Deal with it (I guess?).

I think I got this book for the wrong, wrong reason.  That reason is that I was trying to get a cheat sheet of the sort of material that I should be looking for when I shop in thrift stores, what this book actually is is a coffee-table book that no one would actually read - and nobody likely should read.

It's pretty dull - the running joke with Monster Man became, "and in *yadda yadda year*, what was the little known country which produced a writer who won a prize for writing about the problems of that country's people?"

You just start skipping by entire sections of the book, wholesale, going through dry facts like you're sorting through a barrel of beans with the intent of organizing them, based on color, shape and size.  Oh, there's facts about decent authors that I think I might find interesting, and usually out of every 20 books about a gay character dealing with his society while having deep emotional problems stemming from his mother's lackluster mothering techniques there is something that actually seems like sane reading material. 

Yep, this is another book that chooses to high light material that focuses more on being award baiting material than actually entertaining.  Hell, sometimes I just don't know what the hell I'm reading about - sometimes the writers tasked with writing a few paragraphs-long blurb about a book or its author completely shits the bed, and the explanation about a book ranges from the bizarre - simply listing off things that happen in the book (I'm guessing) or the overly specific explanation of different "themes" of the books.    I mean, how hard is it to explain what the shit Brave New World is ABOUT?  Apparently, this was like asking one of the contributors to have to turn off their Snob-o-Meter and then follow it up with killing their closest loved ones.  

Dance around the subject matter, contributors, dance!

This is basically a badly-written and cobbled together literary, almost 800 page long version of that Billy Joel song, "We Didn't Start the Fire."  And, yes, Stranger in a Strange Land is a part of the collection.  "These are things that happened!", the book seems to be shouting.  "Yes," I answer back, "but where's the beef?  Why should I care about these things, outside of your assertion that it's super important and that it is historically important?"  

I still haven't gotten an answer back on that one.  Oh well.

Post-Script - After some consideration, I realized that what I should have been looking at, as opposed to this book, is this list, compiled by the people of Reddit, for some actually GOOD reading material.  WHAT WAS I THINKING, READING THIS FRIGGING MESS OF A BOOK OH GOD

"For those who would learn to siesta well, I advise taking a cat as a teacher," German photographer Hans W. Silvester writes in this book's preface. And anybody who has ever owned a cat knows that he has a point: Cats sleep up to 17 hours a day, preserving their energy for the moments when it is really needed – even if they live in an environment where they never need to hunt (there's still that all-important playing, after all!); and even if a cat's sleep is never so deep that it can't be stirred at a moment's notice (hence the term "cat nap"). While cats may change their sleeping places several times a day, they will always choose a spot that affords them equal measures of comfort and protection: warmth and soft ground or soft bedding, but also shelter from the wind and from unwanted intruders.

Silvester is a well-known photo journalist with an established track record for environmentally sensitive reporting (including, inter alia, a widely publicized report on the destruction of the Amazonian jungle). Cats have been a part of his life for well over 40 years; and his love and intimate knowledge of his subject is quite obvious from the photos in this magnificent coffee table book, originally published in France under the title "Sieste et Tendresse" ("Siesta and Tenderness"). Although based in the Provence, for this project he traveled to the Greek Cyclades Islands, where cats are virtually omnipresent: unlike their domesticated brothers and sisters elsewhere, carefree outdoor dwellers who may or may not be attached to a human family; nor, however, exclusively scrawny back-alley bags of bones.  The presence of cats is an everyday fact of life in Greece; humans and felines coexist without (for the most part) human attempts to over-domesticate their feline neighbors. Cats are appreciated for their help in keeping rats and mice in check, and while the local approach to animal control can occasionally be drastic as well, overall feline life in Southern Europe (and particularly in Greece) is probably much closer to their natural existence than in many other Western societies, where they are all too often either pampered and overfed indoor dwellers or abandoned, raggedy, disease-ridden skeletons who have learned to expect nothing but evil from humans. The photos in this book depict outdoor cats in unposed, natural circumstances; and yet in positions and situations every cat lover will instantly recognize.

On almost 130 pages, Silvester thus chronicles cats of all colors and sizes curled up with complete abandon on rooftops, windowsills, concrete and wooden stairs, balconies, flower pots, cafe chairs, benches, sofas, a fruit vendor’s empty cardboard boxes, wooden boxes, trailers, fishermen’s boats, the hood of a car, high grass and next to a chapel bell, stretched out in the middle of a street, next to a wooden fence, on a balustrade, a quai or a wall, squeezed into the branches of a tree or beside a building’s wooden beams, perched into a corner, a group of large rocks, a spot of soft earth in the middle of a meadow, a cast-iron balcony roof grid, an abandoned tire or the wheel of a concrete mixer, piled up on top of each other, yawning, playing and exchanging little tendernesses, and even a few pictures of kittens happily feeding from their somnolent mothers. While the photographer’s focus is clearly on his feline subjects, many of his pictures also show the unique flavor of the Greek islands where they were taken; the Cyclades’ sun-drenched landscape, the deep blue of the Mediterranean, the white of walls and houses, and the peeling blue, green and red paint of wooden fishing boats, doors and window frames. This is a book to contemplate, smile and, occasionally, laugh out loud – a marvelous gift for cat lovers young and old.