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Tony Miksak

WORDS ON BOOKS by Tony Miksak for KZYX&Z-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
Airs Sunday, May 27, 2007 at 10:55 am, repeated Wednesday, May 30 at 1 pm

(copyright 2007 Tony Miksak)

Title: Four Word Book Review

It is time to revive the idea of four word book reviews. We did this here once before, and not only was it lots of fun, but listeners and readers wrote in with some truly witty four word book reviews.

The original idea comes from a flourishing web site that invites filmgoers to create film reviews in four words or fewer. The "four word film review" site or fwfr.com has now collected 242,569 tiny reviews, if you can believe it.

"The Lord of the Rings" is reviewed 384 times, with entries including "Gollum gets lava shampoo" "Interminable Hobbit hugging sequence" "Frodo Misplaces Family Heirloom" and "Hobbit Makes Round Trip."

Surely we can do the same for books. The Old Testament: "Noah. see: Deluge (Ark)"

I hereby submit my own four word book review in advance of the next book by pop psychologist Dr. Phil (Phil McGraw): "Shut up, he explained."

And this for Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" ... "Leonardo wouldn't like it."

For any genre novel by Sue Grafton, Danielle Steele, John Sandford, James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark and many others: "The Same Old Story."

You get the idea. That is four words. So is this, actually. Not hard to do. You can do it. You can say a lot in four words, and I know that's eight.

Among the funniest four word film reviews are those devoted to films based on books.

"The Exorcist" ... "Room with a spew"
"Robin Hood" ... "A comedy of arrows"
"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" ... "Slaved by the bell"
"Deliverance" ... "Tough, ruthless, rough, toothless"
"The Bourne Supremacy" ... "Damon is still Bourne"
"The Indian in the Cupboard" ... "Least of the Mohicans"
"1984" ... "Orwell that ends unwell"
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" ... "Nut tries to bolt"
"I, Robot" ... "Robot goes nuts, bolts"

My favorite film-based-on-a-book review is this double-duty effort for "The Wizard of Oz" ... "Gone with the wind."

That is so CUTE!

Last time I tried this we received some zingers: Tinka Larsen's review of Steinbeck's great novel, "The Grapes of Wrath" is "Don't blame the grapes." The four word film review for "The Grapes of Wrath" is "A farewell to farms."

Sue Makovkin submitted "Where was his editor?" for "Atonement" by Ian McEwan.

Liz Helenchild, aka Late Night Liz aka Bessie Mae Mucho reviewed "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck: "Bad dad. Mad! Sad."

Slim Volume, Cowboy Poet, wrote in with a bunch. I especially liked his review of Emma Goldman's autobiography, "Living My Life" ... "Who Else Could Have?" and this one for Michael Pollan's "The Botany of Desire" ... "How plants domesticated people. For the "I Ching" ... "64 facets of infinity."

Then there are four word book reviews that break the rules.

Kate Olsen suggested "I made this up" as her review of "The Cat Hunter," a book, as far as she knows, that doesn't exist.

Johanna Bedford summarized "The Great Fire" by Shirley Hazzard... "Too big for four words."

(MUSIC UP) I hope by now you are inspired to try your hand at some four word book reviews. Email your best shots at me for a future Words on Books. Whatever happens, it's fun to try. Please send your reviews to amiksak@mcn.org.

(MUSIC) As always, transcripts are available through the KZYX web site.

Notes:

"The fwfr is a film review site like no other- an ever expanding collection of extremely brief film reviews and summaries. Submissions are welcomed from anyone- the only condition being no more than four words may be used. Now featuring 19,454 films and 242,569 reviews!"

I have a habit of writing four word WOB titles. For example: I Take it Back ... I Could Go on ... Happy Birthday to Me ... The Same Old Story ... Birds at Our Windows ... In Praise of Booksellers ... When Plagiarism Is OK ... Something's Coming, Something Good ... Before And After Harry ... Please Pass The Pomodori ... Hark! The Language Police ... Hearty Har Har Har ... Idiots, Dummies And Everything ... Reading Can Be Fun ... Death In Slow Motion ... Building The Dream City ... Last Day Of School ... Another Word For Thesaurus ... Whither The Proof Reader ... What I've Been Reading ... When Does Summer Begin? ... How To Be Good ... Please Call The Station ... Arf Arf Meow Meow ... Careful What You Wish.

I just could not bring myself to say this on the radio: "Moby Dick" ... "Dick size does matter." http://www.fwfr.com/default.asp

Tony Miksak
Words on Books: http://www.gallerybooks.com/bkm/index.html

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