The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

There are so many references to this work, some of which I didn’t even catch until reading up on fan sites. Where to begin?

A man named Henry Gale crashes on the island in a hot air balloon. (Ben Linus steals his identity.) Later, Sawyer calls Tom Friendly, one of the Others, “Zeke.” Zeke is one of the farmhands that works for Henry Gale, just as Tom works for Ben.

There is an episode titled “The Man Behind the Curtain” in which Locke calls Ben this and then directly mentions the Wizard of Oz. (As it turns out, the actual powerful being behind the curtain is Jacob, though he, unlike the Wizard, has real powers.) There is also a three-part episode called “There’s No Place Like Home” with flash forwards for Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, Kate, & Aaron.

Then there are also some references to the film, like a character getting crushed and having red shoes sticking out. (In the book, they were silver shoes, not ruby slippers.) But such references don’t really count, so I think I’ll let it go here.

Speaking of shoes, Dorothy uses her shoes and a wish to return home to get back to Kansas. To get back to the Island, Jack thinks he needs his father’s shoes.

On a larger, thematic note, both stories are about people being caught in a storm and thrown into a magical land.

Thoughts:

If I’m honest, I didn’t really care for this book. It wasn’t bad, but with all the hype around both the book and the movie, I was expecting a little bit more. It was written very simplistically, which one would expect from a children’s book, but there was far more “telling” than “showing” in the action. I never really felt engaged or like I was part of the story, just observing from the outside. Dorothy’s emotions especially were told very passively, and even when she did say or do things that would support the purported emotions, it just wasn’t enough to make up for the rest.

Lost: Signs of Life – Frank Thompson

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

Again, this book took place during the first season of Lost, though it didn’t include the crash like the others did. This one includes the motifs of art, dreams/visions, and ghosts.

Thoughts:

I liked that it actually added to the Island mysteries, as opposed to Endangered Species, which was basically about a jungle adventure. I liked that, unlike the other two books, it actually incorporated the show characters into the actual plot instead of using them as props to frame the scene and convince us we were in Lost. However, it does miss out on the use of original secondary characters on the Island, which Hapka’s works at least tried to do. Besides that, it annoyed me that Jeff spent half his flashback time sleeping around, which I consider especially wasted space because he’s otherwise the most developed and realistic of the three books’ main characters. The most obvious flaw in the book, though, is its serious need for editing. There were many technical errors, like referring Jeff as Jack within the book and Nick on the back cover blurb, of all places. There were times when the author did things like suddenly jump between character perspectives or break from the Island-flashback-Island chapter structure. Then there was the ending. Just like the Return of the King movie, this book suffered from several false endings after the climax. All in all, this book had more promise than the other two character-wise and plot-wise, but it comes across as a very unfinished product.

Lost: Secret Identity – Cathy Hapka

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

Like the first novella in the series, it’s set in the Lost-universe just after the crash.

Thoughts:

This one is pretty on par with Endangered Species, and again, the author tackles a common Lost theme: secret identities, obviously. Out of curiosity, I did some research on the author and found that she’s written a bunch of books – some of them tie-ins for companies like Disney and Lego, essentially professional fan-fiction. That really is what you get when reading Secret Identity and Endangered Species: good fan-fiction, no more and no less. You can tell the author is in love with all the existing characters, but it does mean that in both books, original characters apart from the main one don’t get much development. But no one reads these things for the literary value, right? Just enjoy them for what they are.

Lost: Endangered Species – Cathy Hapka

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

This semi-canonical novella is set on the Island immediately following the Oceanic crash (except for the flashbacks, of course).

Thoughts:

The writing seemed amateurish, especially in the unnatural dialogue. However, it did move along at a good pace, and it handled some of the themes that readers would expect in Lost, if in a heavy-handed way. (The main character’s name is Faith, she struggles with self-confidence, she has a secretly violent past, etc. It is also formatted so that the 23 chapters alternate between Faith’s present and her flashbacks.) The big upshot for this book was that it did, in fact, focus on someone other than a member of the show’s main cast. It makes sense, considering how many people were on that flight, and I’m glad those responsible for these tie-in books decided to take that route. So, don’t expect anything deep, but your average Lost fan would probably get some enjoyment out of the experience.

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Rating: 5/5

Lost References:

Juliet pretends to play the movie of this book for Jack, though her tape really contains a secret message. Also, there’s an Other named Harper.

Thoughts:

It’s a tale of morality, like Lost. Also like Lost, it’s particularly well-told. One could argue that both are from the perspective of a naïve narrator. Scout in Mockingbird is a child, and while the Losties only have one child amongst them, they fumble about just as much as Scout while trying to understand the strange world around them.

Fun Fact: I share a birthday with Harper Lee.

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Rating: 5/5

Lost References:

This book shares a title with a Jack episode. The title, according to a podcast by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, refers to the two main Island settlements – of the Losties and the Others. Also, Desmond’s read it.

Thoughts:

Unrequited, sacrificial love and mindless, bloody hatred. This novel touches on some pretty big themes and does so with dignity and style.

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.

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.

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

There are many similarities here, some big, some trivial.

• PLOT: In both stories, a group of strangers crashes on an island and devolves into violent behavior against each other (though Lord of the Flies is about boys and Lost has men and women and a few kids). Both stories have the characters dividing into factions based on beliefs [LotF – Ralph (civilization) vs. Jack (savagery), Lost – Jack (reason) vs. Locke (faith)… LotF’s Ralph and Lost’s Jack are both initially reluctant leaders], and this leads to a lot of reader/viewer speculation on the nature of man and/or the universe.
• CHARACTERS: Both stories have a character peculiarly connected with his island (LotF – Simon, Lost – Locke). Both have a character whose death is seen as a sacrifice to the Island by another (LotF – Jack on Simon’s death, Lost – Locke on Boone’s death). Both have a parachutist arrive on an island, get stuck in a tree, and get discovered by the castaways (LotF – the paratrooper, Lost – Naomi).
• OTHER: Sawyer and Charlie both mention people acting all “Lord of the Flies.” Both the Island and this book’s island are filled with boar. Hurley finds a boar swarming with flies, and in the book, a boy finds a fly-infested boar head on a stick. Both Islands also have rumors of a monster in the jungle. Both have plot points concerning asthma (LotF – Piggy, Lost – Shannon) and a side story about someone’s glasses (LotF – Piggy, Lost – Sawyer).

Thoughts:

Unfortunately, I had to read this book for three separate classes, and in each of those classes, we analyzed it to DEATH. I actually enjoyed this book the first time through, but now I can’t stand it. It’s actually a well-written story about how people create government and society based on crises. It’s also shares many similarities with Lost, so I wish I’d seen this show before suffering through those classes. At the very least, I could have whipped up a decent paper on comparisons and links between the two. And it really is worth reading… I just don’t want to read it myself right now.

Harry Potter – J.K. Rowling

Rating: 5/5

Lost References:

Hurley, seeing Sawyer in his new glasses, says, “Dude, looks like someone steamrolled Harry Potter.” Book Three, The Prisoner of Azkaban, is also on Jack’s shelf (the one with time travel).

Thoughts:

Since the final movie just came out earlier this month, it’ll be difficult to avoid comparing books to movies. Except the last one. I’m going to see Deathly Hallows Part Two later this week. As far as the books go… they cover a wide scale of quality and a hefty amount of plot, come to that. I guess that means I’ll be dealing in broad strokes.

One through Three were amazing. These three books make up some of the best literature I have ever read, with Prisoner of Azkaban at the peak of excellence. (Oddly, I find this one the worst of the movies, thanks to poor CGI, directing, and acting. Gary Oldman was a great choice for Sirius, being an incredible character actor, but even he couldn’t save this flick.) Then the books started going downhill. Four and five were readable, but they started the trend of door-stopper novels that abandoned concise storytelling and indiscriminately included extraneous scenes and information. Six was pretty bad. I want to forget Seven ever happened. Plot-wise, it lacks creativity (which is disappointing, since creativity was one of Rowling’s strong suits previously. Essentially, the characters, in the middle of their Book-Six-introduced quest to find a bunch of magical artifacts find out that they have to… find more magical artifacts. The resolution was poor, too. Half the cast died random, weightless deaths. Everyone who survived married each other and had kids named for all the dead people.

But even this blight of a book can not make the first three any less wonderful. The mix of serious plots and lighthearted moments, the originality, the flawless pacing, the fact that children in trouble at least consulted adults, the unique characters, and just the writing, all make these three novels worth the reading. In fact, it’s practically worth reading the whole series to find out what happens. Even if you’re disappointed in the end.