"My Billion Year Contract" ( & new genre introduction)

One genre of books I enjoy is that of people who have escaped the Church of Scientology, a cult designed to drain money and free labor from its victims via a gradual process of brainwashing and cutting off all ties to non-Scientologists. There's a peril to reading these, which is that Scientology uses a huge amount of jargon, to the point where even people who have escaped from the Church and have been living outside for years will pepper a sentence with enough mysterious words and phrases to make it unintelligible. For that reason, this - and future - reviews of such books will contain a Scientology Jargon-O-Meter, a simple way to gauge how readable the book is without keeping a pocket dictionary of what the hell getting RPF'd for sec checking a SP squirrel means. The book will be graded on a 1 to 10 scale, 1 containing no or always well explained jargon, and 10 being a Palin-esque word salad of puzzling acronyms and phrases.
And now our feature presesntation...

My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist (Nancy Many)

Nancy Many's story is not dissimilar to may Scientology survivors: As a curious young college student she was sucked in with the organization's sales pitch, not realizing what was happening as she was fleeced of her money and freedom until she found herself working feverishly for pennies hard-selling the organization's products. One of the lowest points actually comes very early on in the book as she is assigned the dreaded RPF, or Rehabilitation Task Force, a kind of hard-labor prison program where she has to sleep in a hastily constructed shed in a parking garage and is only allowed to eat leftovers. This occurs while she is five months pregnant.
Not surprisingly, she decides to get out, or "blow", and escapes not only the RPF but Scientology completely. Imagine my surprise to note that all of this occurs about a third of the way through the book. So what's the rest, you ask? Kind of a confused mess, I hate to say. Nancy escapes actually having to live in the Scientology centers, but she stays affiliated with Scientology, even doing undercover spy work for the OSA (Office of Special Affairs, basically the dirty tricks division). The first third of the book is tightly written and easy to understand, but the last two thirds is kind of a mess; I went from thinking she'd just escaped Scientology entirely to her working as a sales rep and spying for the OSA. Eventually during a "Security check", what sounds like basically going into a small room and having someone yell at you for hours on end, she has a complete mental break. This is harrowingly written and genuinely scary. After this she kind of just rambles for a while until the book ends.
This isn't a bad book, but I feel like the author got more from writing it than you may from reading it, if you get my drift. I don't know if it was really that disjoined and muddled or if it seemed that way because I was reading it on my ipod. Either way, I don't feel like reading the book was a waste of time, but unless you're really interested in the genre you may want to take a pass on this one.

Grade: C
Scientology Jargon-O-Meter reading: 2 (occasional phrases without explanation; Vast majority of terms explained when they first appear)

"Team of Rivals"

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Doris Kearns Goodwin)

I'm not really sure what I expected from this book; The first part of it promises to be nothing less than quintuple biography, covering Lincoln and then his three closest advisors (the "Team of Rivals") in the run-up to the 1860 election and through Lincoln's assassination at the end of the civil war.What I got instead was a mess. The author inexplicably has decided to include reams of pointless details, so the book develops an identity crisis. What is this book about? Is it a Lincoln & family biography and history? Then why do we spend page after page on the personal lives of his cabinent members? Is it a history of Lincoln and the federal government's handling of the Civil War? Then why do we spend page after page on Mary Lincoln going camping and shopping? Is it an examination of Lincoln's governing style and how that effected the war and the aftermath? Then why do we spend page after page on Kate Chase and her husband? The ultimate problem is that the book has no message, no thrust, nothing driving the narritive forward, and any time it begins to pick up momentum, the author will jump away from the military developments to Mary Lincoln's camping trips or jump away from Lincoln's navigating of the rocky political waters to Kate Chase's marrige. There's a good book in here, but it has at least 250 needless pages inserted into it. Cut out the parts of Lincoln's personal life that don't effect his governing of the country (the vast majority), cut out the personal lives of his cabinent members, and you have a very interesting examination of Lincoln's political and military philosophies. Leave it all in, and you have this book, which I can't recommend.

Grade: D+

"Odd and the Frost Giants"

"Odd and the Frost Giants" (Neil Gaiman)


 The back of this book says that this is a "Inventive, short, yet perfectly-formed novel",       and, well, it's short, let me give it that. This isn't bad at all, but it's a kid's book, and  frankly I felt a little underwhelmed by this after seeing the movie "Thor"; This is like Baby's First Aesir book, and while it's probably perfect for kids, I'm not sure how much adults are going to get out of it.

 Grade:
 10 and Under: A
 18+: C+

"First Man"

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong (James Hansen)

The imaginitively named authorized biography of Neil Armstrong (not to be confused with the Albert Camus book of the same name). I feel for the author; Armstrong is apparently legendarilly taciturn, which makes for a lot of sentances like "Neil doesn't remember..." or "Neil couldn't confirm that..." This may sound annoying, but I found it kind of charming; Armstrong's quiet, reserved self-confidence seems very commendable to me (and familiar; Armstrong reminds me of a certain someone's older sister, actually). What does get annoying is how technical the book can be. I understand - in fact, I applaud - the level of care and detail that goes into the moon landing (and the preparation and immediate aftermath). What I don't understand is why this level of detail is gone into for the entire part of the book leading up to the moon landing. Do we really need to be given a rundown on the difference between the average height and weight of the first versus the second group of astronauts (to provide one example)? The amazon review points out that the author actually counts up how many shells, bombs, and rockets were fired per month when Neil is a fighter pilot in the Korean war, and this is exactly as boring and as tedious as you think it is - any interesting events are rendered lifeless by an endless parade of dry technical details and meaningless figures. The author even starts early, giving us 10 generations of the Armstrong clan before Neil is even born. Bizarrely, the opposite occurs at the end of the book -after the moon landing, it's like a switch has been flipped; The remainder of the book - and there isn't much - is basically "Uh, then he never gave any interviews, the end."

My recommendation: The moon landing and the parts immediately surrounding it are about a third of the book, and they're a great third of a book. This is where the author's endless attention to detail is a powerful positive instead of a deadly dull negative, and what could in the wrong hands be boring (since you know the outcome already presumably) or tedious (given the amount of technical detail) is where the book shines and almost makes plodding through the rest of it bearable. The thing is, you don't really need to plod through the rest of the book. Skip until when Neil starts working as a test pilot, and close the book after he returns home from the "Giant Step" tour coming off the moon landing. You'll have a well-written, gripping account. Read the whole thing, like I did, and you'll have a slog with a cracking middle. (Admittedly, the author remains humorless, managing to turn Buzz Aldrin's amusing anecdote about being the first man to pee his pants on the moon into a paragraph-long investigation of who truly peed in his pants on the moon first, but this somehow feels fitting given Armstrong's character and desire to get it right, no matter what makes the best story.)

Grade:
If you just read the part I recommend: A-
Entire book: C-

Mass Effect Volume 1: Redemption

If you have not played, or have no interest in, the Mass Effect series...get out of this review. Really. Run. Go outside and do whatever it is people do when they don't play video games.

Now that the boring people are gone (just kidding, favorite reader of ours who just got a new kitten)...I can continue. Mass Effect: Redemption falls...Oh! SPOILERS FOR THE BEGINNING OF MASS EFFECT 2 AND SOME OF THE GAME ITSELF. There. Now I cannot be sued or flamed by the internet.

Ahem. This graphic novel continues from where we left off after Shepard dies, but before she is resurrected by Cereberus. I chose to romance Liara in all of my Mass Effect games so I found the story of how Kate Shepard's girlfriend goes to such lengths to rescue her body from the Collectors touching. If you didn't romance Liara, I guess you can be touched by how your BFF Liara saves you?

Liara tells you in ME2 the overview of how she came to rescue your body and bring you to Cereberus so if reading video game graphic novels or books is not your thing, you can probably skip this. If, however, you enjoy the universes Bioware creates...pick this up. It'll be good to see our girl, Liara, kicking some ass on her own.

Post script to the review: On my first playthrough, I was quite mad at Liara for not coming with me after my Shepard met her on Ilium. I mean, we really had something...you know? The Liar of the Shadow Broker helped a little, I'll admit. This graphic novel, though, really makes you appreciate what Liara did for you...and maybe why she's too hurt and set on revenging Feron to come with you at first on Ilium. Read this if you want to not be mad at your best girl.

The Magicians

The Magicians is, obviously, about magic. Magic done realistically, if there is such a thing. I hate to use the 'blank meets blank' cliche to describe it BUT it reminds me of Harry Potter and Narnia written for adults in an upstate New York setting (at one point the characters even reference a trip to Albany! Cheap pops for my hometown!).

Just as not all animated works are made for children, not all books about magic are for children. The characters drink, swear, and have sex. Just like real teenagers! And that's what I enjoyed about this book. I didn't have to roll my eyes at Boy character and Girl character (or boy character and boy character, this book portrays a gay relationship--bonus points for making the gay character one of the coolest in the book) chastely holding hands and even kissing once at the finale. The book also doesn't portray marriage as the most perfect thing two people can do...marriages can be messed up and children can be pissed about it.

"Coutdown to Lockdown"

Countdown to Lockdown: A Hardcore Journal (Mick Foley)

I am apparently one of the few people who enjoyed Foley's previous book, "Hardcore Diaries", so I was happy to read in the introduction that this book follows the same format - that is to say the birth, life, and hopefully successful climax of a single wrestling angle. In "Hardcore Diaries", it was a fairly horrible journey, with our author at the end wishing he'd just stayed at home, but happily at the end of "Countdown to Lockdown" everything goes about as well as it can when you have a 300 pound, 45-year old retired wrestler lacing up the boots one last time. Um, spoiler alert.
As always, Foley is a wonderful author with a gift for perfect understatment and setting up horrible, obvious jokes that make you laugh anyway after they land. On the downside, he also continues his bad habit of rambling about how much he loves a random celebrity (having now moved from Katie Couric to Tori Amos, who he won't stop talking about). For this book he introduces the "Wrestlemeter", a device that is supposted to let you know how much he's going to be talking about Tori Amos or his charitable work in Sierra Leone as opposted to the main thrust of the book, which is dissecting in fascinating detail what goes into a modern wrestling angle. To be honest, I don't think the Wrestlemeter works. It's not specifically that I only want to read about wrestling, it's more that I just don't want to hear him going on about how much he loves Tori Amos for pages. In fact one of my favorite parts of the entire book has nothing to do with wrestling, it's Foley admitting to and then describing in amusing detail his watching and then re-watching in slow motion a scene from Mad Men trying to see if the actress is using a body double when he's supposted to be working out.
In that respect, the Wrestlemeter is actually unnessessary; All you need to do is start flipping pages when you see "Tori Amos" or "Sierra Leone" and you'll be fine. I don't think I really skipped that many pages - maybe 10 or 15 out of a 314-page book -  and the rest is just as good as anything he's ever written. Recommended for wrestling fans and non-wrestling fans alike, or, I guess, Tori Amos fans.

Grade: A-

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

Town of Evening Calm is a moving story of survivor's guilt. Country of Cherry Blossoms tells of the child of a survivor and of the survivor's attempts to remain connected as those who lived through the bombing, or touched the lives of those who did, simply die of old age.

I finished the graphic novel about two minutes ago. I'm sad and touched. This is the kind of book I end feeling like I want to hug everyone I know and tell them beautifully profound things.

Life with Mr. Dangerous

Gosh. How should I describe this without giving anything away? The main character is a mid-twenties woman who is obsessed with a cartoon show, has a jerk boyfriend, and works at a department store (or maybe just a clothes store?). She has no whacky adventures. She just lives her life. Some stuff happens but I can't tell you. Just read it, okay?

Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park

Ever wonder just how Disneyland and Disney World got so magical? This book will tell you. It focuses on the original Imagineers who helped Walt Disney create Disneyland (btw if you don't know that Disneyland is the one in California, you should just stop reading my review right now. You are a terrible, terrible Disney grinch, and you are banned).

For me, this book did nothing to take away from the magic I enjoy at Disney World as an adult. When you're a kid, you only see the 'real' Mickey. When you're an adult, you appreciate all the work it took to put him there.

"Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin"

Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: Our Tumultuous Years (Frank Bailey, Ken Morris & Jeanne Devon)

Reading though this book, I found myself amazed at two things:

1.) How incredibly vain and paranoid Sarah Palin really is.

2.) The fact that it took three people to write this book.

Let's deal with point two first. Frank Bailey is many things, but unfortuneatly he is not exactly a master wordsmith, and this book at times suffers. (I hesitate to think what the manuscript would look like without his two co-authors). This is kind of a minor point, which is why I want to get it out of the way now. Mostly all you need to know is that some lines hit ("Making me long for a chance to back in time to the Governor's Picnic and say to Sarah, 'Thanks, but no thanks, on that job to nowhere'") and more often miss (A realtively unimportant part of the book - Palin's vetting by the McCain campaign: - is described "As political perfect storms go, this resembled two Category 5s meeting head-on") and some really just sum up the whole book ("Punishing enemies and wealth accumulation became a full-time job").

Back to the first issue, this is an inside look at Sarah Palin before and after her veep run in 2008. (Bailey was out in the cold during the actual veep run, which I think ends up being a net positive; Her behaviour during the election itself has been covered exhaustively and I don't really think it needs to be gone over again here.) Bailey, describing himself as the original Palin-bot, gets in on the ground floor of the Palin campaign for Gov, showing up the first day to pry gum off the floors of her new campaign headquarters. What follows is his rise to becoming Sarah's right hand, kind of, and his subsiquent ups and downs as the Palin inner circle, which sounds like nothing so much as a horrible high school clique on steroids, raises some high and brings others down low.

Though it all, what astonished me the most was how vindictive and petty Palin appears; Even after she's elected Governor, she seems to spend more time reading blogs about herself and emitting steam from her ears when commenters say mean things about her than she does governing. For me, the low point came after she returns from the lower 48 to resume governing Alaska (before becoming the Alaskan Quitbull and resigning), when a neighbor complains about the air and noise pollution coming from tour busses going past her house. Palin sets out to destroy him, sending her daughter Willow out to set up a lemonade stand, then calling reporters to tell them that, gosh, this mean ol' grinch just hates little girls, lemonade, Sarah Palin, America, and probably the Baby Jesus, isn't that a shame?

Bailey has saved all of his emails, which he uses liberally to show the incredible amount of minute, petty matters Palin not only seems to enjoy wasting her time with, but can't seem to ignore to save her life, and the picture they paint is very difficult to refute. (One more piece of dirt: Sarah has had Lasik eye surgery, and only wears her glasses to look smart.) The book can occasionally be a slog, but as far as I've read it's the definitive Palin book out there, and in a sane country would probably be the nail in her political coffin, you betcha.

Grade: A