book #24

A few months ago I happened to catch on t'telly a movie called Hoot. It was one of those occasions when I initially started watching only because my face happened to be pointing in that direction, then discovered I'd been lucky enough to trip over something good: a movie seemingly intended for kids but -- like, say, The Sandlot -- one that worked equally well for adults as an evocation of childhood. At the movie's end I was startled to discover it was based on a Carl Hiaasen novel; I've read quite a few of his books and they're not generally characterized by the sort of human warmth you find in the story of Hoot.

A little while later I was at a library sale and a copy of the book fell into my hand. As soon as I looked at it I remembered that, of course, around the time of its publication there'd been publicity about this being a Hiaasen novel for kids/young adults, and I put everything together to solve my little mystery.

Anyway, I bought the book, and over the past twenty-four hours or so I've read it -- this on top of a normal workload. It's that good. I laughed aloud fewer times than I'd expect to while reading a Hiaasen novel, but I probably grinned a lot more and I was certainly hauled from one page to the next, and one chapter to the next, in a way I don't recall having been by this author before. Hoot is a first-rate piece of entertainment.

Young Roy Eberhardt arrives with his family in Florida from Montana. While being bullied one morning on the school bus, he sees a mysterious "running boy" who clearly leads an existence quite outwith the standard pattern. Obsessed by this youth, the next day Roy sets out to track him down, and in the process discovers the vile plot of a fast-food pancake franchise to flatten the nests of some rare burrowing owls in order to build a new outlet.

No prizes for guessing that Roy and his pals Beatrice (a soccer jock and the toughest kid in school) and Mullet Fingers (as the running boy is known) thwart Mother Paula's All-American Pancake Houses, Inc., and that the school bully who's been tormenting Roy likewise gets his in no uncertain fashion. But not all of the apparent baddies are as bad as they at first seem, as Roy discovers: when it comes to the crunch, a heck of a lot more people give a hoot about those owls than the bean-counters at Mother Paula's All-American Pancake Houses, Inc., could ever have conceived.

(And of course there's the not-so-subliminal message that this is a general error made by corporations and the governments which serve them. I'd like to believe this to be so, but there's been a distinct lack of rioting in the streets over the past seven or eight years as all sorts of environmental safeguards have been shredded.)

This is a book I imagine I'll be returning to now and again over the years: definitely a keeper.
 

another blog review of Corrupted Science

. . . and in fact of Discarded Science, too, this time by Jeff VanderMeer. He says, in part:

These are beautifully designed small-sized hardcovers that cover fraud, deception, and hoaxes in science, along with theories that, as the author says, "seemed like a good idea at the time." . . . What easily could have devolved into a mere listing of facts and circumstances instead becomes something deeper and more profound. Many of these stories are hilarious, but many are also horrifying. . . . Along with incisive and often devastating anecdotes that seem to prove we're really more ruled by emotion and a need for fame than by our intellects, Grant makes the point again and again that although science itself has a kind of objectivity, scientists often do not. . . . [W]hat Grant has written here is a history of the world focusing on human deception and folly in science. The writing is funny, humane, insightful, and balanced. I think these are my two favorite finds of the year thus far. . . .

Please do go and read the whole thing at http://www.omnivoracious.com/2008/04/what-do-you-fin.html.

the liars strike

I posted a short while ago about the kind review Jeff VanderMeer has given to my books Discarded Science and Corrupted Science.

The site (it's the official Amazon book blog) has already been polluted by a religious zealot, who writes (http://www.omnivoracious.com/2008/04/what-do-you-fin.html):

FredTownWard on April 07, 2008 at 03:44 PM

The trouble is that unless the critical reviewers on Amazon are simply making things up, John Grant is guiltier of injecting "fraud, ideology, and politics" into science than most of the people he is writing about. 

It is one thing to take a scientifically skeptical attitude towards Creation Science (though in fairness one should apply the same standards to Evolution), it is quite another to engage it anti-Christian bigotry, as John Grant is accused of doing in several reviews. 

Moreover, if Mr. Grant has championed, as he is accused of championing in those critical reviews, the leftwing lunatic fringe ravings about WMD's and al Qaeda in Iraq, the Nazi-like viewpoint on (no longer required because of recent breakthroughs in adult stem-cell research) embryonic stem-cell research, and the cult-like "science has reached a consensus" attitude regarding Global Warming skeptics,

then he is as bad as or worse than anyone he condemns.

In fact, about two of the 14 or so Amazon reviewers play the fundamentalist card. Of those two, one has very obviously not read the book. So this guy (I try to think of a kinder word) lies.

Yep. How would Jesus lie?

Comments

The trouble is that unless the critical reviewers on Amazon are simply making things up, John Grant is guiltier of injecting "fraud, ideology, and politics" into science than most of the people he is writing about. 

It is one thing to take a scientifically skeptical attitude towards Creation Science (though in fairness one should apply the same standards to Evolution), it is quite another to engage it anti-Christian bigotry, as John Grant is accused of doing in several reviews. 

Moreover, if Mr. Grant has championed, as he is accused of championing in those critical reviews, the leftwing lunatic fringe ravings about WMD's and al Qaeda in Iraq, the Nazi-like viewpoint on (no longer required because of recent breakthroughs in adult stem-cell research) embryonic stem-cell research, and the cult-like "science has reached a consensus" attitude regarding Global Warming skeptics,

then he is as bad as or worse than anyone he condemns.

In fact, about two of the 14 or so Amazon reviewers play the fundamentalist card. Of those two, one has very obviously not read the book. So this guy (I try to think of a kinder word) lies.

Yep. How would Jesus lie?