Landover Book Reviews!

[Meek and Humble]

Hey all. As part of my role at Landover Baptist University, I have got students in the English department to write up True Christian reviews of some famous books. The students wished to remain anonymous, but I thought they were great and will be sharing them with you.

Here's one to get started:

Beloved (1987)

Author: Toni Morrison

“Morrison’s obviously a good writer, but truly, her subject matter leaves a LOT to be desired in this book. It’s raunchy beyond belief. People do things with farm animals that they shouldn’t. I couldn’t get through the first two chapters without vomiting. Some things you just shouldn’t put in your head.”

[Mistress Cookie]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

Hey all. As part of my role at Landover Baptist University, I have got students in the English department to write up True Christian reviews of some famous books. The students wished to remain anonymous, but I thought they were great and will be sharing them with you.

This is a highly useful tool for us "readers" out there. I hope others will contribute book reviews, too, so we can avoid the filthy ones.

I am reading a book about a queen called Marie Antonia Habsburg right now. She is getting into trouble. Is always surrounded by other women (her "ladies") and they run off to a little house somewhere and dress in disguises like milkmaids and such. Something seems off about it. I will report back.

[Lost Sheep McUinnean]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

I was given a book called Unnatural Selection by a young nurse I teach English to. We've reached The Book of Psalms so far but she's gone and decided to read something more 'modern'. Likewise I will report back with her own and my own summary of the book. It has cockroaches on the cover.


YiC, McUinnean.

[Meek and Humble]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

Catch-22 (1961)

Author: Joseph Heller

“Obviously, a lot people were smoking a lot of weed in the ‘60s to think this thing is worth reading.”

The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Author: J.D. Salinger

“So many other good books…don’t waste your time on this one. J.D. Salinger went into hiding because he was embarrassed.”

[Mistress Cookie]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

As promised, here is my review of The Tragic Queen, by Dorothy Moulton Mayer.

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Not, as might be expected, a biography on Charles Nelson Reiley or Pope Eggs Bennedict, this book is instead about the lesbian downfall of a little known Austrian princess. At age 14 she poisons older sisters with the small pox so she's next in line to marry Louis, a rich, french/frog prince.

On the border of the two countries, the french frogs ask Marie to take off all her clothes before she enters their land, to symbolize leaving any national allegiance behind. She falls for the practical joke and strips. France now knows it's dealing with a tramp.

We know there's something sinister in Marie Antonia Habsburg's past, because first thing she changes her name to Dauphine Marie Antoinette Bourbon. (Note fondness for drink.)

Refusing to sleep with her husband for 8 long years (I skipped some of this part), Marie (aka "The AustrianB!+%h" to her peoples), is constantly surrounded by young women she entertains at great expense. All are paid companions. (Mmmm-hmmm...) She spends a fortune on clothes to keep their attentions, and they copy her style to keep favor. A sick cycle.

Years pass...she finally consents to sleep with husband...4 kids...rumors Louis isn't the father...Marie kills the oldest boy and a weakling infant she's left alone with.

END ACT I

Marie wants to tower over and subjugate her husband, and so eats all the bread in France. Hungry fishwives storm the castle, and Marie jeers "Qu'ils mangent du pain" ("Let them eat [my] pie.") (I am sorry to report this but that's what happened.)

With those immortal fighting words, the French Revolution has begun!

The insulted wives drag the royal family to Paris, where Marie is joined by her former lover Princess Lamballe. The fishwives in the street are disgusted and stick Lamballe's head on a pike. Pamphlets circulate in the streets, revealing Marie to be a rapacious harpy with wings, claws and a human head that feasts on the poor at night. She denies this.

Legal stuff, legal stuff....attempted escapes (which Marie ruins)...King beheaded, Marie accused in court of having incest with her 8-year-old son. (Son himself signed accusation!!!!)

In a final act of lesbian defiance, Marie hides behind her bed and stuffs menstrual rags (!!) (please!!) into a crack in the wall to "mark" her former cell. (I fainted at this point.)

They cut off her head. Good ridance!

The End.

PS: I had this foul garbage removed from the Landover Library today.
.

[Meek and Humble]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

A Clockwork Orange (1963)

Author: Anthony Burgess

“In the first 20 pages, Alex and his lackies beat a guy senseless and rob him; they steal a car and trash it, they get into a vicious gang fight; they attack a couple at their home, destroy the husband’s life work (his book, A Clockwork Orange), beat him and his wife senseless, and rape the wife. This really ticked me off.”

Gone With the Wind (1936)

Author: Margaret Mitchell

“Well, it’s a girl’s world. The world of Gloria Steinem and the popular feminism, as distilled on TV (including CBC shows, not all fundamentalist Hollywood garbage) of my youth is GONE. Now the girls run the show. You’re not allowed to call them sluts. And it’s impossible to call them virgins. They’re all doing Rhett Butler. So what are they? Idiots… Hope you like the Gangstas. It’s what you deserve.”

[Mistress Cookie]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

A Clockwork Orange (1963)...
Gone With the Wind (1936)...

Excellent and helpful reviews! PRAISE!

I wonder if we could make a book club where you and the students come over once a month to burn all the books we've read? The refreshments, of course.

The Landover Library has been pretty well picked-over to remove offensive materials, but we might find more stuff there.

Maybe you can even get a grant from the university?

Just thinking out loud, here...

[Meek and Humble]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Author: John Steinbeck

“While the story did have a great moral to go along with it, it was about dirt! Dirt and migrating. Dirt and migrating and more dirt.”

The Great Gatsby (1925)

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

“It grieves me deeply that we Americans should take as our classic a book that is no more than a lengthy description of the doings of fops.”

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

Author: C.S. Lewis

“I bought these books to have something nice to read to my grandkids. I had to stop, however, because the books are nothing more than advertisements for “Turkish Delight,” a candy popular in the U.K. The whole point of buying books for my grandkids was to give them a break from advertising, and here (throughout) are ads for this “Turkish Delight”! How much money is this Mr. Lewis getting from the Cadbury’s chocolate company anyway? This man must be laughing to the bank.”

[Lost Sheep McUinnean]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

I was given a book called Unnatural Selection by a young nurse I teach English to. We've reached The Book of Psalms so far but she's gone and decided to read something more 'modern'. Likewise I will report back with her own and my own summary of the book. It has cockroaches on the cover.


YiC, McUinnean.

As promised.

Here is Carmen María de La Santísima Trinidad's analysis.

''I thought the book was a little estupid but funny also at times. The cockaroach part from the autor was very entertain, well, the idea it was funny. But I not liked the obsesion with the sex it was very bored and the Jewic personage which were the protagonist not was interested. I don't finished the book.''


And mine:


NEGATIVE POINTS:

-The idea that invertebrates are capable of moral thought.
-The idea that the Bible is a book full of wickedness. (Granted it was a modern version where the cockroach nymphs grew up eating pages of the books in the library, but even so.)
- The main character / 'author' using a Biblical name blasphemically. 'Numbers' also displays deranged Moses-like behaviour and incites his 'people' to migrate to the skirting board in the kitchen inspired by Divine 'scripture' as a motive and justification. The Blind Faith displayed in a heretical text offended me greatly.

- The assertiveness of the woman called the Gypsy. Also her foul language and sexual practices. And her slovenly cooking practices. And her Gypsyhood. Completely unnecessary.

- Recreational drug abuse. (Inevitably Afro-Americans will find their way into a book set in NY.)

- 'Gangsta' slang.

- Book was written by a Jew. It mocks everything from the legal profession and is particularly insulting to Jews themselves with many racist quips. Racist book.

- Graphic detail of toilet practices.

- Graphic and unnecessarily accurate detail of female genital examination by the aforementioned invertebrate.

- Women's dominant sexual role.

- Women's sexual lasciviousness for 'pleasure' rather than procreation.

- Sex outside of wedlock.

- Interspecies sexual abominational practices.

- Gratuitous use of Freudian psychoanalysis via the roach named Reud, who grew up in a Freudian book of some sort and was so shocked that he didn't finish eating the letter F. In fact that may be a plus point.

- Murder of a human by a non-sentient invertebrate.

- Negative racial stereotyping of Germans. Racism again.

POSITIVE POINTS.

- The albeit heretical 'Numbers' using messianic imagery at least to warn the roach population of God's wrath - a failed allegorical message for humans, but at least an attempt.

- The accurate racial descriptions: Ira, the Jew and his nose size. Linguistic accuracy of the gangsta drug dealer and his Afro-American physical features and swagger.

- Complimentary descriptions of human nasal features, particularly when describing the negro's nose as a 'sensible flap' of skin practical for respiration rather than Ira's hooked 'schnozz'.

- Good practical description of DIY carpentry and inner wall spacings in NY apartments.

- An excellent guide to the functioning of the NY sewage system.


Overall rating. Complete garbage. Avoid like the bubonic.

[Meek and Humble]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

Lolita (1955)

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

“1) I’m bored. 2) He uses too many allusions to other novels, so that if you’re not well read, this book makes no sense. 3) Most American readers are not fluent in French, so to have conversations or interjections in French with no translation is plain dumb. 4) Did I mention I was bored? 5) As with another reviewer, I agree, he uses a lot of huge words that just slow a person down. And it’s not for theatrics either, it’s just huge words mid-sentence when describing something simple. Nothing in the sense of imagery is gained. 6) Also, to sum it up, it’s a story about a pedophile.”

Lord of the Flies (1955)

Author: William Golding

“I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!! It is incredibly boring and disgusting. I was very much disturbed when I found young children killing each other. I think that anyone with a conscience would agree with me.”

The Lord of the Rings (1954)

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

“The book is not readable because of the overuse of adverbs.”

[Lost Sheep McUinnean]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

My student 'Carmen María de La Santísima Trinidad' (Mari Trini for short) has told me she has a whole pile of Emglish novels she's been given. She intends to read them in addition to the KJV1611.

I should have some of her reviews for January I think.


Excellent reviews so far. They tell us all we need to know I'd say.

[Meek and Humble]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

Author: Virginia Woolf

“The only good thing to say about this “literary” drivel is that the person responsible, Virginia Woolf, has been dead for quite some time now. Let us pray to God she stays that way.”

Naked Lunch (1959)

Author: William Burroughs

“I’m a Steely Dan fan so naturally I wanted to read the book they thought compelling enough to name their band after an element of.”

1984 (1948)

Author: George Orwell

“Don’t listen to anyone who tries to distinguish between “serious” works of literature like this one and allegedly “lesser” novels. The distinction is entirely illusory, because no novels are “better” than any others, and the concept of a “great novel” is an intellectual hoax. This book isn’t as good as Harry Potter in MY opinion, and no one can refute me. Tastes are relative!”

[Rev. M. Rodimer]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

Brother Basher, while I think it's admirable that you have assigned third graders to review these challenging books, I can't imagine these one- to two-sentence commentaries receiving passing grades as "reviews" or even as elementary-school book reports.

Have you any older students who are capable of writing real reviews which discuss the content of the books, instead of saying that "it's not as good as Harry Potter"?

(That does raise the question of why one of your students is reading and promoting books about witchcraft and homosexuality . . . )

[Ezekiel Bathfire]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

The Good Soldier Schweig

Jaroslav Hasek

Set in the run-up to WW1, the book deals with a congenital idiot who is drafted into a European Army. After doing some things he leaves.

Of little interest to anyone except historians.

*

Great Expectations
Charles Dickens

Pip, an orphan, like so many of Dickens’ characters, falls in love with a dominatrix slut, meets an old woman with an old wedding cake and eventually, after being given a fortune by a convict, the convict dies and the story ends with him going back to the dominatrix.

Generally unsatisfactory with virtually no jokes, car chases or other action.

[Mistress Cookie]

Re: Landover Book Reviews!

Brother Basher, while I think it's admirable that you have assigned third graders to review these challenging books, I can't imagine these one- to two-sentence commentaries receiving passing grades as "reviews" or even as elementary-school book reports.

It was my understanding that these reviews constitute 1/3 of the points on the students' timed final? There are other questions they have to get to, so of course the answers are short?