Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Impacting Everywhere Soon

~ Tell us the title: Blonde Bombshell (A comedy of intergalactic proportions)
~ Who penned this work?: Tom Holt
~ How did this piece find it's way to your nightstand?: It came from the lovely library convention
~ Number of pages: 378
~ Time passed from start to finish?: About a week?
~ Describe the cover: A pretty bright blue with bold black and white writing. Plus a giant bomb heading towards Earth.
~ In what section of the bookstore would a reader find this?: Fiction, comedy, science fiction
~ Summary of the basic plot: A bomb equipped with artificial intelligence is on a mission from the planet Ostar (inhabited by dogs) to destroy planet Earth. Apparently the musical emissions the Earth sends into space are driving the dogs insane.
~ Background information on the story/author: Tom Holt is from London, England. His biography in the back of the book says that "At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines...", among other silly things.
~ What did you think of it? (your general response, what you liked or didn't like, what you learned, anything else you want to share about it): I thought it was rather hilarious. The plot line was innovative and fun, and the dialogue was witty and engaging. Books that are considered 'comedy' rarely make me laugh more than a few times, but I was amused throughout pretty much the entire story.
~ Which page was your favorite? Share why: Page 25-26. One of the main characters takes a walk in the woods and sees a unicorn. The ensuing internal dialogue is hilarious.
~ If the story was made into a movie, who would you cast as the main characters? Cameron Diaz would definitely be Lucy Pavlov. And Aaron Eckhart would be a smashing Mark Twain. Beyond that I'm not sure.
~ Share a quote that was worth reading twice. Explain why: There are several quotes that I read twice. I enjoyed the sheer randomness and humor of them.

"Not every day you hallucinate members of the medieval bestiary. But it wasn't a hallucination. Figments of the imagination don't shit in the woods. And if they do, their shit doesn't smell so confoundedly realistic. therefore, it was a unicorn."

"There's a lot of things it could be, she said. Amnesia, incipient dementia, mercury poisoning, exposure to high levels of epsilon radiation. Or it could just mean you've been married for longer than eighteen months."

""Sometimes, she said, we choose to blot out whole chunks of our past, simply because they bother us, and we decide we don't want to carry that stuff around with us any more. It's a choice, not a medical condition. For example, I can't recall a single detail of the first time I met my future brother-in-law. Judging by the fact that it was also the last time I met him, and every time my husband suggests we get together my brother-in-law says, 'Keep that crazy bitch the hell away from me,' I gather that we didn't get on."

"She spent the afternoon fixing a small problem with the PavSoft grammar-and-spelling elf -- the poor thing had reacted badly to the latest compatibility upgrades, with the result that it'd taken to wandering forlornly across spreadsheets, curling up in a corner and sobbing uncontrollably..."

(referring to Earth) "On a planet still mostly powered by flammable goo derived from the crushed corpses of long-dead krill..."

"She had a suspicion that she was falling in love. If true, that could prove to be a real nuisance, given that the man (to use the term loosely) constituted the biggest threat that humanity and the Earth had ever faced. It was a bit like getting romantically involved with the Black Death, or having a crush on George Bush."

~ Choose your rating:

- Changed. My. Life.
- I laughed, I cried, I want you to read it
- A definite page-turner
- Good to check out but don't spend the cash.
- Why did I waste my weekend on this?
- A disgrace to paper everywhere

~ Flip to page 2, 22, or 202. Share the 7th sentence on the page. "And, since she'd had no part in putting the clever brains inside the pretty body, but was merely the beneficiary of the result, she saw nothing she could justifiably take credit for."

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