To Be or Not To Be

Following my last post about Hyperbole and a Half coincidentally this next post is also an "internet book".  Ryan North writes one of my favorite webcomics, the creatively named "Dinosaur Comics".  If you have never read them I must recommend that you give them a try.  Ryan North decided to start a kickstarter funded, choose-your-own-adventure book based on the story of Hamlet.  The project blew up and broke multiple kickstarter records.  Due to the level of funding the book was able to get artwork for every ending from webcomic artists as well as a prequel story and several other additional features.

This book clocks in at 700 pages, so if you don't like it, it makes quite the doorstop.  However, I enjoyed this book immensely.  The book is lighthearted and witty but at the same time has great respect for the original work.

Also, this is the first book that I have review here that I haven't finished, if finished means having read every page.  I have reached an end multiple, multiple times but I still haven't hit every single possible page or even every single ending.  Some of the endings I have reached were the original ending (of course), one where ghost Hamlet and his ghost dad lead a ghost army to fight ghost aliens, and one where Hamlet and Ophelia invent thermometers and live happily ever after.  These are just a few of the many endings that book has to offer.

The book also allows you to play as Hamlet, Ophelia, and Hamlet's father and each of these stories has its own set of endings and experiences and sometimes switches back and forth between them.  In certain read throughs, you can play as Claudius reading a choose-your-own-adventure book.  It is very entertaining.  It is clear that the better that you know the source material the more enjoyable the book is.  However, the book starts at a high level of enjoyment even without any knowledge of the source material.

I think my favorite part of the book is a particular part where Hamlet fights pirates and all of the choices in that section are choosing between the witticisms Hamlet uses in the fight.  While it is a little graphic, that section alone is worth pages and pages of giggles.

Overall, I would give this book a 94%.

Hyperbole and a Half

Hyperbole and a Half was a Christmas gift.  I had never heard of Allie Brosh or her blog (also called Hyperbole and a Half) and I have to say the cover made me slightly worried.  The combination of the subtitle ("unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened") combined with the childish style of art on the cover left concerned that this could be a very unfunny book.  I was completely and utterly wrong.

See, this could be a little troubling with no context, right?

This book had me laughing incredibly hard at multiple points.  The book is formatted as a collection of her blog posts as well as some original stories (which seems to be par for the course for internet writers).  The best chapter is probably the first, where she finds a letter to her present self from her 10 year old self.  I was laughing so much my gut hurt all the way through that chapter and there are many other chapters that are nearly as funny.

There are, however, some serious chapters in the book as well.  Some of them are covered under a veil of comedy like those about her lack of motivation and the rules that she imagines the world lives by. These are humorous but still have the capacity to make the reader think.

Then there are the chapters on depression and her self-identity .  These four chapters comprise a significant fraction of the book, two of them are placed in the middle and two at the very end.  They take issues that are serious and personal and explain what it is like to experience them in a way that still has just enough jocularity to make it not scary or self-pitying.  In fact, while I loved the funny parts, I think the primary thing that I will take away from this book is the exploration of depression.  It was a fascinating read and will probably come to mind when I think of depression for years.

I really liked this book, both at its serious points and its funny points.  I have added the corresponding blog to my RSS reader and I hope that is updated frequently as her art and writing style is highly entertaining.

Overall, I would give this book a 94%.

The City and The City

The City and The City is a truly fantastic book, it certainly deserved all the awards that it received (Locus and Hugo among others).  It artfully blends detective tropes with a unique (at least among my readings) fantastical concept.  I won't go too far into it because part of the fun of the book is discovering this as you read but the basic premise is that two cities occupy the same geographic space but have different laws, language, people, etc and to go between them without certain permissions is called "breach" and strictly punished.

Whenever I read a fantasy book that doesn't have blatant use of magic, my brain always tries to see if there was some other explanation for the magic.  For example, A Game of Thrones passes this test until the last chapter (perhaps "passes the test" provides the wrong impression.  There are many fantasy books I love a great deal that do not pass).  This book, however, passes completely.  All of the magic is completely explainable while at the same time refraining from ever explicitly saying that it isn't magic.  I think the thing that I will remember the most from this book is how perfectly balanced the central idea is between a rational explanation and a fantastic one.

The protagonist is a detective (as you might expect from a mystery story) and it is told entirely from his point of view.  The way the book is structured all of the reveals, both the gradual ones about the world as a whole and the sudden ones about the resolution of the mystery, are excellent. The author says that he views this book as the last chapter in the story of its protagonist and that he would consider writing his earlier adventures.  If he writes them, I will read them.

Overall, I would give this book a 97%.