have made up an imaginary, alien animal: the foxcat.
The alien foxcat. Click to get the book.
It’s called a ‘foxcat’ because it’s a combination of a fennec fox and a caterpillar. A foxcat is a marsupial amphibian. It’s a stowaway on a gigantic flying saucer in my book:
The cover of my third novel Paranormal Privateers. Click to get yours.
My science fiction sounds like fantasy. I wonder what my fantasy will sound like? I’ll have to write my first fantasy to find out. My working title is ‘Sentience’.
More Fantasy Fuel Coming Up for You
You can’t beat reading great fantasy books to inspire your fantasy writing. Here’s one I just finished.
The greatest novel of the 20th century, a true 5 star book, one that’ll be read in another hundred years.
My latest re-read was in the single volume edition with Christopher Lee’s artwork. His art is detailed and complex, with hidden elements that tell the story.
In this re-read, I saw the close connection between the start of the book, which is often called dull, and the end of the Hobbit. One dovetails into the other. The hobbit background is necessary for those who didn’t read the Hobbit, and provides additional detail on them, including their three races: the Stoors, the Harfoots, and the Fallowhides.
I also noticed in my re-read the masterful way Tolkien built tension and prolongs conflict and threats. He also increases the risks and dangers throughout the book. These details jump out at me more since I became an author.
Greetings fans and anonymous internet readers! I’m author Andy Zach. I’ve decided to create one blog post to link to all my free short stories I’ve ever published. If you like them, you can get my collection of short stories below.
Accidents happen. Especially around zombie turkeys. Then you add zombie humans, and problems proliferate. Mix in some ill-planned genetic engineering, and things get crazy.
The insanity continues, from the story where zombies are merged with cucumbers to the one where two basement-dwelling nerds gain access to all video content from the past two hundred years—from aliens.
Andy Zach pulls out all the stops on his imagination as he serves up this smorgasbord of silliness. Try it. Laughter is good for your soul.
I left the air-conditioned comfort of the taxi, and the sights, sounds, and smells of the old bazaar in Jeddah assailed me: a robe-clad man on camel plodded by, an adjacent fishmonger added his smell to the fresh dung in the street, and the hawkers yelled their wares.
I could only speak Arabic at a middle school level, but as I strolled through the bazaar, I heard “Fresh dates!”…”Highest quality rugs!”…”Finest gold jewelry!”… “Ancient books! The rarest in Saudi Arabia!”
My head snapped around. A bald, stumpy man in a white caftan saw me look and said, “Books? You want ancient books?”
“Yes.” I spoke carefully, knowing my poor accent. “Can you speak English?” I didn’t have much hope.
Now, what was he going to do? His boss just told him to double the productivity of Vegan Inc’s pickle strain they used for their Kilwowski Pickle brand. That was completely impossible. But keeping his job required it. He was the low man on the genetic engineering totem pole at Vegan Inc., the last one hired and the first one to be fired if another recession hit.
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t face this. So he cruised the internet.
“The origin of Zombie turkeys? I didn’t know they’d found that. Hmm, a Midley Beacon exclusive, the foremost zombie news source,” he read to himself.
Zombie turkeys had ravaged Illinois and the US at Thanksgiving. Thankfully they hadn’t hit near Terre Haute where he lived. He skimmed the article rapidly. Corn All, one of their agribusiness rivals, had genetically modified their corn to fight off corn disease. The genetic modification would adapt to the disease at a cellular level, and neutralize it by copying the DNA from the disease organism, whether fungal or bacteria.
When wild turkeys ate the corn, it modified the E Coli in their gut, creating the zombie turkey bacteria, e coli gallopavo. That got into the turkeys’ bloodstream and made them zombies, able to regenerate any lost or damaged body part, even bringing turkeys back from the dead.
What caught his eye was the reproduction rate: zombie cells reproduced every twenty minutes. Could that work for pickles? Why not try?
This was one of my favorite short stories to write. It is set soon after my novels Zombie Turkeysand Zombie Detective. The story icon is from my book Oops!.
Get Your Free Short Stories – The Third is the Best Yet
He was dead. At least, his business was. And without his business, his wife would leave him and take their new baby. Then he might as well be dead.
His dad had run the Elysium Fields Mortuary for thirty years and had made a killing at it.
The first and only mortuary in their small town of Hillvale, everyone got buried there. He charged normal prices, he was friendly, and he helped their community. His dad said to him when he was a teen, “Irving, after you get your college degree, go to mortuary school, and when you come out, I’ll hire you and then turn the business over to you. You’ll be set for life.”
Irv had no other plans. He liked this cute blonde Shelley in high school, and she liked him. So he learned the business, got his degree in psychological counseling, and came back and married her. Just as he promised, his dad turned Elysium Fields over to him after a few years and retired to Florida with his mom.
The first years had been great. People were dying to be his customers. He and Shelley remodeled his parents’ old house, went on vacations around the world, had his and her luxury cars. Shelley had their son, Nathan. Then the bottom dropped out of his business.
Rather than dying normally, people were taking zombie blood. Lung cancer? Gone. Heart disease? Cleared up. Severe accidents? Limbs grew back. Most people then took the vaccine to remove the zombie disease, because who wants to be a zombie with glowing red eyes? But they were still alive and healthy.
“Whatcha doing, Brice?” my boss Wilma O’Reilly asked, after sneaking up behind me.
I jumped. As usual, I was cruising the internet, bored with my job. Wendy was my boss. How awkward.
We worked at Vegan Inc, an agricultural conglomerate. I was their lead geneticist in charge of enhancing the qualities of the corporation’s vegetable products through genetic modification. Thinking fast, I said, “Uh, researching. I’m reading about the ‘Butterfly Effect’. It shows how small changes lead to great changes far away. Like a butterfly’s wing causes a cyclone on the other side of the earth.” That should work since that was what I was reading.
“How is this related to your current assignment of increasing the yield of our zucchini varieties?”
“I’m trying to relate my past success with cucumbers to zucchinis.”
“I’d think you’d just do what you did last time when I promoted you.”
“Well, I did and it didn’t work for zucchinis. I tried zombie hummingbird DNA, zombie turkey DNA, and twenty other zombie animals as well. But nothing worked. So I’m stretching my mind to the farthest reaches of what might be possible.”
“That might work. Try this scenario for a possibility: if you don’t make progress in another month, you’ll lose your position. You got promoted for great success. You’ll get demoted for failure.” Then she smiled sunnily and said, “Have a nice day!” as she left me.
The Taser hit me in the back. I convulsed uncontrollably, shocked out of sleep.
“Okay, wakey, wakey. Time to go model for your mistress,” squeaked a high tenor.
The bearded hulk who guarded us held his Taser ready, in case Lulu and I weren’t fast enough. He was so hairy, I couldn’t tell where his beard ended and his chest began. We donned the haute couture apparel set before us. He nodded his approval and gestured toward the door. He always followed us with his Taser.
“We’ve been here weeks and we don’t know your name. What shall we call you?” I ventured. I had some vague hope of putting him at his ease so we could escape.
He laughed. “Call me Gronk.” He wheezed when he laughed.
So I got him to laugh. Maybe that was progress. Maybe not. He also laughed when he tortured us with the Taser.
“That’s your problem isn’t it? Try the local apartments. Look for rooms to rent on the internet.”
I could tell by his grim expression he was serious this time. He’d been nagging me for nearly a year to move out and ‘set up housekeeping’ on my own, ever since I’d graduated from the state university with my BA in Video Game art and my minor in computer science. I’d managed to wheedle him out of it and delay the date. Until now.
I’d been saving money from my Game Stop job to move out, but I kept dipping into it to add to my video game equipment. I had a sweet system, the fastest I could afford using the latest alien technology. Oh. I needed to find some place to keep all my equipment too. And I needed internet access–high speed. I had to have at least gigabit per second speed or I couldn’t keep competing.
This might affect my standing in the Fortnight league. My stomach clenched in worry. I texted my best friend Nick.
How fascinating! Dancer thought. This book says there are libraries where hundreds of books live. It also says the fiction books are in order by author name.
Dancer scurried off Your Sixth Year Reader to look at Jeremy Gentle’s bookshelf again. Jeremy was his owner and unknowing educator. Ever since he’d taught himself to read by studying the newspapers lining the bottom of his cage, he’d craved reading.
He hadn’t figured out why he started reading. One day he’d noticed patterns in the markings. He saw they repeated themselves in clumps. He saw the clumps formed patterns. He also listened to his owners differently. They also spoke in patterns. “Jeremy” was always called “Jeremy” or “Jeremy Gentle” by the his mother, and sometimes by his father.
Dancer had learned to understand Jeremy and his parents, and then he’d put the terms they spoke with the clumps on the paper. Each letter had a sound, and together they formed clumps his master called “words.”
The idea was brilliant. No wonder they were his owners and he was only a hamster
Jeremy Gentle fell flat on his face at therapy. That was normal since he had cerebral palsy. But his new superpower wasn’t normal.
Then things got weirder when his best friend, Dan Elanga, got a different superpower. But Dan was still blind.
Kayla Verdera and Aubrey Wilcosky, two girls in their middle-school special ed class, discovered they too had new superpowers. Kayla was mute and needed a walker. Aubrey lost two legs and used crutches. But they were as powerful as the boys.
What should the four friends do? Jeremy knew if the word got out, it’d be a media circus. Then they started fighting crime, as the Secret Supers. Who knew a disability could be a perfect disguise? No one would ever think of disabled kids as superheroes. Then they ran into problems they never expected.
Villain’s Vacation
Jeremy Gentle fell flat on his face at therapy. That was normal since he had cerebral palsy. But his new superpower wasn’t normal.
Then things got weirder when his best friend, Dan Elanga, got a different superpower. But Dan was still blind.
Kayla Verdera and Aubrey Wilcosky, two girls in their middle-school special ed class, discovered they too had new superpowers. Kayla was mute and needed a walker. Aubrey lost two legs and used crutches. But they were as powerful as the boys.
What should the four friends do? Jeremy knew if the word got out, it’d be a media circus. Then they started fighting crime, as the Secret Supers. Who knew a disability could be a perfect disguise? No one would ever think of disabled kids as superheroes. Then they ran into problems they never expected.
