A Couple of Book Reviews

I had hoped to write about Iowa by now. It will still happen, but 1st here are my thoughts on two books I recently managed to read.

Stephen Fry in America (the UK version)

I like Stephen Fry and have done so for years. If you have yet to see ‘Absolute Power’ I highly recommend finding it. That show is smart, fast and funny. Anyway, this was a good book. The premise is pretty simple, Stephen was nearly born in the USA and claims to have always had a degree of fascination with the place. To help scratch that itch, he sets off in an English black taxi to travel through every state gracing us with a page or five on what we finds. He finds great deal and likes a lot of what he sees, but not everything. There are places to which, given the choice, he is unlikely to ever return and places in which he reckons he could very happily see out his days.

As expected Stephen's insight is keen and his command of English strong. The two combine to make for an enjoyable read. And, if you happened to have already seen the TV series, go ahead and get the book anyway. While there is obviously common ground, each medium focuses on differing aspect of his experiences in a given state.

The Zombie Survival Guide.

I really enjoyed World War Z, which made this pretty disappointing. The Survival Guide lacks human dimension and rigor (but not mortis) that made WWZ such a tremendous piece of work. Instead it is fairly dull, repetitive and at times self contradictory. To be blunt, it should have been half as long.