ALL I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED FROM MY CAT by Suzy Becker

All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat is a little illustrated book by Suzy Becker. Each page has some piece of wisdom like “Be curious” and “Don’t always come when you’re called,” and a corresponding illustration involving a fat white cat.

The whole thing is very cutesy, and if you aren’t a cat lover, this isn’t for you. But if you are a cat lover/owner, you can relate to a lot of what’s in here, and you’ll get some enjoyment out of the book.

Ultimately, All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat, while containing nothing particularly hilarious or classic, is what it sets out to be: cute.

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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame

The Wind in the Willows is a children’s novel by Kenneth Grahame, and was originally published in 1908. It concerns the doings of four anthropomorphized creatures: Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad. Most of the book involves their day-to-day activities, and there is very little plot to speak of.

The book is quite often tediously slow. No character other than Toad does anything remotely interesting or anything approximating an “adventure”. Most of the book involves Mole and Rat puttering around their happy but excruciatingly mundane lives. Those chapters that involve Toad are slightly more interesting. The last chapter of the book has the makings of a full-blown action scene, but Grahame breezes through it in astonishingly short order. The characters are moderately interesting, but three out of the four protagonists are irritatingly melodramatic in their behavior.

Something Grahame has done well is vividly depict the charms of nature and the English countryside. But sometimes he does this too vividly, particularly at the beginnings of chapters, where the reader is often faced with page after page of nothing but description.

The Wind in the Willows is not without its charms, but it isn’t particularly interesting.

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AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY by Tracy Letts

August: Osage County is Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which debuted in 2007. It is typically billed as a dark comedy or tragicomedy. It deals with the reunion of a family in rural Oklahoma after the death of its patriarch. During this time, skeletons come out of closets, and drama ensues.

The play features 13 characters, and most of them get a substantial amount of attention from the author. Balancing all these characters is something Letts does particularly well, and this is especially highlighted when there are two and three conversations going on simultaneously.

Very few of these characters are the least bit sympathetic. Most of them spend most of their time hashing out their problems in nasty, unpleasant ways. Letts seems to be under the impression that the way to go here is to create as many irreconcilable issues as he can and then not resolve any of them. Some people may think that makes good drama; others will rightly ask, “so what?” and “what’s the point?”.

August: Osage County certainly has its moments, but it’s never particularly innovative or impressive. I, for one, am hard-pressed to understand just what about the play was Pulitzer-worthy.

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SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash is a cyberpunk science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, originally published in 1992. It involves virtual reality and computer science, religion (particularly ancient Mesopotamian religions, Sumerian in particular), linguistics, and philosophy.

Stephenson writes in the present tense, a technique that is typically annoying and inferior, but which Stephenson pulls off reasonably well. This is not to say, however, that Snow Crash would not have been better served by being written in the standard past tense. It's close.

The world Stephenson has created is vivid and interesting. Society has degenerated into anarcho-capitalism; virtually every aspect of government has been relegated to the private sector. Elements of Stephenson's Metaverse are present in today's internet. Stephenson holds the reader's interest with his colorful characters, including his main character, the sword-wielding hacker Hiro Protagonist. 

A cast of interesting people doing interesting things is, ultimately, enough to carry the book, which is good, because Stephenson's take on philosophy, religion and linguistics falls flat. Stephenson obviously did a lot of research, which he presents as page after page of lecture from the Librarian character. He's gotten some things fundamentally wrong, however, most notably the development of early Christianity. And his concept of a real-life virus as code is downright silly.

Ultimately, Snow Crash is seriously flawed, but well worth reading. 

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