Great Scott!

A few weeks back i made a great discovery.  While browsing through books at a second-hand book stall, i chanced upon a book by Scott Adams, titled 'Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice'.  Now I've been a fan of the Dilbert comics, and hence of this great cartoonist for quite a while now, yet i'd never heard of this book ever.  I regularly visit book stores, often read up on my fav writers, etc, but had not come across a non-dilbert work by Adams yet, and was instantly intrigued.

It is an amazing collection of 1-2 page long essays and blog entries; essentially his views on anything and everything, from cloning, to the sexes, dancing less like a dork and terrorism.  Bite-sized pieces of humour, with an insight or two lurking below the surface here and there.  I am a worshiper of the fine art of sarcasm (as my wife, bro and close friends will enthusiastically confirm), and this dude is a high priest.  Add to that a wild and volatile imagination, and you've got a lot of fun coming your way.  Mind you, very few of the passages are 'haha' funny...most of the stuff is thoughtful, yet it'll bring a smile on your face.

I guess i was most blown away by the fact that the bugger sees humour in everything!  He makes even the most mundane of daily observations seem wickedly funny.  I mean, as i read i kept thinking, don't we all see these very things all around us?  Yet most of us manage to focus solely on newspapers full of depressing headlines and all the shit seemingly surrounding our buggered lives. 

What a find.  Serendipity!

Book Review: Theodore Boone by John Grisham

Rating: 1.5 / 5

This is Grisham's 24th novel.  And a bad one.  I have read 5 of his novels before this one, and have liked all of them.  A Time to Kill, The Firm and The Client were really amazing.  Extremely gripping plots, unexpected twists and turns, and superb writing.  Even The Pelican Brief and The Broker were quite good.  Going on past experience I picked up Boone with a lot of anticipation; and was completely disappointed.

The writing was average, at best.  There was no plot at all.  Even after reading 100 pages i was left waiting for some semblance of a plot to develop.  An overly simple and straightforward story line, with no twists (other than the one where the surprise witness turns up; but that's the whole premise of the book anyways, even mentioned on the back cover), half-baked characters and a feeble ending.  And I thought Grisham was into legal suspense thrillers....

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The story is about a 13 year old boy, Theo, who dreams of becoming  a famous trial lawyer or a judge.  Both his parents are lawyers, and he spends most of his spare time wandering about the courthouse, getting to know all the lawyers, secretaries, bailiffs, etc.  He also hacks into various law databases and systems to help out his school buddies in legal matters.  He is excitedly following a murder trial when he gets to know of a witness who's testimony would completely change the trial outcome.  Sworn to secrecy, but still desperate to see the murderer punished, he finds himself in a tough spot.

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Theo's character is quite okay.  So is his uncle Ike.  But the other important characters, viz. his parents, his childhood friend, school friends, the school teacher cum mentor, the judge, the accused, the witness, etc are all ill developed.  Or rather, the author has hardly spent any time on giving them any depth or substance.  This, along with the lack of a substantial plot, are the two primary reasons for making this book highly superficial.

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The other thing which really irked me is this foray into the Young Adult Fiction genre.  Many other authors are doing this because this is where the money is today.  Its like a critical mass of youngsters have suddenly started reading again, and you find so many of these new books claiming 'bestseller' status.  Some recent names are the all-too-obvious Harry Potter series, the Artemis Fowl series, the Twilight series, the Bartimaeus Trilogy, etc etc.  Does Grisham need to do this? 

Even giving him due consideration for wanting to reach out to a much younger audience and doing something different, it is not pardonable that he hasn't tried to understand this segment better.  Todays tweens and teenagers are quite complex creatures, who can handle complicated story-lines (see the later potter novels for example), who are already into relationships (it is absurd to describe a 13 year old who is not into girls - this is far fetched even in India!), who are reasonably mature individuals for that age...and want to be treated as such.  Blyton era innocence cant fly now.

To top it off, the ending seems to be designed for a sequel.  Or maybe we are to see many more Theodore Boone books.  I really hope not.