20: The 37th Parallel – The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway

I spent a longer-than-normal amount of time staring at this book in the bookstore, trying to decide if I wanted to buy it. It was on sale, just a few dollars — yet, I was perplexed.

Namely, because it was unclear (from the inside, vs. the outside of the book) whether or not I was looking at a purposeful work of fiction. The outside makes it very clear that the book is non-fiction — and then you flip it open, and it’s written like a novel, around a seemingly fictional main character. In the bookstore, I finally decided that it was meant as non-fiction and purchased it, because I was intrigued by the title (and the fact that the proclaimed “UFO Highway” runs straight across the part of the world that I live in).

I got the book home, started reading it… and was further confused. Was this a novel? It didn’t read like a piece of non-fiction. Scenes were too “set up”, too stagey, for a piece of non-fiction. It was a very odd way for a non-fiction piece to be written, because it was like it was asking not to be believed. Finally, I got on Amazon and tried to ascertain what the heck I was looking at — just looking for something that would either say “based on actual incidents” or “totally fake story”. Finally, I came across a review by the man who is the subject of the book, which led me to believe that this was at least marginally intended as a work of non-fiction.

Further confusing matters was the title — The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway. This is a Very Misleading title; namely, because the book isn’t about that — it’s about the struggles of a man, Chuck Zukowski, who slowly becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind UFO-related phenomena. It’s about his sacrifices and personal cost as he researches things like cattle mutilations — coming up, time and time again, with nothing to show for his passion except a bunch of inexplicable points of contention — plus overdrawn credit cards and a rapidly fraying marriage.

In other words, the bulk of the book has nothing to do with the title. It’s kind of annoying and frustrating. In fact, when I reached a point about 3/4 of the way through, I was beginning to wonder if the title was ever going to come into play at all, and only continued reading because I was convinced that it wasn’t going to come into play and wanted to see if the book would fool me and turn things around again.

I also have to complain about the writing style. The 3rd-person, novelistic style did not suit the content. It detracted from the reality of the story, constantly making you think that you were reading something fake. It also read like something the the author had obvious cinematic plans for — which isn’t much of a stretch considering the author apparently also wrote the book that the movie The Social Network was based on, and that in the jacket bio the author refers to himself as “one of the most influential writers in the film industry.”

Finally, during the final fourth of the book, things get a little more interesting — the black helicopters and SUVs hinted at and implied in previous chapters finally come into play, and FINALLY, in the last few pages, we get the significance of the title explained to us.

In other words, the title of the book ruins the end of the book. The end of the book reads like it’s some big reveal — but we’ve known about this UFO highway thing ever since we picked the darn book up off the shelf. I know the publishers probably gave the book this title because people wouldn’t read a book called “Chuck Zukowski: The Little UFO Researcher Who Could” — I only bought this book because I was intrigued by the title — but it seems like a bait-and-switch. I didn’t want to read about some guy who’s having trouble with his wife because he’s investing too much time and money in his hobby. I wanted to read about that darn UFO highway!

Also, in a super annoying, super-stagey turn of events, words on the final page of the story were redacted: you know, the way they do in official government documents where things are too top-secret to show the general public:

This kind of thing.

I know what he was going for. The last quarter of the book got more into the “black helicopter” area – the government conspiracy stuff, SO IT’S LIKE THE GOVERNMENT GOT TO THE PUBLISHERS OF THE BOOK AND FORCED THEM TO REDACT STUFF. GET IT?!

I’m sorry, but the effect wasn’t cool, or sinister, or mysterious, or whatever it was that the author was going for. It was simply annoying, and reinforced the stagey, fakey quality of the book, further undermining that anybody seriously interested in the content is actually going to take this book seriously.

In the end, the book was just too cinematic to be believable, and too little composed of the things that I was hoping to read about based on the title. While I found out a few intriguing facts from it, those bits and pieces were far too few and far in between.

Not worth it. If you want to read about ostensibly “true life” alien stuff, read Communion.

17: Jurassic Park

In another very convenient coincidence — I just finished reading Jurassic Park for the first time this weekend. (I’m working on my movie review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom for my movie blog as we speak…)

Of course, reading the book, after watching the movie for 25 or so years, one can’t help compare it to the movie.

The plot of the book is less concise, and several things are treated as though they are great mysteries, when (even if I hadn’t seen the movie) a reader would pretty much figure it out immediately. The beginning of the book spends a long time on the mystery of what this mysterious John Hammond is doing out on that island… and give like five clues before revealing that he’s created baby dinosaurs… when we doubtlessly already know this based on the fact that the book is called JURASSIC PARK.

The book features scenes much more gruesome and graphic than the movie. (Nedry gets his guts eaten while he’s still alive. Wu, the Asian scientist who is responsible for the cloned dinosaurs, also gets his guts eaten while he’s still alive.) Alternatively, several characters who die relatively early on in the movie survive the entire book. Our protagonist, Alan Grant, likes kids in the book (unlike in the movie, where not liking children is one of his major personality traits) and he and Ellie Statler are never a couple. Ian Malcolm (famous for his extensive monologues in the movie) has even more extensive monologues, going on for pages and pages with nary an interruption. (Incidentally, some of those monologues were mined for his brief appearances in Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom). The two kids from the movie were in the book, but their positions were reversed — Tim was the older kid and the computer nerd, and Lex… complained the whole time. Ultimately, of course, all these character things are neither good things nor bad things, really. Just different.

The book also spent pages and pages explaining the computer system at Jurassic Park, and what they were having to do to get it back on line… and it gets a little dull. I know that the issue here is that I’m reading this book twenty-five years later, in a world where people can use their phones to turn on the AC before they get home — and Michael Crichton was writing for an audience who had literally never used a computer. (Not to mention that the high-tech system he’s describing sounds rather quaint.) But, again, I can’t really fault the book for these things.

But I can fault it for overall affect. Initially, reading the book, I was really engrossed and felt as though the book was a huge improvement on the movie. But by the end, I felt like the movie was a huge improvement on the book. The book meanders, goes off on tangents, dwells too long on mysteries that aren’t mysterious — and ultimately, the movie tightened it up in just the right places. Not that the movie is a flawless experience, but it’s pretty good for what it is.

P.S. I’d like to make one additional complaint on the 25th anniversary edition of the book (which is what I read). Namely, this edition is FULL OF TYPOS. For a 25th anniversary edition, that is pretty shameful.

11: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

I recently read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as you know. So, I figured I ought to read the sequel, as it picks up exactly after the first book ends, and I’d always wondered (when watching the movie) exactly what happens after that elevator shoots out the roof. (And wondered why Hollywood, which is so desperately enamored of sequels, hasn’t ever tried to turn this into a movie.)

Well, it readily became apparent why it was never sequelized by Hollywood… because it isn’t very good. In fact, it’s straight-up bad. (There are some spoilers below, but I’ll keep the ending a secret… not that it’s a very good or interesting secret, but if you’re wanting to read it, I won’t ruin it for you…)

They shoot out of the roof, they go too far, they have some brief adventures orbiting earth (followed by an entire chapter which seems to be a satire of American politics — a topic all children love, as you know); avoid space aliens; go back to the chocolate factory; experience some conflict based on Charlie’s awful grandparents continuing to be lazy and awful — and then the ending (I won’t spoil for you) happens, and it ends just as abruptly as the first book.

It’s a mess.

The three things that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has going for it are a) a clear plot, b) a fun setting, and c) a clear moral.

ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE ABSENT IN THIS BOOK.

Stuff happens in it — and that’s all you can really say. What was the point? Old people are awful? It has the feeling of a book that was written because it was demanded by a publisher — not because the author was particularly inspired.

It wasn’t much longer than the first book — which took me maybe a couple hours to read — but this took me more than two weeks to finish reading because I simply wasn’t enjoying it. It was dull and obnoxious, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

I can’t even tell you to read this book if you’re interested to find out what happened after the other story — because “they aimlessly goofed around for a while, everybody acted kind of like a jerk except for Charlie who stood meekly in the corner” is not a story. It’s not even a good ‘continuation’ or ‘revisiting’. I mean, what does anybody want out of a sequel to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”? They want more chocolate factory is what they want — we needed to pick up with Charlie’s first day on the job, and the problems he runs into (not Oompa Loompa labor strikes or the inevitable lawsuits from the other children who went on the factory tour — but fun, fanciful problems, like going on their own safari to source new flavors for candies, or creating something like a fruit-leather kite which turns out to attract whangdoodles and hornswogglers, the deadly enemies of the Oompa Loompas… And it all needs to be firmly wrapped around specific “moral of the story” moments, like the first book was.

I understand if Roald Dahl felt like, as an author, he had tapped out the whole concept of the chocolate factory and he just didn’t have more to write about it. FINE. But if that’s the case, DON’T WRITE A SEQUEL. (Of course, authors write for a living, so it’s possible he just needed the money to buy food. I get this. But that doesn’t mean it’s worth reading.)

It’s not worth reading.

The End. – UH

9: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

It occurred to me, randomly, that I should probably read this book. I didn’t read it as a child, but I’ve seen the movie(s) multiple times — and it’s always good to be able to say you’ve read the book when you’re a fan of the film.

This is due to the fact that sometimes, on rare occasions (such as with Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man) the film is actually a huge improvement. (The film version of The Thin Man has delightful main characters. The book version had selfish, hideously unlikeable main characters — and, unlike the film, I don’t recommend it.)

So, as I said, I decided this would be the year that I finally read this book — so that I could compare it to the two film versions that I’ve seen. Unlike many, I actually did not grow up watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) — so I don’t have a sentimental attachment to the film but have grown to appreciate it over the years. Similarly, I have many reasons to dislike the Tim Burton (2005) version — but I don’t. I actually think it’s a pretty well-put-together film (mainly having issues with the casting of the lead. Johnny Depp wasn’t terrible — I just think there were other people who would have been much more suited to the job). (I’m sure I’ll be going into those films at more length on my other blog, Every Movie on My Shelf).

How does the book fare compared to the films? Pretty well, actually. The first film diverges in minor details and the addition of certain songs, the loss of one of Charlie’s parents (Dad didn’t make it into the 1971 film version, for no clear reason — except that they could save the cost of a parent who doesn’t ultimately do very much for the plot), and certain changes to the character of Willy Wonka (who, unlike his portrayal in the 1971 version, is not a psychopath). The 2005 film diverges in the interpretation of Willy Wonka (now just a socially inept weirdo) and provides additional supporting material regarding Charlie’s family (and Willy Wonka’s motivations and family, which IN MOST STORIES would bog down the film unnecessarily — but in this story, didn’t hurt at all).

Ultimately, though, the meat of the book (a cautionary tale about bad childhood behavior) is correctly and accurately portrayed in both films. Having been a fan of the films first didn’t hurt the book to any appreciable degree — nor did it interfere with mental visuals painted. Plus, it’s an extremely fast read; it took me about two hours to finish (probably would have taken less, if I hadn’t been sleepy the evening I started to read it). So do I recommend it? If you like light, very British, YA-type reading (and/or are a fan of either of the films), most definitely.