Al's Book Review

It's kind of ironic that I just blogged on experiencing life without the lifevest of another's opinion. In the blog I used book and movie reviews as examples of how we (our culture) preferred to wait and let someone else formulate the opinion of whether the undertaking was worthwhile. I scoffed at how we avoided thinking for ourselves. And now, I'm trying to provide that very crutch the next day. Oh well. I guess "I" am a part of "we."

Since this is my first Book Review on this blog, probably my 100th overall, I thought I should preface the review with a little background on my reading preferences and writing resume. I love to read and have been known to read as many as five books simultaneously. I am hyper-critical of flow, prose and storyline, but less critical of syntax or literary genius. As to my writing accomplishments: I have one novel under my belt; two others unfinished; and about ten short stories. There are a few essays and poems out there with my trademark as well. Does this make me an expert? Hell no. Just one who loves reading and writing.

I'm not a big fan of memoirs, including travel memoirs, which makes my first material for a book review a bit unusual. But I decided almost immediately to roll with my most recently finished reads instead of my favorites. That is for another day. Okay? Let's do this...

Travels by Michael Crichton (published originally in 1988 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.)

I kinda picked up this book while searching whether or not I should write a travel memoir myself. I still haven't decided. I just may after the first of the year. I'll have a few more trips under my belt and an extended sojourn with my twelve year old daughter. Her innocent perspective really slows me down forcing me to look at being a traveler from a very different
point of view. Anyway...

This book is divided into two sections; his "medical days" and his "travel days." The book starts out on fire. The first eighty pages tells various stories from Michael Crichton's days at Harvard Medical School. The writing is amazing; the prose is smooth and witty; and his anecdotes are funny as hell. I began to wonder how I missed reading this potential bestseller for so many years. Sadly, this book had another 300 pages left in her when we slip into the next section of the book just as he finishes medical school and as his novel, The Andromeda Strain, is turned into a movie. This is when Mr. Crichton's Travels begins the slow descent of losing this reader.

The author constantly attempts to subjugate the reader's ideology with his less than ordinary beliefs in the astral plane, chakras, auras and mystical spoon bending while utilizing traveling adventures as a backdrop. It doesn't work. Crichton often challenges believers of the western world's three main religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) as shallow and gullible. He submits western medicine is short-sided and too scientific. I don't have a problem with his opinions per se. I only wish the book would not have been marketed as a travel memoir, but instead some kind of "Western moving Eastern coming-of-age story". Because this is what we end up with.

Attempting to be optimistic, (not a strong suit) I am still hoping that the original premise can be salvaged through Crichton's Family Christmas trip to Tahiti around page 230. But the optimism became futile when I had to sit through a whole chapter of him sitting in the California desert for two weeks communing with a talking cactus. This could have been some seriously funny stuff if he weren't sincere. And then Mr. Crichton really loses me when he wants me to consider him worldly and intelligent as he precedes to tell of his experience being exorcised of the demon that appeared to be the evil devil in Disney's Fantasia in a Los Angeles apartment by some clairvoyant named Gary. Give me a friggin' break.

I finished the book. Maybe I'm a masochist.

Pick of the day(25-7-0)...Orlando/Lakers O48 1st quarter, O99 half, O198 game