Computer – DaneCobain.com

Title: Alien

Author: Alan Dean Foster

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 246

Rating: 4.25*/5

For some reason, I wasn’t expecting this book to be as good as it was. I’m not sure why, because I’ve seen and enjoyed the movie and I’ve read and enjoyed Alan Dean Foster. I think another part of the reason is the book itself, which is one of those old sci-fi paperbacks with tiny print and super yellowed pages. And then for the first ten pages or so, there was a lot of computer jargon that felt super dated and just kind of annoying, with people saying stuff like “patch the RDN drive through the CRX aux” for pages at a time.

But once I started to get absorbed into it, I found myself unironically enjoying it, and despite the fact that it’s a novelisation of the movie, I think I liked the book better. That’s a testament to Alan Dean Foster’s skills as a writer, and I was particularly impressed by how visceral it was. In the chest bursting scene, for example, Foster was writing about the stench of Kane’s perforated bowel, a detail that you wouldn’t pick up on if you just watched the movie and wrote what you saw.

All in all, this would be a great book to read if you’re into sci fi in general, as well as if you specifically like Alien. It definitely did the movie justice, hurray.

Alan Dean Foster

Click here to buy Alien.

Arianna Huffington – Fanatics and Fools | Review

Title: Fanatics and Fools

Author: Arianna Huffington

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 372

Rating: 3.5/5

Arianna Huffington – Fanatics and Fools

I have mixed feelings about this book, and when I first started it I wasn’t enjoying it to the point at which I almost gave up on it. I was filming an unhaul video for my BookTube channel when I happened to notice that my copy of this was signed by Huffington herself. That made me think that I might as well keep it.

It’s basically a big long book about the 2004 presidential election, outlining Huffington’s theories on what a democratic candidate would need to successfully unseat George Bush. Obviously it didn’t quite turn out that way, but it’s strange because a lot of what she says about this new leader that they need could be describing Barack Obama.

Huffington also has an interesting take on things because she’s no stranger to politics. She ran against Arnold Schwarzenegger for the role of governor of California, and she has some interesting things to say about his brand of politics — and indeed of Republican politics in general.

Arianna Huffington

One of the main themes in this book is the way in which corporate America basically makes a mockery of democracy, with politics for sale to the highest bidder. Huffington clearly knows her stuff and I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a dossier on her computer to this day detailing all of the sleazy, sketchy stuff that politicians get up to, not just in America but around the world.

Sure, it’s sometimes a little slow going, and I did have to read this twenty pages at a time as my bedtime book, but I am still glad that I picked it up even if it’s out of date by now and no longer really relevant. I also found Huffington’s writing style a little abrasive to begin with just because of how sarcastic she can get, but after a while I was able to overcome it.

All in all, I liked what she had to say here and if she was running for office somewhere that meant I could vote for her, I probably would. And most of the policy ideas she shared were spot on.