book review, Volume 5 number 3, April 2003 BookCrossing I discovered a very interesting website the other day, and the way I found it was through a book at the post office. I regularly check the book exchange shelves for good reads, and I love science fiction. A trade paperback with an eye-catching orange cover, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch leaped into my hand a moment after it grabbed my eyeballs. I took it home and read it in two far-too-late nights. The novel is a collaboration between Neil Gaiman, who I had never heard of before, and Terry Prachett, who writes rather funny sci-fi and fantasy (I recommend The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy). This book is one of those genre-crossers, mixing fantasy, science fiction, and religious fiction. It is quite successful and very funny. The characters are well developed, the dialogue witty, and the spirits well seasoned. Biblical references are plentiful, of course, but so are musical. literary, and pop culture references. The chapter ornaments, done by David Frampton, are reminiscent of old woodcuts, and lend a visual element of modern whimsy and quite appropriate old-fashioned art hearkening to Gutenberg’s wooden press and his famous bible edition. The gist of the story is that two angels, one fallen and one still in God’s good books, have become friends over the millennia, sort of, and the End of the World has finally arrived. The Antichrist has been born, but through a mishap has been placed with the wrong family, so to speak, and so is growing up to be a normal little boy, rather than as "the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast That Is Called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness." This, as one can imagine, is putting a serious wrench in the plans of both God and Satan. Since the proper, or rather, improper raising of the lad (named Adam) has been botched by Crowley (the demonic half of the angelic pair of friends), the kid is quite unprepared to take on his foredestined role (which he doesn’t even know about). Things are very quiet while he’s growing up, but when he reaches age eleven and the Final Curtain starts to rise, Crowley and his counterpart, Aziraphale, find themselves a) in big trouble with their higher-ups and lower-downs, and b) not that keen on ending the world after all. Crowley really likes people, and finds them very good at things like music (Freddy Mercury and Queen are of great significance in Crowley’s car) and food and electricity, as well as evil (better than demons, in fact). Aziraphale is passionate about Regency silver snuffboxes and old books, and runs a bookshop in which he tries not to sell anything. The two come to the conclusion that if either side wins the Final Battle, they won’t like it nearly as much as the world is now. Heaven would be boring and Hell would be, well, Hell. Added into this mix is Agnes Nutter, the prophetess of the title, and her descendants. The problem with Agnes’ prophecies is that they are 100% correct, extremely precise (nice in its archaic meaning becomes quite important in this tale), and therefore very exasperating; the question of free will and exactly what it is and how humanity’s freedom of choice affects its spirituality is a major theme of this book, and provides depth to what would otherwise be a lightweight but well-written romp. I recommend this book for both its entertainment value and for the spiritual and religious questions it raises. A book this funny and yet this profound is uncommon and well worth reading. Now: what about the website I mentioned at the beginning of this review? On the cover of the book was a little white label with a cartoon of a book with arms and legs, and the bold hail, "Howdy! Hola! Bonjour! Guten Tag!" The blurb below read:
The ID number was handwritten on the label, and the idea of a catch-and-release book passing through interesting places around the world appealed to me. So I looked up the website. Essentially, BookCrossing is a worldwide book club that keeps track of its books and shares information about them via the internet. The site is easily navigable, clean-looking and full of great reviews and interesting logs of the places to which books of every description have traveled. There are over 130 countries represented and hundreds of thousands of books in circulation. Members of BookCrossing note where they found the book, what they thought about it, and where they left it. New books donated by members are registered on the website, assigned a number and labeled by the member, and then "released into the wild." Each book has a journal, and members can look at where a book has been and what happened to it after they released it. Some of BookCrossing’s plans for the future include:
The site is dedicated to increasing literacy and altruism, and features book covers, recent releases, and short quips on books and good karma. It’s a bibliophile’s dream site.
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