I receintly bought a book to read on the plane. I figured something that was on the New York Time's Best Seller list wouldn't be to bad of a bet. Boy, was I ever wrong. It has to be the worse book I've ever read. I decided that I should start a book review page to prevent people from making the same mistake.
Books:
ISBN: 0-312-96928-7
First of all, a book that you decide to put down after reading a chapter or two shortly after buying the book is not a good sign. It's even a worse sign when you don't have anything else to do and decide to listen to music instead.
It's hard to put a finger on what's bad in this book. It basicly boils down to that he tries to hard to tell the story. He throws tons of cute little phrases in that are more anoying then helpful. He just doesn't know how to be subtle about various hints he drops in the book. Everything is obvious where he is trying to go with the story.
The book isn't so bad if you have no understanding of science and medicine, but if you have any understanding it is just worse. One of the largest problems is a statement he makes near the end of the book.
Back in Boston, he had hardly ever noticed the stars, but now that he was on the other side of the earth [China], he could see that everything was out of place.This statement implies that the stars are unfamilar to him. Last time I checked, China is still in the northern hemisphere. This means that the stars are exactly the same as in Boston minus the latitude differences. The only place that they are slightly different, is in the souther hemisphere, but even then, half the sky is still recognizable. I know this from my receint trip to New Zeland where I recognized the northern half of the sky. When an author can't even get some of the basics like this down, it's obvious he is not cut out to be an author.
If you feel that the book can't be this bad, and would like to write you're own comments, I'm willing to give the book to anyone who wants it (they must pay shipping though!). The only catch is that you must right up your comments for posting to this page, and once you are done reading it send it on to the next person who must also follow these two rules. If you are interested, send email to John-Mark Gurney <gurney_j@resnet.uoregon.edu>. Hope to send this book off soon!