The Dark Balloon staff, overwhelmed by our consumers’ increasing
appetite for our opinions about books, is pleased as punch to release
the The Dark Balloon Bookshelf, an ambitious attempt to catalog
the best books ever written, published, and disseminated to our
reading desks. But, mostly, we’re doing it for the holidays’ money.
With 15 books to choose from, who knows how long you can withhold
the ever increasing thirst for buying goods from the Bookshelf, no
matter how much you hold your trembling hands with your trembling feet.
The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr is what scientific nonfiction
should be: engaging, fun, funny, and thrilling. It provides just the
right amount of biology and high-school organic chemistry to
adequately portray the theory, but not enough to overwhelm Joe the
Reader who whiled away the time spent in AP Chemistry by talking about
the Ebonics robot in the movie Transformers (not me). It’s the story
of an underdog where the antagonists aren’t evil bastards as much as scientific corruption is and
where everybody’s surprising and where the way the story’s told is
almost as smart as the people it’s about.
(Using emails between Stewart and Turin (who gave a TED talk in 2005. You might have been there, if you were insanely rich enough to pay the $6,000/year membership fee.) does get old after a while,
though. Emails in the book overall prove that scientists as a rule
like molesting English. Also, the Author’s Note would have worked just as well at the end of the book.)
Mother Night is a punch to the stomach, and yet I can’t recommend it
highly enough. It should firmly unseat Vonnegut from the catch-all
postmodernist literature movement because, whereas Pynchon or Wallace
eschew emotions, Vonnegut will emote the hell out of you. When I had a
periodontal abscess, which is slightly less painful than reading some
of the more horrifying parts of Night, I was giving benzocaine,
which is also called Hurricane Spray to make people feel better about,
I don’t know, anesthesia. “Hurricane Spray takes your breath away.”
This might be the most popular motto in the medical world because I’ve
now heard it twice, word for word. And it’s true. The first spray
numbs your throat. The second one force you to cough for air.
(If you have ever read Slaughterhouse-Five, Mother Night is
nothing like it. I’m good at imagining fake similarities and
differences between works of literature; it’s the only thing that gets
you through high school and college classes. Night and
Slaughterhouse-Five, though? Worlds apart.)
Mother Night is benzocaine.
Small Gods is the thirteenth installment of Terry Pratchett’s
Discworld series. It’s one of the more detached Discworld novels, and
you get the feeling it doesn’t really rely on the universe created for
the previous novels as much as it tangentially touches upon it. It’s a
satire on religion. But none of these sentences adequately describe
it. It’s a deeply human story about faith, and it reminds me of my
other favorite book The Time Traveler’s Wife, which is a deeply
human story about love. It’s a cohesive story and a shame to pull out
quotes from it without the sustenance they need—context—but there
are two generally powerful scenes in the book should you decide to
read it, and I’m of the opinion it should be required reading for
everybody. The scenes are these: When Om (quietly horrified) reacts to
the doings of the Citadel and when Urn reacts (quietly horrified) to
Simony’s battle plan.
The two kids hear thumping from a supply closet that has been nailed
shut and the two pry it open, only to discover hideous plants with
human features. One has an arm. The other has fingers. A third has
pride.
R.L. Stine Shows He is Down With the Kids: “We need a lemon tree,” Casey said as they slowed to a walk. “They’re cool.”
Regina, furious over Todd’s sabotage of her project, attacks Todd
and the two quarrel, knocking over Patrick’s worm skyscraper, which
falls and lands on the Liquids and Gases project. This is followed by
maybe the single best line ever uttered in Goosebumps history, as a
girl screams “Look out—it’s Liquids and Gases!” Then, be with me on
this, there’s an explosion, but R.L. Stine doesn’t even write about the
explosion. I guess the previous 40 pages of worm digging were far more
exciting than writing about a middle school science fair ending in an
explosion. No one’s hurt, and no one mentions again in the book that
the school gym exploded.
Troy Steele, blogger beware
The Internet has deconstructed Garfield, Encyclopedia Brown, and white
people. What other artifacts from your childhood will come next? Yes,
that’s right. Goosebumps. In
extreme detail, like a cross between television episode recaps and
Permanent Monday and
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency lists. Consider reading through the Monster Blood I-IV reviews because the author develops an impressively
nuanced and hilarious critique of the character Evan. Also, those books suck the most in the series so lulz all around. (via MetaFilter)
