I am so behind on book reviews. There will be three this weekend because that is how many I finished during the week but have not had the time to write the blog posts. My apologies!
So a little bit of a back story for my fabulous readers who don't know. I had to go through a six week training class recently. Oddly it coincided with the start of this reading adventure. Sadly, the training program was not that well put together and really there was about 30 minutes of actual work to do in a day and about 7 1/2 hours of free time. Unfortunately, cell phone service is sketchy at best in the training room and there is no internet connection on the computers so there was really nothing to do. Well, reading was an allowable activity and given the lack of other acceptable choices I bit the bullet and started reading (and detailing the accounts of my adventures in literature on this blog).
Well, training is done and it is back to regular work. Now the cool thing is I do not have to interact with people very much so one of the benefits is that I can listen to my IPOD all day. The down side is that I can't read at work anymore since they APPARENTLY don't pay me to do that. What to do in this moral quandary. I came up with this brilliant idea that I could listen to books on tape and that would be just as good.
Well, maybe. See when this plan was discussed I was advised that listening to audiobooks is cheating. I disagree and I will tell you why (because I know you wanted to know right?). Studies (legitimate one's done by actual researchers, not some crap I threw together to get a grade) have found that the average person remembers 10% of what they read and 20% of what they hear. Immediately I am 100% better than before! I assume, not being some complete snob about reading, is that the point is for you to remember what you read right? As long as the audiobook is unabridged I assume it would be fine (that means they say all the words that were in the actual book for those who needed a little help there). Furthermore, I think that it is not cheating the whole reading plan and since it is my blog and my reading plan I get to make the rules. Therefore, unabridged audiobooks do count and they are 100% better than regular books. So there! :p
Anyway, the first audiobook was a test run and I went with a rather short book. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was actually a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald that appeared in the longer book "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and other Tales of the Jazz Age", which was his 1922 follow-up to his blockbuster first book "This Side of Paradise" (and if you don't know that book, you have not been reading by blog and you fail at life). ANYWAY...the story is set in Baltimore during the time directly preceding the Civil War where Mr. and Mrs. Button are expecting their first child and low and behold she delivers a baby who is, in fact, a 70 year old man. Yes, he ages in reverse. The failing of the story is I wanted to know how in the hell did Mrs. Button give birth to a full grown man. This is never explained. I mean, if she were like 14 feet tall and weighed 900 lbs then maybe I guess. I suppose the reader would have to go with my bigfoot version of the mom since none is given by Fitzgerald. Take my word for it - she was 14 feet tall and 900 lbs. Maybe not 900 because the food in any story I have read that is set before 1950 sounds incredibly crappy so let's say she was 500 lbs and add in 150 for the "baby" so that is 650. We will go with that.
Ok so he starts as a 70 year old man and he ages backward. Stuff happens like he is a hero during the Spanish American War, tries to get into Yale but they laugh him out due to his age (I guess that either he had it coming for trying to go to Yale instead of Princeton or they just did not have a strong adult reentry program at that time). And it progresses until he is a just a baby and dies. The end.
It was an OK story/book/whatever. I understand that some B list actor was in a movie adaptation of the story recently. I wonder if I was right about the mom being an amazon woman. If anyone saw that movie and they explained it you should tell me. So I give the book:
Vroom, Vroom, Vro (2 1/2 "Vroom's" on my motorcycle scale of awesomeness)
Reviews Due: "A Christmas in Washington" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
Working on: "American Wife: A Novel"
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