The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

Desmond packs it up as he’s leaving the DHARMA Swan hatch.

There are a bunch of similarities, but these are the big ones…

• AFTERLIFE/TIME/ETERNITY: Apparently, eternity can be reached through a church in either universe, and it takes people a while to realize that they’re dead.
• BLACK AIR: The book frequently references a (fictional) physicist/philosopher named de Selby who has a lot of crazy theories. One is about “black air” produced by volcanic activity, which creates night. The Island, of course, has its own black smoke problem.
• THE BLACK BOX: (No, not the black box from an airplane.) The main character in the book is questing after this black box throughout the book, while the Losties all have other things that they’re obsessed with. The black box contains omnium, or energy, which can make anything. . It’s a bit like a metaphor Ben gave Locke.
  • Ben: What if I told you that, somewhere on this island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be?
• THE BUNKER: As in the Swan hatch, the novel has a bunker where two men must keep strange equipment closely monitored. As it turns out, they don’t have to; it’s just another guy messing with them, which is one thing that Desmond thinks as he’s pushing the button in the hatch in Lost.
• CRIME: The main character is a robber/murderer, and the majority of the book takes place in a police station or around police, while Lost is packed with cops and criminals.
• NAMES: The main character doesn’t know his name, though he puts some effort into coming up with one. On the Island, there are plenty of aliases going around, and there’s the Man in Black who’s never given a name.

Thoughts:

For a heavily metaphysical book about a murder in hell, this was a surprisingly comfortable read. It’s hard to say more than that, except that I laughed a bit and that I’ll never look at bicycles the same way again.

Watership Down – Richard Adams

Rating: 5/5

Lost References:

Boone had this book in Australia, but Sawyer found it and is seen reading it in a few scenes. (“It’s about bunnies.”) Also, the book has a big bunny motif, largely thanks to Ben and DHARMA.

Thematically, the novel has the ongoing idea of home, which is important to all the various rabbit communities. Some of the rabbits are lead to find this home through one rabbit’s prophecies.

One group of rabbits is reminiscent of the Others, as a military state from which no one is allowed to leave. They practice kidnapping and murder (and at one point, they even have some of the protagonists captive). This group also has difficulties with childbirth.

As in Lost, Watership Down has some Smoke Monsters. One is a train, and the other is the legendary Black Rabbit of Inlé who brings fear and sickness, lives in a cave (where no time exists), and plays a game with stones.

Thoughts:

When I was a kid, Tales From Watership Down was one of my favorite books. I had a thing for rabbits, and this book seemed a little edgier than other bunny books. Some parts of the book even genuinely freaked me out, like the White Blindness (which, incidentally, is a real rabbit disease known as Myxomatosis and is used by humans to control their population). The rabbit characters were more fleshed out here than in other rabbit books. They have a very complete culture of their own, and I loved the side stories about their folk hero, El-ahrairah.

Looking back years later, I have no reason to change my opinion. The original novel, Watership Down, has the same charm and originality, so it was a pleasant foray into children’s literature.

Valhalla Rising – Clive Cussler

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

This book is on both Ben and Jack’s shelves. So far, it’s the only one I know of that’s on both. The villainous corporation in the book is called Cerberus, which is DHARMA’s name for the smoke monster.

Thoughts:

Brace yourselves, because I have more than usual to say. I’ll start with the one aspect of the story that I had to do research for. In the climax of this book, which was published in 2001, the villains attempt to bomb the World Trade Center, which might seem, er, tacky, but I looked it up, and this book came out almost a month before the September 11 attacks, on August 13. That said, I can move on to the actual book.

Clive Cussler has an unfortunate, removed way of writing. He prefers telling to showing, for one thing. For another, he treats huge passages like a history lesson, rushing ahead of himself (which removes the element of suspense), forcing facts into the story (to show how much research he did), and telling about events in a broad sweep. The only exception to this is when there’s something he particularly likes – usually a car or boat or something that Dirk Pitt is doing. Then he hones in and purple proses the passage to death. His fixation with eyes is almost as silly as Stephanie Meyers’s. His characters, all cardboard-cutout stereotypes are particularly irritating, from the conscienceless villains to the perfect, devotedly heroic, and far too lucky heroes. Pitt’s only “flaw” seems to be his aversion to the spotlight.

Even worse, at one point this paragon is rescued, along with his friends, by Clive Cussler, who writes himself in for an extended cameo (and it seems he’s made other visits over the course of the series, which wouldn’t surprise me). He seems to love all the same things as Pitt, who essentially serves as his author avatar anyway. They have the same hobbies, job, fondness for tequila, etc.

But you may want to know about the series of contrivances that masquerades as a plot. They include: Vikings, sabotage, pirate mercenaries, castaways, a damsel in distress, terrorism, Jules Verne’s Nautilus, and a dogfight where the hero’s passengers are fifteen disabled children. Are you sure you don’t want some ninjas to save an orphanage, Mr. Cussler?

In spite of all this, the adventure of the story was engaging for some reason I can’t explain. For this reason I checked the dvd of Sahara, a movie based on another Cussler book, out from the library and I actually really enjoyed it. It was the adventure without the boredom and without Cussler. Apparently, another Cussler movie called Raise the Titanic! came out a while before that, but Cussler hated it even though he was granted a cameo, and it was a while before he’d let anyone try again. This time around, he was a mega control freak and ended up suing some of Sahara’s filmmakers. Granted, it bombed in the box office, but the writing quality is better than his own, so he ought to be thanking them.

The Pearl – John Steinbeck

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

One DHARMA station is called the Pearl, and the book is about the curse of wealth, reminiscent of Hurley’s lottery win.

Thoughts:

It’s a novel about all the evil in man. Read it, and it’ll depress you for the rest of the day. But it’ll only depress you for one day, because it’s that short. And there are some truths in it, so if you want to read about a negative but mostly realistic view of humanity, this book would be pretty ideal.

Sursum Corda – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

The phrase “sursum corda,” Latin for “lift up your hearts,” is written three times on the blast door in the hatch. Yes, it’s also part of church liturgy – different versions for different churches – so I read some of those versions, too. But I’m going with the Emerson poem because, well, it’s literature, and that’s what I’m reviewing in this blog.

Thoughts:

The poem deals with predestination, a Lost theme. I like that the poem’s short, and to honor that achievement, I’ll keep my review short:

It had a couple good phrases but was largely unimpressive. Emerson had better (but this was one of his early poems, after all).

Island – Aldous Huxley

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

The main character, Will Farnaby, is out sailing and crashes his boat on a strange island. The book opens with him suddenly waking up, all ragged and dirty, in the middle of the woods, just like Jack in the opening of Lost. DHARMA also built the Pala Ferry, and Pala is the name of Huxley’s fictional island.

Fun Fact: Aldous Huxley also wrote a short story called “Jacob’s Hands” about a man named Jacob who finds he has a healing gift, and he first offers his services at a church in LA.

Thoughts:

Though Farnaby gets more likeable as the book goes on – morphing from a weak-willed philanderer to someone who will stand up for his beliefs – the narrative itself is thoroughly laced with dry, plotless passages featuring the made up philosophy/theology of Pala. The lengthy last chapter is the part that would hold the most potential interest (the invasion of the island), but unfortunately, Farnaby’s high through the whole chapter.

On the Debuts of the Misses Rachel and Pauline Garcia – Alfred de Musset

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

Locke draws what he remembers of the writing from the Swan’s blast door on a page with this (French) poem.

Thoughts:

I like what it says about people bickering about the arts when they should just sit back and enjoy them like children do. It may seem like this is the opposite of what I’m doing here, but I’m not arguing with anyone about the books; putting some thought into them doesn’t damage them at all. Unless I think about them too much…For more on this, see Lord of the Flies.

A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

Sawyer, knocking on the (past) hatch door, announces himself as the Ghost of Christmas Future. Later he calls the Man in Black the Ghost of Christmas Past. Both the book and later seasons of Lost rely on time travel. And of course, there are the ghosts.

Thoughts:

Anyone who’s seen any Christmas Carol play, movie, or musical has heard most of the memorable lines, which are usually mined straight from the book. Your average movie-goer will probably have seen more than one version to compare. And yet, you’d be surprised how many clever sentences are left to read. Personally, I even loved rereading the bits I’ve heard a million times. It’s probably (mostly) nostalgia, but I found it a cozy read.

After All These Years – Susan Isaacs

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

This book is by Sawyer’s bed in the Swan hatch as he’s recovering from his injuries. The book pertains more to Kate than Sawyer. Like Rosie in the book, Kate is on the lam after a murder charge… though unlike Rosie, Kate is actually guilty. Both of them get help from a (now-married) childhood friend/love interest named Tom. I don’t know how this new book got into the old DHARMA station, but fans speculate about it being periodically restocked. Or maybe the Losties brought the book in with them.

Thoughts:

Trashy romance/mystery novel. The only thing I can say is that Isaacs knows how to turn a phrase.

Epic of Gilgamesh

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

Locke works on a crossword puzzle in the Swan hatch. Question 42 is “Enkidu’s friend” Locke writes “Gilgamesh” as the answer (though Lostpedia guesses that this is incorrect) The Epic of Gilgamesh centers on an ancient hero who, after some adventures with Enkidu, watches his friend die and then goes on a quest for immortality. Lost, meanwhile, has three immortal-ish characters: Jacob, the Man in Black, and Richard. By the end, none of them are immortal anymore, but, hey, they had a good run. Oh, and Gilgamesh never gets that immortality, either.

Thoughts:

The text, being so fragmented, is hard to read. Then it repeats itself extensively. As a result, I went back and forth between not knowing what was happening to knowing far too well. I guess the characters want everyone on the same page, because when they tell a story, it’s duplicated at least once, word for word. As fans of ancient literature will know, other cultures use this literary technique, not just the Mesopotamians. I suppose it served them well, but it doesn’t work for a modern audience. That said, it’s a decent adventure, and it’s one of the oldest surviving works of literature, so props for that.