buter's BABY blog

The last man on earth walks into a bar.
What does he say?

Drink, I'd like another bartender.

I'm reading a book called The Rule of Four, which has been described as "The Da Vinci Code for people with brains" ... which in itself was enough of a recommendation for me to read it. It's about some Princeton students delving into a 15th Century mystery hidden within the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii. Dare ya to say *that* 10-times-fast.

(deep breath) that that that that that that that that that that

Although I'm not going to devolve into a book review here, you should know that this book is truly astounding. It covers Renaissance theories of art, philosophy, music, mathematics, and religion, all while preparing a final graduate thesis at Princeton. But even apart from that, it surprises me with genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, like the joke above. If I haven't convinced you to check it out, then I give up.

If you'd done as I asked, and calibrated yourself according to my sci-fi top 10 books, then you still won't know why I liked this book so much.

So here, for your literary amusement and edification (edifiction?), is my mostly-not-sci-fi top 10 book list. To make it on the list, the book must be well written, thought provoking, and above all, readable more than once. Depending on my mood, the order of books in the list will change, but this is the order in which they sprang to mind... (tonight ...)

• The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
• Anything in the Sherlock Holmes Canon (Arthur Conan Doyle)
• The Return of the King (JRR Tolkein) - yes, the third book. I know what I'm talking about.
  
• the Mordant's Need duo (Stephen Donaldson)
• The Number of the Beast (Robert Heinlein)
• Kafka On The Shore (Haruki Murakami)
• Quicksilver (Neal Stephenson)
• His Dark Materials trilogy (Philip Pullman)
• Persuasion (Jane Austen)
• The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

There you have it. Another list. I haven't finished The Rule of Four yet, so I can't tell you if it will make it onto my "must read again" list. But it was definitely worth all $4.95 to get it at the clearance table at the local bookstore. Did I ever tell you my failsafe for picking a book to buy? I call it "The Middle Page Test". Open the book in the store, at a random page somewhere in the middle, and determine if the paragraphs you read there make you want to read more. If yes, it passes The Middle Page Test. If no, then put it down and pick up the next one. If it's not well written enough to make you want to read on from some random page, then it's not worth starting.

Oh and it makes for a nice glitch in the matrix when you come across that Middle Page later on.