Truly Typical
Written: Aug 08 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: news-paper-esque like feel, easy read, a good all around intro into unsolved cases.
Cons: too much filler, not enough original or non-recycled stories.
The Bottom Line: The worth of this book all depends mainly on how much you've read prior to picking up Truly Weird. More then likely it would make a good coffee table book.
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| MagickCat's Full Review: Truly Weird: Real-Life Cases Of The Paranormal Boo... |
Anyone else remember Eyewitness Books, the kind you would have to fight over gladiator style after Mrs. Greenburg had assigned you and five other little screaming monsters to the same research topic...
Kind of reminds me of trying to find a topic to review...
Truly Weird is reminiscent of the old Eyewitness Book format, more then slightly generalized and chalked full of colourful pictures. Those were the type of books that picked an extensive topic; lets say ohhh maybe... Egypt and then proceeded to explain 3000 or more years or history in less then 70 pages. Except Truly Weird is a book meant for adults, but just like Eyewitness its got the limited text, and the pictures...unfortunately without the colour which I guess makes it grown-up.
Its author, Jenny Randles, basically put together a collection of other people’s stories, interviews and pictures, jumbled them up, threw in a introduction and a few sections called "So What Did Happen" and Evidence and called it a book.
Real-life Cases of Stories ripped from Documentaries
Truly Weird is a non-fiction manual of the paranormal, that will disappoint anyone familiar with such topics as time slips, crop circles, man beasts, poltergeists, the Bermuda triangle and a virtual cake walk of other oddities. If you have ever watched episodes from TLC dealing with these topics your base of knowledge will probably surpass what found in this book...and you’ll be more entertained by it as well.
However if you are just getting into paranormal study this might just be the book for you, perfect for beginners because it introduces a topic and then leaves the possibilities open for you to settle on. And it’s only a paltry 144 pages, which is pretty undersized compared to some of the tombs like they’ve put out.
Truly Weird is sort of like a very cheesy version of Unsolved Mysteries with a booming Robert Stack asking "You Decide"
(Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.)
The Book
Its divided into 16 different topics with stories ranging from a few paragraphs to a page long, followed by about three different explanations for the occurrences, ranging from the scientific, media’s and skeptic’s theory.
The facts of each story are then recapped in the Evidence section and the reader is left with the decision of which of the three views to believe.
All and all, I actually enjoyed the way in which it was set up, the writing was well done though by no means complicated and the facts that were presented were intriguing providing a short but interesting read. It had that news paper/comic book feel.
Particularly fascinating was the section dealing with "The Phantom Hotel" (which was about a couple who were headed to Spain and somehow traveled back in time spending the night in France, the year 1905)
and the connection this phenomenon could have to Physics and Black Holes. The mention of certain theories made this story seem more credible.
I suppose the reason I started this review out harshly is because if the author can pull out information of that caliber and link it...then I don’t understand why more than half of Truly Weird is basically recycled material. If you were to do a search on the Internet you could pull up a good percentage of the stories used and even pictures... (Except the ones on the net are in colour) and for free!
Leading to the next topic.
The pictures
Nothing spectacular, and it really bothered me that they were printed in black and white, I’ve seen photo’s vary similar to these ones in the book, but because of the fact that they were in colour it allowed a person to make out more detail and be able to verify the authenticity easier.
Conclusion
Had Truly Weird continued on with the standard of such stories as the "Phantom Hotel" and the "The Cursed Crossroads" it could have been truly interesting. However instead we see filler stories like Big Foot and Spontaneous Human Combustion, which is as over done as it gets. One positive aspect of Truly Weird is that it would make a good introductory book if you’re at all interested in the paranormal. Or I would recommend having it if you just want a book to flip through as reference. But if you want in-depth answers look elsewhere.
There is very little in this book that you couldn’t find with a few key words and a search engine.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
MagickCat
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Location: Canada
Reviews written: 44
Trusted by: 10 members
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