The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett

I wanted some nice light reading for Cuba so I brought along a couple of Pratchett favorites. I think this one is my all-time favorite Pratchett novel. I features death by pineapple, a continent somewhat like Australia, the wizards and Rincewind and my favorite quote "Even so, there is no excuse for putting pineapple on a pizza." I may make a T-shirt.

Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures - Vincent Lam

I think my problem with this book is that my expectations were too high. The stories were okay and some were even interesting but the characters were not particularly engaging and I didn't find the book as a whole to be at all cohesive, although it seemed to be attempting to be cohesive. Overall, I was disappointed.

The Secret - Rhonda Byrne

This might be the most infuriating and senseless book that I have ever read. While it is not necessarily marketed as a self-help book, once you open it, it poses in that guise.

The basic idea of "The Secret" is that if you think about something hard enough, your brain emits a signal on a frequency that will cause the Universe to give you what you want. (Seriously. I am not making this shit up. It actually hurt me to type that.)

It includes statements like "Look at everything you like and say to yourself, 'I can afford that. I can buy that.' " Thinking this is supposed to make you rich. I wonder why we have such enormous problems with debt these days? I think the only person becoming rich is the author (who also has a movie version of this). She's making money off of all of the people who are too stupid to see through the scam. Frankly, it's brillliant. (I took it out from the library; she's not making any money off of me.)

The author also uses quotes from famous people to try to give credence to the idiocy of her message. The way that these quotes are inserted into the text twists their meaning. For example, "The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) When taken outside the context of the book, this quote inspires independent thinking, curiousity, questioning of inherited beliefs, self-confidence, and motivation. Taken within the context of the book it seems to support the idea that if you sit around that think about having money, you will get rich.

The problem with The Secret is the focus on thought over action, when a balance between the two is what is needed; The Secret caters to the lazy, tells them that action is extraneous. Postive thinking and visualization are all well and good but if there is no action, there can be no positive result. If professional athletes sat around all day thinking about making the perfect shot, winning the race but then didn't play the game or show up for the race, how can they achieve success?

I am alarmed at how many people are being sucked in by The Secret. Just because something is in print, does not mean it's true.

The Hippopotamus - Stephen Fry

Continuing on my Fry kick, I picked this one up because it was supposed to be really funny. Someone has a weird sense of humor. Again, I enjoyed the basic story, which was interesting and well assembled, but there were a few things that bothered me:

1) The character Oliver, who talked constantly of taking up the butt and had the most annoying verbal tick (calling everything Sally Sunshine or Doris Desk or Patty Pimple until I wanted to scream).
2) The sex with a horse was creeepy.
3) That they didn't really explain the "hot hands". Was it psychosomatic?

Instead of a comedy, this turned out to be kind of a mystery novel, which I enjoyed, surprisingly. (I think I'm overusing commas to balance his self-admitted lack of comma use.)