"Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" by Barack Obama

I checked out this book on a whim using the office's library delivery service. To be frank, I don't follow American politics very much so I can't really explain why this book appealed to me. Regardless, it came to me while I was thinking of books to borrow, so I just went ahead and did it.

"The Audacity of Hope" (henceforth shortened to "TAOH") is a political memoir written by Senator Barack Obama in 2006. This is his second book, the first being "Dreams of my Father". As the anointed Democrat candidat in the 2008 US presidential election, TAOH now carries a heavier message and will doubtless be used as reference to Obama's political leanings.

I make no pretensions to understanding all of the book and the events mentioned therein, though I did enjoy reading it. His writing style is extremely readable, and many of his thoughts/ views are told in a simple manner. If he is really the person reflected in his book, I think he comes off as a really decent guy who is trying to do his best in the world he lives in, and who believes that public service is all the more meaningful for its ability to make people's lives better. A person who knows that decisions often reside in the gray rather than black and white, but who takes a stand anyway in the belief that he has considered the issues and its ramifications thoroughly.

TAOH is a sweeping opus touching on a variety of topics from faith, family, politics, Democrats vs. Republicans etc. Through it all, the hope and optimism he has towards all these themes come through and make a compelling read.

This book will not make you into an instant nor overnight political scientist. But read it for some insights into the man who might be the next president.

And maybe, share his world view of hope for a better world.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

Artemis, goddess of the hunt, walks dogs for a living. Apollo, god of the sun, music and prophecies, fails miserably as a tv psychic. Aphrodite passes the time as a phone sex operator when she is not shagging any of the other gods. Powers weakened, and long forgotten by people, the once mighty Greek gods are cramped into a shabby house in modern London.

During the taping of his doomed tv show, Apollo falls in love with Alice, a cleaning girl sitting in the audience with her geeky friend Neil. He tries to charm her with poetry and song when Alice ends up hired to clean the gods' house on a regular basis. But Alice and Neil are secretly in love in each other, they are just too shy to confess. So when a spurned Apollo causes the death of Alice by mighty thunderbolt, Neil bravely travels to the underworld to save her and the world.

Gods Behaving Badly was good light-hearted fun for me, especially since it followed from a heavy read in the form of The Naked and the Dead. I breezed through it within a day, chuckling at the jokes and quirkiness of the story. It is a little predictable but which romantic comedy isn't? It plays out like a movie with the right amount of humour, drama, and feel-good factor, and sometimes that's all we need.
73 out of 100 ninja earwax missiles.

"Odd Hours" by Dean Koontz

"Odd Hours" is Koontz's 4th book featuring Odd Thomas, the fry cook and inept (in his opinion) hero who can communicate with the dead. Often drawn to places inexplicably, with ghostly companions by his side, in this book, he has to stop a terrorist plot to plant nuclear bombs in cities.

This 4th book also introduces a new female character, Annamarie, whose raison d'etre for being in the story is not revealed even at the last page of the story. (I suspect it is Koontz's way of stringing readers along for the 5th book.)

In the end Odd succeeds in his endeavour (naturally!) but really with Koontz's books one is rarely greeted with sad endings but the fun in this book is really Odd's journey as he goes about saving the world, his encounters with people, and the friends he makes.

This being the 4th Odd Thomas book I read, I really experienced diminishing marginal returns in my enjoyment. All the leading up to the actual confrontation between Odd and the villains was really Koontz's skillful playing of his adept hand at repartee between characters. While I admit he is good at what he does, there is only so much you can repeat before the formula wears thin for me.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

"The Dark Knight" by Dennis O'Neil

Foreword: As far as I remember, this ought to be the first time I have read a novel based on a film and watched the actual movie. I usually do one or the other (i.e. read the book or watch the movie) to gauge if I want to do the other (meaning read the book if I watched the movie or watch the movie if I read the book) and hitherto, I have never wanted to do both. With "The Dark Knight" (henceforth shortened to "TDK"), I did both, credit going largely to the good movie for having imbued me with enough curiousity to see how the book would turn out. Since this is the first time, I thought now's as good a time as any to do my first review of a novel-based-on-film.


For me, TDK, the book, is both less and more than the movie. It is less in that in its prose form, it naturally fails to match up to the adrenaline-pumping, visual fest, of the actual movie. It also fails to convey the Joker's bone-deep enjoyment of evil for evil's sake, Wayne's anguish, and Alfred's humour. In these, I found the movie immensely more enjoyable, profound and at times disturbing.

But TDK the book does have its strengths, and this is by and large due to the vehicle in which it has told its story. The first few chapters add more background to the story by telling the "story behind the story", the beginnings of the villains, Bruce Wayne's beginnings and how he himself increasingly realises that in seeking to deal with evil, he has to deal in the very depravity his enemies traffick in. These are things that for obvious commercial reasons, TDK the movie is unable to do. Pity, for I thought they were also the very things that would have deepened and fleshed out the movie and novel.

However, TDK the book did answer one question which was never resolved for me when I watched the movie, being how did Batman end up rushing to Dent's rescue rather than Dawes' when he had explicitly hollered at Commissioner Gordon that he was going to save the latter? (Heh, I won't tell you what transpired -- read the book if you wanna find out!)

One spoiler for me in reading the book was in knowing that Dent is not the white knight that he was made out to be, even taking into account his pre-Joker-influenced days. But I guess it also made the character more realistic and added some verisimilitude to the plot. [Seriously, no one can be that perfect a "knight", can they? (In good ol' movie plots, anyone that perfect to the outside world typically has a few dusty skeletons in his closet.)]

For some strange unfathomable reason, on finishing the book I was reminded of Yeats' quote,

"Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as much courage in entering into the abyss of himself"

Don't ask me why. Maybe Batman's feeling of isolation reminded me of Hamlet's, which was when I first came across Yeats' quote.

Taking the good and the bad, I give this book a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars.

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

60 years ago, American novelist Norman Mailer wrote The Naked and the Dead, a story about a platoon of soldiers on a Japanese-held island during WWII. The then 25 year old Mailer saw enormous success with the book and it has been hailed as one of the best novels about the Second World War. The platoon, part of the large American force trying to wrest the island from the Japanese, was sent on a dangerous reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines. As they fight their own personal battles, terrible fatigue and harsh terrain, Mailer splices "Time Machine" flashbacks in intervals to relate the background of various characters -the ruthless General, the brash Lieutenant leading the mission, the NCOs and some of the men in the platoon.

It took me more than a month to finish this book. In my efforts to run regularly and distracted by a rather compelling video game, I only read a few pages every night. It doesn't help that the story plods along at times, and my eyes glazed over the time machine flashbacks towards the end of the book.

I'm still scoring the book a good 8 out of 10 though. One amazing thing Mailer managed to do with The Naked and the Dead was to capture the essence of the army in its entirety. The story was fleshed out in such vivid detail that I even empathised with the cunning, cowardly and incompetent characters. Even if you are not a military buff, you will take your hat off to the tenacity of the soldiers, the strength and courage they had to summon throughout their journey, and the brilliance of the General. It really made me sit back and humbly reflect on my own experiences.

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Metamorphosis tells the short tale of Gregor Samsa, a young salesman who wakes up one day to find that he has turned into a monstrous bug. What kind of bug he turns into is not defined, but that's not important (Although I found it easier to imagine him as a giant cockroach). Gregor cannot communicate with his family as he is bugged down (haha!) by the lack of a tongue and pharynx, but his thoughts and feelings remain human. He ends up spending his days under a couch in his room, climbing the walls and ceiling when he gets bored. Previously dependent on Gregor as the breadwinner of the household, his aged parents and younger sister slowly find the means to support themselves. But as they do so, they start to become more distant and repulsed by the son/brother they once adored.

The one theme of the story that resonates the loudest for me? How people change. It's quite scary really, thinking about how people change when you tell them you want out of the group/relationship, or how cold I can be as well...I enjoyed the numerous themes of Metamorphosis, the plot and Kafka's style of writing. It makes me want to reread the story again! 8.5 ninja stars.