Vivian Godwin Godwin من عند Barwali, Rajasthan 335504، الهند
This one is lesser known than Little Women or Little Men, but I think I enjoyed it at least as much as both of those books.
Want to drain all the tension and excitement from a book? Have a crisis every five pages that will, without fail, be quickly resolved. Moreover, compared to this book's ersatz hero makes Indiana Jones look like a faithful portrait of a professor. This could have been another Foucault's Pendulum, if only the writer could draw believable characters, manage a steady build-up of tension, and maintain any sense of irony about the silly ediface of conspiracy he constructs.
** spoiler alert ** Don't bother. I gave two stars as the writer uses good English and her descriptions are colourful and vivid. It's an easy read and the story is set in places that I know which made me feel comfortable. I got the impression that the clearly straight-laced young writer was trying to live out a fantasy of an exciting youth never had. Her drug references were poorly researched and were cringable in their inaccuracies. The main character, Karen's 'best night of her life' was a rather naff party which finished around 4 in the morning. Whoop. A few bottles of wine, the odd spliff and one off experimentation with Ecstasy hardly denotes hedonism. I was totally unconvinced by the life-long connections she made after meeting people with whom she had barely had a conversation once or twice. I didn't believe that Karen would have lied to Rex. There was no reason why he wouldn't have gone along with the story and doted on the child anyway. I felt that this was a weak device for the final twist. I was also unconvinced at Rex's demeanor after a ten year stint inside. I don't think it was 'creepy' was not 'gripped' and I thought that 'thriller' was a stretch.
This is a great book. The text is really good and it does a great job of presenting a sensitive, complex subject in a way that a child (and an adult) can understand. However, I like the previous edition's illustrations better.
4.5/5 ABANDON HOPE OF (COMPLETELY) AVOIDING SCIENCE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. -Rita Mae Brown The phrase practically screams common sense, does it not? And yet endurance, perseverance, and stubborn tenacity are all valued qualities in the face of a seemingly unobtainable goal. Personally, what immediately comes to mind are the trials and tribulations of scientists in countless laboratories scattered across the globe. Proclaiming a hypothesis (ex: I hypothesize that chemical A will interact with chemical B like so), designing an experiment to match it, and then conducting it over and over and over again, enough to gain enough data points to exclude both systematic and random error, avoidable and unavoidable biasing of the results. Three is the magic number required to measure just how wrong the data could possibly be, but more is always encouraged, just in case a monstrous outlier rears its head due to some unforeseen amount of chaos. And if that experiment proves faulty, scientific training demands a do-over. Correct the hypothesis a touch, adjust the variables a smidgen, re-calibrate the chemicals and fine-tune the machinery, then repeat the process countless times more. On and on and on, as one of the blessings of the scientific method is that conclusions can always be questioned, answers can always be tested ad infinitum, and theories that have lasted for millenia can have their sterling reputations cracked like an egg during the space of a single hour. Now, what does this have to do with The Third Policeman? Well, the previous two paragraphs in essence described a major plot point, the "twist" if you will of the entire narrative, as well as an action that multiple characters take part in throughout the course of the story. More importantly, there are a surprising amount of passages that are grounded firmly in the 'insanity' that science is. For those who are not inclined towards the hard sciences, feel free to skip this next part. For those who have some level of interest, continue on. (view spoiler) I could go on about the myriad reality-defying ways the book illustrates that in actuality are necessary for successful scientific reasoning. But I think that you have all had enough lessons in mathematics/physics/general engineering for one day. Rest assured, this is not all that the book has going for it. There are many passages of dry wit that had me flat out giggling, as well as wonderfully unconventional metaphors that raised the reality the words described to a unusual, yet beautiful art. You'll even find scathing critiques of society and profound existential meanderings within these pages. However, what stuck with me the most were the uncanny similarities between the strange logic that the book operated on and the science of the real world. Not all of the book's weirdness is reflected in sound science, but science itself has its own cases of crackpot theories and misinformed conclusions. Ultimately, to discover the truth, scientists delve into these realms, these hells if you will, of supreme weirdness and nonsensical assumptions, bring back bits and pieces for the rest of humanity to benefit from, and then dive back for more. It's a wonder that more of them don't go mad from the effort.