Wednesday, July 02, 2008

It's shockingly sad that

Helen Dewitt's brilliant The Last Samurai has an Amazon Sales Rank of 194,889, while William Young's The Shack has a Rank of 8.

Allow me to gently recommend that you read the former, and skip the latter.

I mean ... you can get it for only something like 43 cents plus about $3 shipping. The Shack is going to cost you 20 times that plus the $3 shipping. And Dewitt's book will definitely profoundly move you, if you have the gumption to read it all the way through, whereas Young's book will mostly just rehash a bunch of already over-hashed theology (although it almost manages to redeem itself, in the end). Plus once you get addicted to Dewitt's book, you get a full 544 amazing pages, whereas even if you *do* end up liking Young's book, you're going to run out of it at page 272.

Hey--look at that. Dewitt's book is *exactly* twice as long as Young's book. It's a sign. Twice as long, and at least twice as good.

If you do read, or have read, Dewitt's book, I'd love to hear your reaction =)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting that you wrote this. I came up with a theory just last week. My thought is that the higher the book is on the list the more dumbed down it has to be to appeal to the masses (baaaaa, as in sheep). Whereeze when a book is lower on the list like the one you mentioned it has requires a higher level of intelligence and comprehension to truly enjoy its brilliance thus of course not being able to have that mass appeal that the general sheepish people of todays society require to be higher on the list..... however I could be completly wrong. Its just a theory. Grin. Love you and good luck later today!!