The Cannonball Read III - Osaka Slide: #6 - Here's the Situation: A Guide to Creeping on Chicks, Avoiding Grenades, and Getting in Your GTL on the Jersey Shore by Mike Sorentino with Chris Millis

Mike Sorrentino, aka "The Situation", made a name for himself...and sold the shit out of it.  Using his nickname/catch phrase, he rode to the front of the Jersey Shore cast, being matched only by everyone's "favorite" diminutive dimwit Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi.  Not content with merely being on people's TV screens, "Sitch" decided to "drop the knowledge" on the public in print form.  With his assigned collaborator, he set out to create, "the Bible to the Situation Nation".  I for one can honestly say that if this is the Bible to an entire nation of people, I'm all for starting a good old fashioned crusade.

With only 133 pages to its name, one would assume that this would be a simple book to just walk right through.  That assumption couldn't be further from the truth, as it is the most painful 133 pages I've ever had to read.  Catch phrases, shitty drawings, fake "ab facts", and of course "Real Life Situations"...all are yours for the perusing in this handy volume made for you to "crush".  By the end of this book, the only thing that was crushed was my soul, and that was because of the fact that somewhere, out in the major population sprawl of America, someone thought this was a good idea.  Someone allowed this book to be written.  Someone would have eventually bought it. Scariest of all, someone might actually take this at face value as the "Psychology" book it's being categorized as.   (Here's hoping it's properly reclassified as "Humor" in a couple of years.")

Sorrentino's writing comes off as a blend of pretentiousness and stupidity, making him out to be the biggest bonehead with narcissistic tendencies in quite some time.  (The only competition he'd ever have is if Charlie Sheen writes his autobiography, "Winning".)  It occupies a rather inconvenient middle ground: it's too stupid to laugh at, but it's too funny to completely trash it.  All you really need to take away from this book is one quote: "You can nail the GTL, and the GTL Remix, but you can't fake being a class act."  Oh Sitch...you've proven yourself correctly, if only to your own detriment.  I usually try to keep it classy around here, writing off only the books that deserve it...and this book deserves it.  It's misogynist, it's repetitive, it's the biggest monument to the "Cult of Me!" that most reality stars subscribe to.  If you've asked me to get to the point, I'd sum my feelings up in three words:  Fuck This Book.

Up Next: Kings of Colorado by David E. Hilton

The Cannonball Read III - Osaka Slide: #5 - Across the Universe, by Beth Revis

Science Fiction is an easy genre to screw up, simply because while it's easy to create fiction, the science isn't always there. Teen fiction is an easy genre to screw up because while you're writing for a certain audience, you also have to try and keep your fingers on the pulse of a rather fickle demographic. To combine the two is a tricky situation, because if done wrong it can irrevocably trigger animosity of the highest regard. (I'm looking at you, Ms. Meyer.) Needless to say a lot of authors get it wrong, and we have a marketplace flooded with stories of how some plain teenage girl is in love with a mythical beast and how her life is going to change because of it.  (The Oatmeal has a comic covering this exact phenomenon.)  However if you do it right, then you'll have something that ranges from "a decent read" to "excellent beyond expectation".  Across the Universe is the first Teen Fiction book I've read from someone not names John Green that has given me hope for the genre, as it masterfully blends both genres into something that reads as wonderfully as it sounds.

Amy Martin is part of an expedition to another planet...a planet not unlike Earth.  It's sometime in the future, and things are pretty frakked.  So much so that we've decided to build a generational ship, freeze the essential crew (plus one non-essential family member, Amy herself), and ship them out into the deepest reaches of space on a 301 year mission.  Not a lot of fun, especially when James Cameron got cryo sleep wrong in Avatar.  Not only do you dream, you dream so much that you tire of dreams.  Unfortunately for Amy, she's going to be woken from her dreams about 50 years early, and under mysterious circumstances.  When awoken she meets a boy around her age by the name of Elder, the future leader of the colonists aboard the Godspeed.  Under the tutelage of Eldest, he will learn to lead strong, lead fair, and lead without hesitation.  Or love.  Naturally these two join forces and not only try to solve the mysterious de-frostings, but also the most elusive force of nature ever: teenage hormones.

For a debut author, Beth Revis knows not to overdo the romance or the Sci Fi aspects of her story, thus widening her audience appeal.  By being a more inclusive writer, Revis makes Sci Fi geeks, Teen Romance geeks, and casual readers feel so comfortable and invested in her world that they can hardly tell which genre is taking focus at the time.  And thank gods she wrote her characters like actual people!  Gone is the neutered teenager from the moment Elder sees Amy naked under the ice.  He knows he's attracted, and his mind starts to wander toward some rather naughty thoughts.  (Nothing too bad though, this IS YA lit after all.)

Perhaps the most telling aspect of Ms. Revis's story telling is the usage of split perspectives.  Each chapter alternates between Amy and Elder's perspectives, ultimately weaving the story together so well that while the point of view changes, the story flows perfectly.  The only negative beat I'd give this book is the ending.  There's a big revelation as to the plot of the book, and it's fine that we find out what that twist is.  It's just the revelation of the twist between characters could have been saved for the next book in the proposed trilogy.  All she had to do is end it with the twist being revealed to us, and we'd get a nice cliffhanger to latch onto for the next book.  Nevertheless, it's not a big enough gripe to spoil the enjoyment of this fine book.

Across the Universe makes me further believe that Teen fiction isn't just a wasteland of neutered, brainless shells for readers to populate and live vicariously romantic lives through.  It's books like this that make me feel literature in general is still very much alive and kicking.  In the parlance of the book's society, anyone who doesn't at least read the first few chapters of this book is a frexing idiot.

Next Up: Here's the Situation: A Guide to Creeping on Chicks, Avoiding Grenades, and Getting in Your GTL on the Jersey Shore by Mike Sorentino with Chris Mills

The Cannonball Read III - Osaka Slide: #3 - I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I want to be your Class President; by Josh Lieb

This book has been on my reading list for a while, seeing as I fell in love with the concept merely with the title alone.  You see, I am a genius of unspeakable evil and I was class president (Class of 2002, Howell High School...I have the varsity jacket to prove it), so naturally it was a given that I read this book.  For varying reasons, I hadn't fit it into my reading schedule until recently.  My girlfriend's car broke down, so that meant I had to drive her to her shift at J.C. Penney's.  Not content to just drop her off at the mall (only to have to go and pick her up again), I wandered around Borders and found this book in the Bargain Bin for the third time.  The other two times I'd managed not to succumb to the pressure of purchase, but the third was too much to ask.  I opened the book and started reading it, just to make sure I could justify the shelf space.  Needless to say, we know how that story ends.

However, if I were as evil as Oliver Watson, I could have just taken the book.  You see, Oliver has everything he could ever dream of.  Water fountain that covertly dispenses Root Beer and Chocolate Milk?  He's got that.  A zeppelin?  Owns one and uses it to relax.  A Pit Bull trained in the Basque language to possibly maim or kill an enemy?  He calls her Lollipop.  All of these things are simple to acquire when you're the third richest person in the world.  But as Oliver finds out, there's one thing that's hard to buy while making it look like you didn't...an election.  You see while Oliver is a genius to himself and his audience, his parents and his peers think he's...well, rather dim.  It's the perfect cover to hide behind if you don't want anyone catching onto your extracurriculars, but it does make achieving goals rather difficult.  Still, Oliver is about to give it his all, and his all might not be good enough.  Which would mean it's time to rig things and take what he wants anyway.

The concept, if in a typical Childrens/Teens author's hands, could falter very easily and would probably be deemed too simplistic.  This isn't the case with Josh Lieb's writing, and I wouldn't doubt him for a second.  This may be his first novel, but he's been Executive Producer of a little cable news show you might have heard of called "The Daily Show", so one could assume his writing prowess would assumably be matched only by his wit.  I'm pleased to say that he not only meets those expectations, he exceeds them swimmingly.  Don't be fooled by the book's setting or marketing, because while this is a story of a young kid's drive for world domination it's written in a style that seems like it has Adults in mind as well.  Also, this book really is laugh out loud funny. 

Between smatterings of Pop Culture references (FYI: Your kids will ask you who Captain Beefheart is.  It's unavoidable with this book.), details of the various machinations young Watson uses to get what he wants, and some hysterical visual aides, it's hard not to like this book for what it is: a really good, family friendly comedy.  Six words I don't utter too much around these parts pretty much sum this book up.  In fact, as soon as I finished the book, I handed it to a friend.  Upon seeing the title, he laughed his head off just like I did.  Ultimately, that is the true sign of a good book:  it's good enough that you'd hand it off to someone else to read instead of just letting it gather dust on the shelf.  If I have anything to do about it, I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President will not be sitting on my shelf for long in the coming months, simply because it's too good to hide in a Bargain Bin.

Next Up: A Shore Thing by Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi