Bottom of The Barrel Book Reviews-Confessions of a Recovering Preppie 228
An anonymous reader writes "Michael de Mare's, Confessions of a Recovering Preppie, has
been sitting on my desk a long time, for good reason. They say you
can't always judge a book by it's cover but in this case, the
unintentionally embarrassing front is perfect. Confessions is a painfully
ordinary collection of college stories. Michael seems to have a
different definition for the word preppie than the good people at
Webster or I do. Even though the author specializes in cryptography,
he seems unable to decipher any social situation, himself or the code
to writing a book worth reading. Click below to see how confusing it
gets.
Michael de Mare is to literature what Jeffery Dahmer is to fine
dining. At least someone finally stopped Dahmer. To complain about any
one part of this Titanic failure is like complaining that you don't
like the tilt of your room, as the ship sinks beneath the waves. The
back of the book promises, "In this compelling book, he lays bare
the instructive stories of romantic adventures, intense studies,
fascinating friend-ships, highly ambitious goals, and the wit and
wisdom that can only come from the mind of those who are capable of
fathoming the black arts of advanced cryptography and computer
science." What we get is a book that has no theme to speak of. It
reads like a logbook more than a novel. I have managed to group
Confessions into three parts. Each part consists of the few
common ideas that reappear many times in the book. It also includes
the scant instances when Michael has an idea or something noteworthy
happens.
| Confessions of a Recovering Preppie | |
| author | Michael de Mare |
| pages | 304 |
| publisher | BookSurge Publishing |
| rating | 0/10 |
| reviewer | Samzenpus |
| ISBN | 1419663275 |
| summary | Stuff happens in college but not to the author |
The first part lets us in on a few basic facts about Michael and his day to day activities. He hates rap. Indian students cheat. Walking makes Michael's legs hurt. He is scared of his stoner suite mate. CS students are the smartest students on campus. Michael is the smartest among them. He likes Chicken Parmesan, Bill O'Reilly, and shopping at Walmart. In this section Michael becomes aware that his friend likes to drink at parties until he is drunk. He informs us that this is called binge drinking and worries that it might affect his friend's grades. (His friend's grades are slightly better than his in the end.) Then he discovers that college kids pirate music. One of my favorite parts of the book can be found here. Michael tells a story about his second cousin who tried to get him seriously hurt on two separate occasions. The first time, Michael was tricked into riding an unbroken horse. The second, was an incident which involved milking an extremely unfriendly cow. This story allows the reader to understand that the feelings of dread and the overwhelming desire to make Michael de Mare stop are a perfectly normal reaction. It is a feeling that is shared by his family and most likely, anyone who talks to him.
Just when you are wondering what purpose the 300 pages of Confessions serve, the author takes a trip to Montreal. When a customs official is making her way through the train, asking if anyone has anything to declare, we find out the FBI is following Michael. Two FBI agents tell the official loudly that they have guns and that they are following Michael because he works for the NSA. At no point prior was the NSA mentioned and it is never addressed again. I re-read this part several times to make sure that it wasn't a dream sequence or a jump to future events. At this point, I was sure that this book was the best way Michael had of telling his friends and family that he was or planned on being, a spy.
Part two follows a common pattern. Michael hates rap. Indian students cheat. Walking makes Michael's legs hurt. He is scared of his stoner suite mate. CS students are the smartest students on campus. Michael is the smartest among them. He likes Chicken Parmesan, Bill O'Reilly, and shopping at Walmart. He learns that men, in particular, college-aged men, are easily manipulated by pretty girls. He doesn't see his stoner suite mate for a couple days so he reports him missing. (The stoner was visiting home.) This section contains what is easily my favorite part of the book. It also demonstrates how hard it is to read Confessions. Here, Michael is talking to a girl he may have some interest in but is so uncomfortable around, that you're not quite sure.
"Hi Shawna! How are you doing?"
"My circumstances are not good."
"Your circumstances?"
"Yes. They are not good."
Now I was concerned about Shawna's circumstances. They were, as Shawna had pointed out, not good. I didn't know which circumstances she was referring to, but I was sure that they were circumstances that she considered important. For this reason I hoped Shawna's circumstances would improve."
Then it dawned on me. Michael de Mare specializes in cryptography. This whole thing is an elaborate code! The de Mare code! If I could crack this book I could find out where the descendants of Jesus live and who the Illuminati would allow to win the Super Bowl next year. Unfortunately the best anagram of Michael de Mare I could come up with was, A charm I'd eel me. So I tried writing down every other word, then every third. I cut the pages into strips and wrapped them around sticks of different widths. I made a baking soda solution and brushed it over the pages. Finally I exposed it to a UV lamp and then heat from a light bulb. Nothing I did seemed to reveal a new story that someone might want to read, so I continued with the last 100 pages.
The end of the book provides the usual. Mike hates rap music. Indian students cheat. Walking makes Michael's legs hurt. He is scared of his stoner suite mate. CS students are the smartest students on campus. Michael is the smartest among them. He likes Chicken Parmesan, Bill O'Reilly, and shopping at Walmart. Michael doesn't see his binge drinking friend for a few days and somehow resists the urge to report him missing to the police. He explains how the world would have broke out into World War III if George Bush hadn't been elected president. He defends his thesis, graduates and is accepted into a PHD program. The book then ends as quickly and as uninterestingly as it started. I entertained the notion that this was actually a Walmart viral marketing campaign for a few moments. "Walmart, we got everything Michael de Mare needs and most things that normal people need too." Probably not the message the suits in marketing would want to send. Now I'm convinced that Confessions of a Recovering Preppie is actually part of Michael's work at the NSA. This book is part of an "enhanced interrogation" program. Right now a man in a nicely pressed suit and sunglasses is reading Mr. de Mare's device of unusual punishment, for the second time, to a prisoner who begs to just be water-boarded like usual. Confessions of a Recovering Preppie is not the bottom of the barrel it is in a hole five feet below the barrel.
End This. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please. No more. These reviews are, truly, the bottom of the barrel.
The editing is worse.
-G
Stuff that matters? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for occasional humor (hell, I used to be an admin on Fark) -- but I'm thinking that if Slashdot is going to be running as much crap as they have with 'idle', crappy book reviews, and criticizing their reader e-mail, that they need to drop the "Stuff that Matters" tag line.
Is it really that surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Correction (Score:3, Insightful)
ALL students cheat! Perhaps he meant that Indian students that cheat are caught more frequently?
Please stop (Score:2, Insightful)
Please stop putting links to "idle" on the front page.
Re:End This. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was actually entertained... If you don't like time-wasters on Idle, how hard is it to avoid? You know, it actually wastes less of your time if you're able to refrain from clicking in, reading enough to assure yourself that you don't like it, and then posting to complain. Sure, it's a complete waste and a pointless review on a pointless book. But it's pretty easy to skip if you're not in the mood.
Why is there a review of a vanity press title? (Score:5, Insightful)
BookSurge is an Amazon-owned vanity press. Since when does anybody, including Slashdot, waste time reviewing self-published books? Even in the "Idle" section this is stupid.
Maybe this is a thinly veiled review by the author to get a few people to buy this thing to experience its awfulness.
SirWired
Well, I like the review. (Score:5, Insightful)
/. gets books to review and some of them are awful. Nothing wrong with putting that on the front page. So please stop can people stop whinging about idle on the front page.
Re:Correction (Score:4, Insightful)
That "Saved by the Bell" show ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Michael seems to have a different definition for the word preppie than the good people at Webster or I do.
You and me both. When I went to high school (early 80s), preppies were the kids who were taking college prep classes - hence "preppie". They were the ones who studied, dressed neatly, participated in sports, band, chorus, etc... and generally got good grades. They were usually from middle class families whose parents understood the value of an education. Everyone in that group wanted to be: doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer specialists, or any other white collar professional career you can think of. Preppies were usually decent kids. Yeah, there were some rich kids who had the nice cars and coasted through life, but they were the rich kids and weren't part of the preppie crowd. They were the ones who got in Ivy League schools because they were legacies or what ever.
It was NOT someone who tried to get away with conning other kids and teachers, doing little work, and just coasting through life.
Re:End This. (Score:2, Insightful)
Doing a funny review of a bad book is all well and good, but samzenpus's meandering trainwreck of a writing style, combined with his painfully unfunny commentary and his... creative use of punctuation means that he's really not the one to be doing them.
Re:Book Surge (Score:2, Insightful)
Please NO MORE (Score:5, Insightful)
I KNOW what the url to DIGG is. If I wanted braindead lolcat crap I'd go there.
You are seriously destroying the integrity of Slashdot with Idle, the reader's mail garbage, and now this book review drivel.
Is it driving up your hits? Perhaps it is, perhaps it is also making you more money. Are you so greedy that you are willing to cheapen yourselves in this way? Why not just get into the spam industry if that's the case?
There is no value in this. It detracts from otherwise good content. You can see perfectly well that there are already many complaining. Do you not care about this site any more?
Enough is enough
Re:End This. (Score:5, Insightful)
D'oh!
I assumed base on the fact that this was a complete waste of time that this was Idle, but didn't actually look.
You are absolutely right. WTF is this doing anywhere but Idle!?!
Re:Get Harlan Ellison to do a review, then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, slashdot is more informal than most newspapers. Also, you could simply not read the reviews. That would work too. But, I think a better point is that in some way, they are entertaining you, because here you are, debating with me the marits (or not) of having these reviews. Is that entertainment? If not, why are you here?
Re:Well, I like the review. (Score:4, Insightful)
You may offer me a counter argument. Allow me to couynter with a counter counter argument...
If you don't like the idle stuff, then why did you enter this thread?
Back more to your point, not all the slashdot articles are useful. Quite a lot are very speculative, and the ones on basic science, while very entertaining, are not really useful to me, beyond entertainment. Oh, and the threads are often a complete waste of time (Someone in ther internet is wrong!--Randall Munroe), but an entertaining waste of time, so I still post.
To conclude that somewhat rambling point, I assert that the main purpose of slashdot is entertainment. So the question becomes, is idle entertaining?
Personally, I find that the hit rate for idle is about as high as any of the other sections.
Re:Get Harlan Ellison to do a review, then. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I can't depend on slashdot actually restricting the front page to stuff that at least *someone* thinks "matters" (it's clear that not even the reviewer did) then it's less useful.
Does it matter how old the miniture lego man is? Or what the latest apple rumour (to the nth degree) is? Or that article about 1Pb databases which kind of falls in to the "duh" category if you've been following Moore's law for any time at all.
In your dreams. I'm here because I had hoped that after a few cycles of this crap they'd quit posting it, but it's obvious that I gave Taco too much credit and ignoring it won't make it go away.
Honestly, I don't dream about whether or not you are entertained. But you are still here posting (and quite annoyed by me if your tone is anything to go by). A post like your last reply will go nowhere towards making Taco stop posting these things, since it's such a deeply nested reply. So, you muse be getting some entertainment since you took the effort to make that post.
Or you're doing something you don't enjoy for reasons you don't fully understand. But here's the rub, now you either have to let my claim stand, or post a reply.
Now *that's* entertainment!
Re:Please NO MORE (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot used to be a relatively safe haven from the mass stupidity of the Internet. But recently that has changed -- that's the point. Something, presumably greed and retarded marketing droids (same thing really) has caused this change on Slashdot.
Now we have the Idiocracy of Idle, dear Taco, and reviews that are just juvenile ways of insulting people. It doesn't need to be this way. The whole world is dumbing down, but it's reasonable to expect Slashdot to have standards -- based on 10 years of seemingly having them.