Jeff Komarow

Category: Book Reviews

  • Book Review: She: A History of Adventure By H. Rider Haggard

    Book Review: She: A History of Adventure By H. Rider Haggard

    I was looking for inspiration while writing a script and heard about this book so I downloaded it. It’s one of the most popular books of all time. The book is notable for having one of the first multi dimensional female villains. “She-who-must-be-obeyed.”

    No joke, It took me 5 years to read! Is that sad to me? No, the book is a very tough read since its over 130 years old and the grammar was insane! The words have a literal opposite flow with lots of “thou” and “thee”, its a different way of thinking and getting lost in the action was quite tough.

    It took so long to finish because, well, I never gave up! I read the first half in very little time, but the second half I would read a little bit every some odd month. I never forgot about the book completely because its one of few books on my google play books app. Some books are ok for reading on a smartphone, this was not one of them.

    The book has this third party perspective that works well to immerse you in the story, that supposedly the editor was given the manuscript to publish that it was another person’s journey. Overall the beginning is good, The orphaned son gets a nanny and says this line “You is ugly but you is nice” which I thought was very humorous. Then there are exciting elements in the middle with the swamp journey and the first tribe, however it lulls for a time when it comes to many transition moments.

    “She” is a 2000 year old immortal who rules a lost ancient city. The Femme Fatale falls for one of the adventurers who thinks its her lover, even though she is the only one supposedly to be immortal. When Ayesha kills jobs wife like that, it was expected and honestly how no-one had died in so many pages it was expected but still was wild and just placed in there after so much time passed in the cave. The ending is exciting and I love the descent into the immortal fire pit.

    The only times I actually got sucked into the story was when you get to the canoe action scene, when they are escaping the cannibal tribe, and the ending.

    I can understand the cultural and historical significance of the book, but do I recommend this book? Only if you can handle 100+ year old grammar then sure!

  • “Where The Red Fern Grows” Book Review

    “Where The Red Fern Grows” Book Review

    I knew the name from the movie adaptations, so it peaked my interested when I picked up the book at the USC book fair in 2018. It cost me a whole dollar to purchase- complete with wafty scents of an old book on every page.

    My copy of "Where The Red Fern Grows"

    I thought, why not- the title Where The Red Fern Grows is such a good title I am going to read it. The cover art is also great and mysterious.

    The perspective of a boy in the rural Ozark mountains is beautiful escapism. The descriptions of the country and the boys dogs caught my full attention. This is a story with descriptions only found from someone who’s been and raised there. As an adult living in Los Angeles this was a great education on dog hunting. I did not know this was a children’s book upon reading, and frankly didn’t cross my mind because I fully enjoyed the pace of the story and how everything unfolds smoothly.

    How normal does this book make hunting? It seems that everyone is good at it and knows how to skin an animal. I am aware of where my food comes from yes, however this is a boy who just skins these animals in just a single sentence. It’s definitely a different time 100 years ago in the Ozarks than it is today. 

    The back of the book has a short summary that starts with- I kid you not “A loving threesome” well that etymology did not age well at all. A much different meaning than it did in 1961 or whenever this version was published. Another piece of the book that has not aged well is the word coons. I didn’t fully understand what it meant as I don’t recall one time the full spelling of racoons. Now I am aware of the derogatory term and the animal term, but I wanted to google it to be sure and when you google image search you get lots of fluffy cats. 

    The sappiness is what catches you off guard.The story is really melancholy and pretty sappy, the boy is crying at anything! He’s sad he cries, he’s happy he cries, it’s a lot of crying all around. I was expecting far more conflict throughout the story, which made me think of the TV shows and movies of the last 20 years, it feels like we have been in a time of negativity, every conflict, every misunderstanding, every dilemma is met with a hard lesson. In this book it was a nice break from the negativity of our time. What caught me off guard is when Billy has the accident with the pritchard boys, to me it seemed like it would become a massive problem, the family would want vengeance or have a whole different version of the story, well five pages later we don’t hear about it anymore! Just like that a death is brushed under the rug. Well that was unexpected because a story today would take it much more serious. 

    To be honest, the lack of conflict was one of the reasons why I breezed through the book and enjoyed the story so much, to have the kid win and enjoy life with his pups and be happy, its a break from the norm of today. Today it seems like so much writing and foreshadowing is focused on misery. A dystopian re-telling. A dark reboot. It’s so ingrained in film and TV today that we take it as granted, well personally it’s getting pretty tiresome. This is why it was hard to continue watching six feet under because it was so dark and depressing. Dark and sad stories are great and cathartic however there are just far too many of them today and to break from the normal and read this book was a good welcome change.

    Do I recommend this book: Yes!