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Weirdest book I’ve ever bought.

33 Comments

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As you know, I’m an avid reader who buys a lot of books. Some I love, some I don’t and some I want to enjoy but can’t.

Enter S.

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It arrived wrapped in plastic with a removable hard box and seal.

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I’d read good reviews of it and was eager to jump in.

S, conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams
and written by award-winning
novelist Doug Dorst, is the chroni-
de of two readers finding each other in the
margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces
they don’t understand. It is also Abrams
and Dorst’s love letter to the written word.

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Made to look like an old library book, I admit I was intrigued.

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The synopsis:

One book, two readers. A world of mystery, menace and desire.
A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger.
Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own,
leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.

THE BOOK: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V. M.
Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with monstrous crew and launched on a disorienting and perilous journey.

THE WRITER: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him.

THE READERS: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad srudent, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.

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As soon as I opened it I saw reading was going to be an interactive experience.

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It was positively crammed with letters, newspaper articles, post cards…

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There was even a hand drawn map on a paper towel. You actually had to be careful how you held this book when reading because things fell out all over the place. And while that might sound like fun, to be honest… it wasn’t.

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It was a confusing mish mash of multiple voices and long drawn out tales. The book itself was a story, and a pretty lame one at that. Then there was the translator who wrote the introduction and footnotes about the mysterious author. But the most maddening part? The margin notes conversation between two people who tell yet another story.

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There are so many of them they completely take over the pages. I found it virtually impossible to follow all three narratives at once and tried various ways to finish this clearly epic undertaking.

Did I mention the book literally stunk? As in physically smelled weird. I think they were going for eau de la musty library but it came across as noxious chemical to me. 🤢

As much as I hate to admit defeat when it comes to reading, I couldn’t finish this book.

Well… okay, I could have.

I simply didn’t want to.

J.J. Abrams needs to stick to Star Wars and the visual medium of film because this thing was a mess.

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33 thoughts on “Weirdest book I’ve ever bought.”

  2. Sounds complicated. And nessy. I see why it came in a box.
    Was there any guide to where to put something back if it fell out? If there was I would have taken everything out, read the book first, then gone back and read the margin notes, etc. if no guide, I would gave thrown it on the fire and watched how pretty the flames danced.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. There was no guide, nor any particular rhyme or reason to the some of the placements. When things first started falling out I was careful to put them back but after a while it was just an annoyance. And I tried reading things in segments but the margin notes weren’t interesting enough to stand on their own. It was a mess.

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      1. So where is the book now? I hope you donater it to themlucal library, box included. Maybe someone else can figure itball out.
        Who gavenitba good review? Academycians? Or a bunch of people who wanted everyone else to suffer too!

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I have bags ready to donate to our local library’s fund raising book store. It went in there, though I feel I should add a warning to it as well…
        😉

        Like

      1. Gotcha…i once had a Marvel Comics museum book like that…too busy to be interesting. Lots of cool inserts with no substance was a dull experience $75 waste of money

        Liked by 1 person

  13. so, i know that as a blog only writer, i am completely unqualified to comment on this. But, since i am a bit cheeky i will anyway:) It looks to me \very similar to what i’ve seen the Neo/ Emo writers doing at least in my local area. It starts out as a way for writers/poets/readers or a group of them to converse about a specific book ( the above case appears to be someone’s screen play) and winds up looking like what you are showing here. Once it’s all said and done, one of them looks at it and says’Wow, thats way cool…i bet we could sell copies of this..because it looks so cool ..totally”. But it only “looks” cool and is only truly cool to the people participating in the original notes, discussion and miscellaneous banter. Does that sound familiar?
    Inserting personal opinion here: This style should have faded by now…along with the grunge thing.

    Liked by 1 person

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