December Book Report and Some Thoughts on the Year: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

 

The collection of essays, Me Talk Pretty One Day by humorist David Sedaris, starts with a story of how in elementary school he was taken out of classes to attend speech therapy sessions. Rather than having his speech corrected, he worked around things by expanding his vocabulary to avoid the words with the “s” sounds he was deemed to be not good enough at. What follows are essays woven around the loose theme of talking/speech, presented in (from what I remember) chronological order, following his upbringing in North Carolina, his young adulthood in New York and his adulthood in New York and France. The tendency to choose different words as a workaround for speech problems continued into his adulthood. Rather than learn the genders of words in French, he would order things in multiples, since a “la” or “le” word transforms into a gender-neutral “les” when pluralized.

I found the book to be enjoyable, but largely forgettable. I was most interested in the stories about France, where he would give literal translations of things he tried to say in French and how the sentence structure was different and sounded juvenile in English. But the way he only presented the English end of the translations left me wanting to hear him say the thing again in French. When he talked about his first trip to France where one of the only words he knew was “bottleneck,” I longed for him to tell me the French word for “bottleneck.” Looking it up, Google Translate offers three different choices. Was he saying goulot? I’ll never know. And this is the kind of thing that really bothers me.

There were sections where I laughed, which is a pretty good endorsement, but sitting here today, I can’t tell you where those sections were or what they were about. I’ve forgotten them.

I didn’t actually read this book, I listened to it. It was read by the author. His voice, if you haven’t heard it, is similar to Droopy Dog from the old cartoons. A little southern, a little lispy, a little depressed. It was fine, really, but it drew attention to itself. For a book called Me Talk Pretty One Day, having the voice of the reader be another character in the stories works. A friend who adores David Sedaris was a little miffed that I told her my book report wasn’t going to be an overwhelming lovefest. She adores him and would listen to him saying just about anything. Sure, I feel this way about David Mitchell (the other one) and Richard Ayoade, but I do not share the passion for David Sedaris. I guess I need an English accent along with the whine to really enjoy it.

As far as the production goes, some of the chapters in the audiobook were recorded live in front of audiences and music was added in places, as chapter bumpers and during the live readings. I found this a little jarring.

Did I love it? No. Did I hate it? No. I’m sort of indifferent. If my friend said, “This other book is so much better. Listen to that one!” I would consider it. But I’m unlikely to seek out another of his books/essay collections on my own. It was whatever.

****

Anyway, I’ve finished my New Years Resolution of a book a month. Yay, me! What have I learned from this experience? I think I already knew it, but just reinforced that I actually hate reading, but I love books. Holding something with ideas inside, looking at the covers, smelling the pages…all great. Filling bookcases? Love it. Going to a bookstore? Love it. Finding a book with a cover drawn by Edward Gorey and adding it to my collection? Love it. But actually sitting and reading a book one of the worst things you can ask me to do. I guess that’s why it took me 10 years to edit my own novel. The idea of sitting down and having to read the thing was torture. Listening to books is better than reading them. But did I “enjoy” it? No. If I had, then the extra books I still have in my Audible library wouldn’t be sitting there, unlistened to. I actually finished this book in November and since then I’ve spent maybe another 30 minutes listening to a book. Knowing I was done and that I just had to write up the book report lifted a weight from my shoulders and no book has enticed me since then.

I’d like to blame my job for my disliking of reading. For work, I have to read a lot of screenplays. Sometimes I have to read a screenplay because of the continuity I’m writing and sometimes I’ll take work proofreading them. Reading = Work. For relaxation, I’m much more likely to put on a record. Listen to music. Practice piano or guitar. Write my own stuff. Do some crocheting or make some jewelry. Dig up weeds in the yard. Pull out my pastels and make some art. Sometimes I can put on an audiobook while I’m doing those other things, but just as often I’ll put on music. Or talk radio. Or a podcast. Or I’ll start the series of QI running at A and let it go. Background noise. A book isn’t background noise. It demands attention and mostly I don’t want to give it that attention.

Next year, my resolution will not involve books or reading.

November Book Report - Agatha Christie “Cards on the Table", a Hercule Poirot Mystery © 1936

 This month not only did I listen to a book by Agatha Christie, but it is available as an episode of the TV series Poirot starring David Suchet, so I watched it, too.

The title of this book, Cards on the Table, refers not only to the idiom of putting ones cards on the table (meaning to be open and honest about something) but to a game of bridge. A mysterious man who likes to dress like Mephistopheles, Mr. Shaitana, decides to hold a dinner party where he invites four sleuths, including Hercule Poirot and his occasional companion Ariadne Oliver (portrayed on the series by Zoe Wanamaker), and four criminals. Mr. Shaitana has learned through gossip that the four criminals he has invited are, in fact, murderers who have never been suspected of the murders they have committed.

After the meal, during which Mr. Shaitana baits the murderers with hints about the murders he knows about, the dinner guests break into two groups for bridge, with Mr. Shaitana sitting the game out by the fire. The murderers play their game in the room with Mr. Shaitana while the sleuths are in the next room for their game. Sometime during the course of the night, Mr. Shaitana is murdered. The sleuths have been out of the room the whole time, so it falls on them to learn the dark secrets held by the murderers and determine which one of them was able to murder Mr. Shaitana, without the others noticing.

I made the mistake of watching the episode before I finished listening to the book. This lessened my enthusiasm to finish listening to the book, but I did. There are some notable differences between the book and the show, the main one being that on the TV series Mr. Shaitana is a hobby photographer who has taken pictures of most of the murderers (maybe all, I forget) and the police detective who is in the sleuth group. There are no photographs of importance in the novel. This was added entirely for the TV show.

Two of the characters, Anne Meredith (murderer) and Superintendent Battle (sleuth), are changed from the novel as well, with Anne Meredith being more sympathetic and Battle being thrown into the suspect category.

There are other changes to characters, but not as notable to the story revolving around them. I will say that I adore Zoe Wanamaker’s performance as Ariadne Oliver on this and other episodes of the TV series, and would love to see a spinoff series of Ariadne Oliver solving crimes. Ariadne is much more likeable on the show than in the book.

Up until the very end, I wondered if the TV show had also changed the identity of the murderer, but it didn’t. The novel just makes a very convincing case for a different character which the TV show didn’t follow through with in the same way. The murderer also has his motive heightened for his original murder in the TV series. I’m still not sure from the novel why he did his original murder. If I heard the reason, I have forgotten it.

The audiobook was, like with the other Christie novel I listened to, read by Hugh Fraser. He is excellent at this and makes the characters come to life, doing all sort of accents and pitches with his voice. I enjoyed this story more than the last Christie one and infinitely more than the mystery from last month.

Somewhere (which means on Facebook or Twitter) I recently read about how mystery novels differ from other stories in that the detectives are not expected to have any character growth over their series of stories. They are only expected to be interesting and competent in solving mysteries. It got me thinking about Poirot, Miss Marple, Agatha Raison, Jessica Fletcher, Columbo and others. True. They don’t grow and change as people. They solve crimes and they do it the same way, which is what the audience finds so satisfying. They start off as interesting characters and the reader/viewer wants to learn more about them, not to see them grow and change. Anyway, I thought that was interesting and worth pondering.

Anyway, this month’s book is one of the better ones from the year. Oh, and I should mention that I basically know how to play bridge (my dad never let anyone else keep score, so I can’t do it), so that part of the plot wasn’t confusing for me. It might be for you if you are not familiar with bridge at all.

 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie - September Book Report

 If there’s one thing I love, it’s a cozy mystery -- British preferred. I have seen every episode of Murder, She Wrote several times. I can watch Columbo episodes again and again. Agatha Raisin? Loved it. I’ve seen all of Poirot, Father Brown, Miss Fisher, Shakespeare & Hathaway, Rosemary & Thyme, Queens of Mystery and others. Not all of them work for me, but many do. So for my next book, I decided to not go for another memoir but to try a mystery novel instead.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a Poirot story by Agatha Christie, published in 1926. I got the audiobook version, read by Hugh Fraser, who happens to play Captain Hastings on Poirot. He did a terrific job of reading/performing this story, including doing a good Poirot voice.

A couple of things stuck out to me in this novel. First, I must have read it before. Actually read it. I knew who the murderer was almost immediately. I’ve only read maybe three Agatha Christie novels, millions of years ago, so I thought it would be unlikely that I would select an audiobook of one of those that I’ve read, but that’s what happened.

If you’ve ever read any Agatha Christie, then you will know that guessing the murderer is nearly impossible. She withholds vital information until the very end, or introduces a new character at the very end. One of my favorite movies, Murder by Death, has a speech near the end about the frustration of reading stories by a writer like Christie. I found a copy of the speech online, which might not be accurate, but you get the point:

“You've tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now, the tables are turned. Millions of angry mystery readers are now getting their revenge. When the world learns I've outsmarted you, they'll be selling your $1.95 books for twelve cents.” -- Lionel Twain

That sums up my experience. So when I watch an episode of Poirot or Marple, I don’t try to figure out who did it. That is an impossible task. I just enjoy seeing the detective at work. Christie is a good writer and reading or listening to her work is enjoyable.

The second thing that stuck out to me was how easy her stories are to adapt to TVs and movies, which is probably why they remain so popular. The novel sounded almost like someone reading a screenplay. The dialogue was complete. The characters were complete. The locations were visual and the story was engaging.

I tried to find the TV version of this story, but for some reason it isn’t available on the subscription services I have, and I don’t want to pay extra just to watch it. Maybe I’ll change my mind, but for now that’s where I’m at.

Overall, this was a great title to listen to while pulling up crabgrass in my yard, and I’m leaving the door open to listening to more stories written by Agatha Christie.

July Book Report - Susan Calman “Cheer Up Love: Adventures in Depression with the Crab of Hate”

 If you don’t know who Susan Calman is, then you must not watch a lot of British panel shows. She’s the very short Scottish comedian who started out as a lawyer. She can stand up inside of a red post box with no problem. She loves Doctor Who and names her cats after strong fictional female characters. And she seems like a happy person.

But looks can be deceiving. Cheer Up Love is a memoir which follows Susan’s (I feel like I can call her Susan since I know her so well from seeing her on tv) life story framed around her depression. It is a book about how she deals with depression and what she wishes people without depression understood about people with depression and how to interact with them. Hint: It doesn’t involve telling people with depression to “cheer up, love.”

As a person who has struggled with depression for as long as I could remember, there was a lot in Susan’s story I could relate to. For Susan, and for me, depression has been a lifelong companion. Susan has personified her depression into something she calls the crab of hate. The crab of hate visits Susan, but also goes away sometimes. And it isn’t something she can control. It is external to her. External to logic.

I listened to this as an audiobook, read by the author. It took me several chapters to get used to the way Susan reads. She doesn’t have the natural “acting” quality to her voice. You can definitely hear that she’s reading. But I don’t think the book could have been read or performed by anyone else.

I highly recommend Cheer Up Love to people who are depressed, looking for commiseration and maybe some tips on how to cope, and I recommend it to people aren’t depressed. Her portrayal of what it is like to actually be depressed can maybe help the non-depressed people of the world understand depression a little better. Or, if nothing else, provide them with a list of things which they should never say to a depressed person.

May Book Report - Sabriel by Garth Nix (with spoilers)

 

Lots of non-book-report stuff first:

 My birthday was in April and I was gifted some credit on Amazon. I didn’t have any idea what book to read in May. The only thing that I knew was, that despite reading a relatively short book in April, this has been a slog for me. I am not enjoying reading at all. One friend thought it had to do with book choice and tried to make suggestions of books I might like. She was annoyed by my request that the books all be under 300 pages or so, just so they weren’t daunting. The copy of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress that I read was only 288 pages, but that was a trick. The current reprint edition is 398 pages long, and that 288 sure felt much longer. Tiny type will do that. I was miserable reading it. For many reasons.

 The friend who gave me the credits suggested Sabriel, based on what movies and stories he knows I enjoy. It was over my page limit, by a lot, at 491 pages, but he was basically giving it to me for my birthday because of the credit, and he thought I’d like it, so I gave it a try.

 I purchased the book very early in the month. It arrived much faster than the books I’ve been buying from independent sellers (and England) so far, so I had it available for almost the entire month. And there it sat.

 I’d like to say that I was too busy with work to get to reading, but I went almost three weeks without work in May. I freelance, so I never know how things will be with work. For June, I’m booked and will probably also be working weekends to get everything done on time and with enough attention devoted to it. But May was wide open. Day after day, I’d look at the book, see how thick it was, and put on YouTube, listen to a podcast or go for a walk in the garden.

 One night, I searched for Sabriel on YouTube and found a man who was doing his own audiobook reading of it. I listened to chapter one. It wasn’t that bad (the story or the reading of it), but I still didn’t want to crack open the book. So I listened to chapter two. He has recorded the first nine chapters, and I listened to them. Then I learned there was a prologue in the book, so I listened to that after chapter nine.

 But there were only nine chapters available this way. I got out the book, flipped to the start chapter ten and put in the bookmark…

 Then I got an email from Audible that they wanted to give me two free audiobooks. Ding! Winner! And so I listened to Sabriel, starting at chapter ten, read by Tim Curry.

 Now some book report stuff:

 Sabriel is a young woman, 16 or 17, who grew up in a very earth-like place called Ancelstierre which is separated by a wall from the Old Kingdom, where magic exists. Her father remained in the Old Kingdom because his bloodline as something called an Abhorsen meant he was needed to stop, or help stop, the constant stream of dead people and things which would claw their way back to life. He was a necromancer and was able to send the dead things back into death, by traveling there himself and taking them. He could also travel into death and bring back the spirits of things which were newly dead and make them not dead if their bodies were in good condition.

 Death in the Old Kingdom is a place with a series of areas with water connecting them. They are divided by gates and it is only when a dead thing passes the ninth and final gate that it can’t come back to life. An ancient evil being, Kerrigor, is trying to amass an army of dead things to destroy the controlled magic in the Old Kingdom, called Charter magic, and replace it with free magic. I guess because the free magic is more powerful? I missed some of that.

 Anyway, Abhorsen goes missing, not making one of his regularly scheduled meetings with Sabriel and instead sending a dead messenger to her with the tools of the necromancer - a sword and a set of magical bells. Sabriel decides to journey to the Old Kingdom to find him. It becomes her job to fight Kerrigor and restore order to the Old Kingdom, becoming the new Abhorsen.

 The story was enjoyable enough. There is a cat, called Mogget, who isn’t all he appears. He works as a servant to the Abhorson and joins Sabriel on the quest to find her father and destroy Kerrigor. She also rescues the future king, who has been turned to wood for 200, and he joins her on the quest.

 Things which really stuck out to me from the listening were that the words “Charter magic” and “Charter stones” are said a lot.  A lot-a lot. I also didn’t love the way Tim Curry did the character voices. Mogget was smarmy and everyone else sounded annoyed and snitty most of the time. But I enjoyed his reading of the bulk of the book, and that he read it so I didn’t have to.

 My main complaint at the end when (SPOILER!!!) Kerrigor is turned into a cat like Mogget is that the reader doesn’t find out what happens to cat Kerrigor. I read a little bit about the next books in the series and it seems like Kerrigor is not mentioned again. Oh, well. The thing which really got me through the story was Mogget being a cat. There were some nice visual elements in the story, like the Paperwing, a paper plane which kind of magically becomes life-like and bird-like when a mage whistles and controls it. The moments of peril didn’t last very long, which I also like because I don’t want to have to stress about what fictional characters are doing.

 By listening to the story instead of reading it, there were things which I felt were glossed over a little quickly - like what exactly Mogget is. If I had read it, I probably would have reread the few sentences where he is explained so that I was sure I understood it. I didn’t bother to go relisten to anything, aside from one time when I was getting a lot of text messages which were really disruptive to my concentration. When I read something, I’ll often reread passages just to make sure I’ve really understood everything.

 Sabriel would make a good movie, probably animated, or mini-series. I’d be curious to see and hear the bells. I enjoyed it, but not enough to continue with the series.

Book Report - Foundation by Isaac Asimov

It is the future. People have spread out all across the universe and the Galactic Empire rules. No, this is not Star Wars. That’s set in the past.

 In the future, a science has developed which is akin to fortune telling. One man, Hari Seldon, is an expert in this science and he has seen the end of the Empire. He sets in motion an elaborate, century-spanning plan to build a better ruling outcome for the universe, hopefully sparing centuries of war and unrest in the process. The start of his plan it to be exiled to the farthest end of the universe with a group of intellectuals, under the pretense of writing the perfect, all-encompassing encyclopedia of everything ever. And to not tell them the rest of the plan. Hari Seldon has recorded holograms of himself which play at pre-determined times, when he has predicted a great conflict or crisis will have just been overcome. They provide the only clue if his vision of the future is happening as he predicted or not. (It is.)

 The whole book is like a game a chess. You know how in chess, before you make your move, you try to calculate all the other moves your opponent could make as a result? Yes. Boring and time consuming. And when done properly, not very surprising. (I’m not very good and chess and never really understood why it was fun. I have not watched the Queen’s Gambit yet.)

 Let me get this out of they way. I counted two female characters in the whole book. A secretary who got one or two lines of mention, and a Commdora. The Commdora got two whole scenes, maybe totaling four pages, but she was just there to be snippy. The rest of the time, any new character who gets introduced - no matter how unfamiliar their name - don’t worry! It’s a man.

 The story is told primarily through dialogue, which makes it not very interesting and difficult to follow at times. At the start of each chapter, a paragraph or two of set-up is presented and then the characters chat. And at the start of each section of the book (there are four), just go ahead and forget all the characters you were just getting to know. They are long dead and it is now dozens of years later. But don’t forget them completely. Their names might come up. But while you try to remember the names of characters who have disappeared and died, also learn the names of all the new characters in the new section of the novel. Names, names, names.

 None of the characters are fully developed. The action, predicted, but kept secret, by Hari Seldon, is not exciting. Things just work out. Wars don’t happen. And if it looks like a war is about to happen, turn the page and it is fifty years later and the first sentence makes it clear the war was, in fact, avoided. The story is all lining up dominoes, but the reader never gets the satisfaction of seeing them knocked down.

 It does have some interesting parallels to modern-day politics. Part of one successful war-avoiding tactic is to build a religion. They use missionaries to infiltrate surrounding worlds, or train priests on those worlds, and ultimately disable power supplies. It is hard to read how the religion is weaponized in Foundation and not see similarities to how Evangelical Christians and Republicans currently work together to push an agenda. It works until the missionaries and priests are no longer welcome on nearby worlds, because they have been revealed to be more loyal to their religion than anything else.

 If putting plans in motion, politics, discussions and a universe where women are virtually nonexistent sounds good to you, then you might like Foundation. It didn’t work for me.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick - Book Report

 In the near future, which ironically already happened, January 3, 2021, the world is a different place thanks to World War Terminus. Not a lot of details are given about the war, but it becomes clear that most life, not just human life, has been wiped out on Earth. Most people have left Earth and live on one of the colony planets, where androids (which are nearly indistinguishable from people) are used as slaves.

If you remained on Earth, you would be lucky if you aren’t affected by the radiation which has poisoned everything. Most people start to deteriorate mentally after too much exposure, and then become ineligible to travel to a colony. But some people just don’t want to go. Like the hero of the story, Rick Deckard.

The androids from the colonies are sentient enough to realize they are slaves, and to want better lives. Because of this, many of them travel to Earth illegally and attempt to blend in with the people. Rick’s job is to hunt these androids and kill them.

When he gets an assignment to hunt down the most advanced version of androids yet, he jumps at the opportunity. An opportunity he only gets because the original (better) bounty hunter has been hospitalized from his encounter with one of these androids. Rick desperately wants the extra money because owning a pet on Earth is now a status symbol, since most animals are dead. And Rick and his wife, Iran, didn’t manage to keep their pet sheep alive and have replaced it with an electric one. If the neighbors found out they were keeping an electric sheep, they would be humiliated. With the extra income from these bounties, Rick hopes to buy an ostrich, despite the exorbitant cost of $30,000.00.

Meanwhile, a man named J. R. Isidore lives outside of the city in the wastelands. The suburbs of the city are filled with abandoned buildings from the mass exodus of people from Earth. Isidore’s brain has started to decay. He lives alone in a high-rise apartment building and doesn’t have a pet. He works undercover for an electronic pet repair shop which is disguised as veterinary services, picking up malfunctioning animals. Unfortunately, he does pick up a real cat and mistakes it for a fake one, hastening its death. He becomes a refuge for one of the escaped androids, Pris, who moves into his building and eventually brings two other androids along.

Rick’s hunt brings him out into the country, crossing paths with Isidore. They each also have weird religious experiences with the Christ-like figure Mercer. Mercer seems to have been created to provide humans with one of the things the androids are incapable of - empathy. But it isn’t entirely clear if Rick’s and Isadore’s experiences with Mercer are real or imagined. Is Mercer real? Is he an actor? Is he an android?

The writing is brisk to the point of feeling like details are missing. I’m so used to fight scenes (in movies) being drawn out, lasting far too long for the people fighting to still be standing, that it was jarring to read a fight scene which started and concluded in just a couple of sentences. I had to go back and read a few paragraphs a second time to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I wasn’t. There wasn’t more. Like if someone was shot in the head, they were shot in the head and dead and the story moved on to the next thing immediately.

For serious animal lovers, you might want to stay away from this one. There aren’t many animals in it, and yet most of them do not have pleasant ends. The androids embody all of humanity’s negative aspects (greed, jealousy, anger and hostility) but they don’t have any of humanity’s positive emotions (empathy, love), so they don’t value life, human or animal, the same way as the humans remaining on Earth do.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a short, easy read. If you are looking for Blade Runner, you don’t get much of it here. Although it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Blade Runner, I don’t remember many of the main elements of the novel in the film. Was Rick married? Did he have an electronic pet sheep? Did he want to buy an ostrich and eventually buy a goat? Did Pris look identical to the other android Rachael because they were the same model? Did Rachael fully know she was an android? I don’t think any of these things were included in the movie. And I don’t think the whole religious, Sisyphus and Christ-like Mercer was in the movie at all.

I wasn’t reading it expecting it to be Blade Runner. I was reading it to read it. But it is impossible to read it and not compare it to the movie as you go along. If you are looking for Blade Runner, or if you love lush prose, then you should skip this one. But if you are curious, then I would recommend reading it.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Book Report

 My New Year’s resolution this year is to read one book a month. I know for many of you this is easy and not worth a resolution. I read a lot of screenplays each year and work by writing, so more text isn’t actually that relaxing for me. So since I’m going through this hard work, I decided to do book reports. This is my February book. I'll go back and do January's report soon.  

Designed to be a prison camp, the colonies on the moon have evolved into something bigger. The tunnels of the moon are used for farming and because of favorable gravity, shipments of grain are sent from the moon to the earth to feed overpopulated cities. It isn’t only prisoners on the moon now, though. Spouses and children of prisoners were allowed to go with them. And after a hundred years of sending people to the moon, many of the residents were born free, but as citizens of the moon. Everything there is controlled by the prison guards and the company they work for, Lunar Authority, though.

One supercomputer controls almost all operations on the moon, on Luna. A Holmes computer, which because of regular expansion of its memory and processors, has become sentient. The only person who has noticed the computer is “alive” is a Luna-born computer technician named Mannie, or Man, who is sent to repair the computer whenever it malfunctions. Man has named the computer Mike, short for Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older brother. The computer malfunctions are usually Mike trying to be funny and not actual errors.

Perhaps manipulated by Mike, Man is thrown into the world of Luna’s underground rebellion. The citizens of Luna want to be free. With the help of two revolutionaries, Wyoming Knott (Wyoh) and Professor de la Paz (Prof), Man and Mike join the fight and help sway the odds in favor of the Lunatics in the fight for their lives and livelihoods. Mike eventually develops many different personalities, but they are of little consequence. They can all be thought of as Mike.

It sounds great. But this is one difficult book to read. The story is told from Man’s point of view, maybe as many as 60 years after the fact. And because Man was raised by people exiled from Russia, he speaks in the way one imagines a stereotypical Russian to speak. Here’s a sample sentence from the book:

Was comfortable lounge with own bath and no water limit.

It would be easier to read with more words:

There was a comfortable lounge with its own bath and no limit to water use.

Maybe no the optimum example from the novel, but the first one I found opening it up. The whole thing benefits from having the voice in your head speak in a Russian accent. I don’t think I could have gotten through it without hearing the text in a Russian accent. And there are Russian words scattered around here and there, just to drive home the point.

The author also gets really hung up in explaining relatively unimportant ideas in relation to the overall plot. Because the population on Luna is 2:1 male to female, most people live in clans with polygamist beliefs. Man has many “wives” and “husbands,” who live together, raise children together, and work on their farm together. The explanation of how this all works out is tedious and I will admit, I don’t think I read every single word about it.

Similarly, I glazed over a bit when the description of how the information cells in the rebellion were structured. Mike on top, with a pseudonym starting with A (Adam Selene), Man, Wyoh and Prof below, with pseudonyms starting in B, each controlling a cell of 3 with pseudonyms starting in C and so on. I think this went on for pages! And look, I’ve covered the basics in one sentence. If you encountered someone whose pseudonym started in F, you would know he was in the sixth level, and exponentially you could figure out there would be 243 people on level F.

 Some things in the description didn’t match with how I pictured the story in my mind. The cities on the moon are all underground, but when they are first introduced my mind drew them as more enclosed in domes, built on multiple levels, not necessarily underground. And as some point I think Man is described as wearing tights and having a bare chest. The farmer and computer technician of Man (who has one artificial arm) looked more like a farmer or computer technician, in coveralls or a boiler suit, in my head. I had trouble picturing him as bare chested. I also had trouble picturing a 40-year-old man as 20, because aging on the moon is very kind. Lunatics live into their hundreds regularly, and because the colonization of the moon isn’t very old, no one is really sure what the average life-expectancy on the moon might be. I pictured Man as a one-armed Jason Statham in a boiler suit with a thick Russian accent. Wyoh? Gwendoline Christie. Prof? Antonio Banderas.

It was interesting that Luna had a strict code of ethics, which needed little to no police supervision. If you got out of line with someone, murder is extremely easy on the moon. And it is already a prison. As a result, people behave and are courteous. And because women are so outnumbered, they are treated with greater respect (although whistled at constantly and written to enjoy it). The kick-off of the revolution actually happening, after years of planning, is when the prison guards rape a woman, violating one of the most sacred codes on Luna.

Overall, I do think this would be a good adaptation for a mini-series. Too much going on for a movie. But I don’t recommend that anyone read the actual book.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, © 1966

Somehow I got a UK copy of the book, although I didn't notice any spelling issues aside from all the Russian.

And I should mention that TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch) is the slogan of the moon, and mentioned with some frequency in the book. But that's a different book report.