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Hazel (1853 KP) rated On the Origin of Findo Gask in Books

Dec 14, 2018

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

“Sick, twisted, blasphemous, wrong and very, very funny.” That is how this book, On the Origin of Findo Gask by David McCreight, is described on the back cover. But how accurate is it? “Blasphemous”? Most definitely. “Very, very funny”? Not so much. Although it is obvious that there is an attempt a humour, it is too “sick” and “twisted” for it to be anywhere near hilarious.

Findo Gask is a rather unattractive sixteen-year-old living in the Scottish Highlands. The narrative, recounted from his point of view, alternates between present day and an account of past events. Findo was once a child prodigy until he began questioning religion openly in church. In order to get back at the Christians, who thought he was possessed by demons, he establishes the Darwin Terrorist Organisation along with Cousin Dan. This, however, eventually gets rather out of hand. Now Findo is living with his Gran and his Mum is in hospital with a mysterious illness. He also believes he has sold the universe.

The fact that Findo is a stereotypical, Scottish, working class teenager makes the amount of bad language almost acceptable; although, to tell the complete truth, it did border on excessive.

At first there did not seem to be much of a plot, but once the past and present join up it is possible to connect all the events included in the story, which results in a considerably explosive ending.

As everyone’s take on humour is different there will undoubtedly be people who love this book. It would not be fair to deliberately put people off from reading On the Origin of Findo Gask, yet at the same time it is not recommended for the easily offended readers, particularly those with strict religious principles and a dislike for foul language.

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Sarah (7799 KP) rated Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything in Books

Nov 18, 2019

Pretentious and selfish

I really wanted to like this book. It sounded like it'd have a lot of motivational thinking and empowerment for single women, but in fact it just turned out terribly pretentious and was basically just one woman's selfish and rather self centred journey.

This book is split into 3 parts: Italy (Eat), India (Pray) and Indonesia (Love). I fairly enjoyed the first part in Italy, as all Liz does is eat the entire time she's there and who doesn't love Italian food? And it also featured a lot of decent and moving thinking and a lot of this related to how I've been feeling over the past year, so I really clicked with this

However it's India and Indonesia that I have major issues with. Firstly I'm not a religious or spiritual person at all, it's just not for me although I have no issues with people that do believe, that's your choice. My problem is that the second and third parts of this book virtually shove religion and spirituality down your throat. And not in a hesitant good way, more in a preaching condescending way that irritates like hell very quickly. I quickly started to skim read these chapters as I couldn't deal with Liz's pretentious ramblings. This entire book is full of her selfish ideas and notions, and at the end I didnt find this in the slightest bit motivational and I didn't feel like Liz learned much either despite her proclamations otherwise. I really didn't find Liz an endearing or lovable person, despite the fact that everyone she encounters in her story appears to (which is debatable).

Maybe I went into this book expecting the wrong things, but aside from the first third and the odd thought or sentence throughout the book that made me think "that's so true!", I really didnt enjoy this at all.