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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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A collection of related and unrelated Twain writings. He has a (generally) amusing, approachable style. His approach to the Bible, written from the POV of an incredulous Satan watching half-witted mankind declare themselves the sum of all creation, the Apogee, the end-all be-all, and offering up praise to the Lord for every plague, pestilence, war, is funny as hell, but I doubt seriously that he believes that the bible is all that, or all that alone, rather I prefer to think that he's making fun of those literalists that take it's every word as gospel truth. More poking fun at the rubes of middle America (and Alberta), the kind of right-wing bible thumbing Baptists and Evangelicals who want everyone to read a book they but poorly understood themselves.
There then follows the diary of Eve, of Methuselah, and reading it and discover (again) that all our new problems are the same as the old ones, the periodicity; overpopulation, pestilence, hunger, dreams of a techno-utopia thwarted by villainous plutocrats, etc, etc.
These "biblical" stories are followed by a few on different other themes, science fiction, children's tales, and - what amused me most of all - his reviews on travelling abroad - especially when he sees the Albert Monument in London, or St. Paul's, and declines to review the interior (it's in every guide book), but instead writes a few very relatable pages on the courtyards around it, a very modern send-up of the travel review.
Anyways, very much enjoyed but glad it's over. Now what to feed the mill...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 590
The autobiography of Gabriel García Márquez, which much resembles his novels. A thick read, to rebuild an attention span laid siege by cellular phones and the internet and poor viewing choices on NetFlix.
Anyways, I'm enjoying, it's nice to get out of ones head for a bit and - while I've always enjoyed his books, I'm discovering him to be very relatable in his autobiography. Which is perhaps odd, in that we're in no ways the same, but that is the point of reading, to meet different people without running the risk of having to know them...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 593
I liked this, he's an easy style of telling you stories that "happened to him", "First Person Singular", easy to read, and always with a little twist.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 558
I'm not a fan, particularly, of his style of writing, and this took a bit of getting into, but there's some intriguing ideas in it well tied together. He's a feverish imagination, and he grooms you to accept his fantastical narrative by providing you numerous rabbit holes (conspiracies, forteana, etc) to research and verify first.
I can see why he has a cult following. Good.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 524
Maybe if I were a brooding 20 year old college student with black lipstick. But I'm not and so this rather sadly disappointed. All novels have their time and place - and this one missed it.