Sara Reviews Audio Programming: Doug Loves Movies!

Man, I sure suck at book club. But you know what, I spend most days listening to at least some audio programming or other, and that's a lot of hours of my life (so many hours... so many wasted, wasted hours). So, screw all of you.

Doug Loves Movies was the first comedy podcast I really listened to. My exact recollection fails me now, but I'm pretty sure that I saw somebody post online a link to the episode with Adam Scott and Jon Hamm, and being me, I was like "I should probably listen to this." My first job included lots and lots of boring, boring BIM modeling of big box stores, so my brain wasn't exactly too occupied most of the time, and this show really spoke to me at that particular moment of my life. I ended up listening to all of the (free) back episodes within a relatively short amount of time, the appeal of which was, primarily, the games.

There are a lot of mediocre podcasts out there, and other than the relatively high caliber of guests, Doug Loves Movies really isn't anything extraordinarily above the rest. But the games! Oh, the games! I think they're the reason I never really tire of this show. Even though the laughs per minute are a lot lower than on superior shows like Who Charted?, I still find myself able to chug through more episodes of this than almost anything else. Generally speaking, even the duds have plenty of games. I'm even terrible at Leonard Maltin, yet I still listen with rapt attention.

I cannot remember specific episodes to recommend, but my favorite guests include: Paul F. Tompkins (the episodes where he shows up as Cake Boss, Ice-T and Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber to play the Leonard Maltin game against himself are a delight), Scott Aukerman, Adam Scott, Samm Levine (okay, this is just a list of people who get overly enthusiastic about the Leonard Maltin game), Leonard Maltin himself (who constantly apologizes for being terrible at his own game), Anna Kendrick, Garfunkel and/or Oates, T.J. Miller (especially earlier episodes before he got sort of replaced with Pete Holmes, whose popularity I do not understand). Generally speaking, I'd listen according to who you already like.

Overall, 8/10 stars!!!!!!! Honestly, on the enjoyment scale I'd put it closer to 6/10, but 10/10 for endurability (not a word, but let's make it one).

Points or whatever: NONE GAINED! Because this is not a book and if it were, it would be a really terrible book.

Kristie Reviews: Going Bovine by Libba Bray

I know, the title sounds like it's going to be a 500-page ex-vegan diatribe. My roommate gave me a look when he saw me reading it. But when I hastily explained the plot to him, he just asked me "where do you find these books?" A fair question.

If I have a favorite genre of fiction, it's whatever one includes road trips, weird shit, bizarre humor, and characters who are certifiably (if not certified) insane. I guess it's kind of a specific category?

Regardless, that's kind of what Going Bovine by Libba Bray falls into. The story basically revolves around a kid who's a bit of a loser and an asshole, in that loveable YA fiction way, who gets Mad Cow Disease and then starts to wildly hallucinate that he's on a mission to save the world from fire giants and find the dimension-jumping doctor/scientist who can give him the cure. There's legendary NOLA jazz trumpeters, old ladies in seaside cottages, some pseudoscience, and a Daytona Beach spring break party house. There's a "punk angel" who's frankly a lot more pop than punk. There are Norse god-gnomes. There are hypochondriac teenage dwarfs, but not the LOTR kind, the regular kind. Oh, and a lot of Disney World.

I like the bit about the tree in Hope, Georgia that grants wishes. Loveable-Asshole-Boy didn't. Tant pis.

The satire is far less than subtle and at points way overdone, but I appreciated the jabs at standardized testing (which surprisingly is not something I've seen as often as you'd think in YA fiction). The writing isn't inspired, but it feels natural to the narrator. Also don't read this if you have a strong fear of getting It's a Small World After All stuck in your head. You've been warned.

I guess if The Fault in Our Stars is the big, tragic, romantic, inspiring dying children YA book of the day, Going Bovine is the "what the hell was that actually, maybe someone dies I guess, oh and I laughed" sort of novel.

I enjoyed it. 7/10. If it sounds like your kind of thing, consider yourself recommended.

Word count: 123,224
Kristie's total points: 123,224

Sara Reviews: Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka!

Mitch really is not embracing this book club I mean I invited him to post and it's been like 12 hours, no response, what is this? In what will most assuredly be a failed attempt to annoy him into participating, I am reviewing Metamorphosis because I know that it was the first thing he read for "book club."

I most related to this part:

"If they were startled, then Gregor had no more responsibility and could be calm. But if they accepted everything quietly, then he would have no reason to get excited and, if he got a move on, could really be at the station around eight o’clock."

Let's be honest, if I woke up as a bug, I'd probably be like 'oh maybe I won't have to go to work since I'm a bug!' Dick move on the part of the family though to not accept Gregor's new identity of a bug. Oh god, do you think "otherkins" use this book as like evidence that it's important to accept non-human identities? I'm not sure I like this book anymore.

Overall, it was short, so... 7/10 stars!!!!!!!!!

Word count: 21,810 (or something around there, I'm not sure for this particular translation)
Sara's total points: 96,810

Sara (Prematurely) Reviews: On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks by Simon Garfield!

I just bought this book and I'm already put off by the foreword author, who on the first page tells us, "Even at odd moments, say while clearing spam from the junk folders of my email accounts, it occurs to me that 'spam' is 'maps' backward, and how maps, the true opposite of spam, do not arrive unbidden, but only beckon." Wow, you're like the Zooey Deschanel of map-likers. I don't know what I expected from a popular book about maps that calls itself a "A Mind-Expanding Exploration," written by an author celebrated for his previous work on fonts.

But I do love maps, so. Okay.

Sara Reviews: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell!

You know when a dude on the bus or maybe a weird uncle starts talking to you and he's going on and on with very specific anecdotal stories and drawing tenuous conclusions from them and you're just like "calm down"? This book is kinda like that. It's called "Outliers," which implies that the author has some sort of grasp of statistics, but he then oxymoronically proceeds to generalize, oversimplify and draw sweeping conclusions from his hand-picked group of "outliers." There's no reason for the reader to believe that it's anything more than a collection of anecdotes. It's interesting, sure, but what's the point?

The first part of the book posits the wild idea that success is a a product of hard work, circumstance and being in the right place at the right time. You know, I had been wondering why my grandmother wasn't the creator of Microsoft, but this book really spells out why Bill Gates was in a slightly more advantageous position to found a pioneering, multi-billion dollar software corporation. I guess I should cut grandma some slack.

The rest of the book kind of devolves from there, with some interesting stories that lack the full picture to really convince you of the author's conclusions aside from the most generic and obvious ones. Cultural differences can affect communication styles? Really. I'm already bored of reviewing this.

I did learn a few things I guess so 3/10 stars!!!!!!!!!

Word count: ~75,000 was the closest I could find on the internet. Sounds about right.
Sara's point total: 75,000