Ancient Book Reports

Hmm. A friend of mine made me read a book, "The Hero and the Crown" by Robin McKinley back in high school. I'd managed to forget about it, but something pinged my little grey cells. I don't hate many books, and while this one cannot hold a candle to the hate I have for "The Old Man and the Sea", it's close. It's really not the plot, or even the characters, though I do dislike the inability of the heroine to master her own fate, most of what happens in the story, as my memory recalls, was passive. It's the damn insistence on using made up words without explaining what they fucking mean. There's no obvious reason for it, other than to make it feel more "fantasy-like".

I remember we had to do a book report each nine-week period for that class. For some reason, I only remember 2 books I reviewed. The first was "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul," by Douglas Adams. I pulled a reverse review on that, using a tactic Gene Shalit used for the movie "SpaceBalls." You intro with a biting cutting description of what you're reviewing, chewing it up and spitting it out. In LDTTotS, it's that it's disjointed, fraught with grammatical errors, possesses one of the most outlandish plots imaginable, and almost runs like a stream of manic thought. But it's still one of the funniest books I've ever read.

It wasn't written, it was an oral presentation, and I got good marks for that one.

I also got good marks for "The Hero and the Crown", but the reasons were very different. I hated that book. Mr. Bryant admitted he'd never seen a student give a negative review of a book. He actually seemed rather shocked, in fact. The fear that the teacher would hate a student for disliking a book keeps most students from "bucking the system". Screw that. I didn't like the book, and I'm honest enough to admit it. The plot wasn't bad, the main character had some annoying traits, but she wasn't horrid. What sucked was the introduction of a word that wasn't defined until nearly two thirds through the book. Not explained, and the syntax clues were considerably more vague than calling a Great White Shark a multi-cellular predator.

It was a fairly significant plot point, and after finding out what it was, there was absolutely no reason whatsoever for keeping it from the audience. None. Except to make you keep reading just to find out what the damn thing was. And this book won a Newbery award. This is the sort of writing that keeps kids from reading books because they run away in abject horror at the poor presentation of the story.