ottiedottie's review against another edition
3.0
Fun enough. Perfect quarantine read. Went into it having no idea of what it was and a lot of rambunctious laughter was had as my friends and I tried to figure what the hell was going on in this book, but after the initial novelty of it wears down it's not something I'm too eager to sit down and read cover to cover.
It's something you'd pull out from your bookshelf and flip through to get a random burst of inspiration or laugh though. Perfect to gift to a friend with a strange or offbeat sense of humor.
It's something you'd pull out from your bookshelf and flip through to get a random burst of inspiration or laugh though. Perfect to gift to a friend with a strange or offbeat sense of humor.
ottiedot's review against another edition
3.0
Fun enough. Perfect quarantine read. Went into it having no idea of what it was and a lot of rambunctious laughter was had as my friends and I tried to figure what the hell was going on in this book, but after the initial novelty of it wears down it's not something I'm too eager to sit down and read cover to cover.
It's something you'd pull out from your bookshelf and flip through to get a random burst of inspiration or laugh though. Perfect to gift to a friend with a strange or offbeat sense of humor.
It's something you'd pull out from your bookshelf and flip through to get a random burst of inspiration or laugh though. Perfect to gift to a friend with a strange or offbeat sense of humor.
laneamagya's review against another edition
3.0
This is silly and cute and a pretty fun read. The book is an anthology of imaginary diseases invented by a slew of sci-fi and fantasy writers. A few are priceless, and I was not surprised at all that Michael Moorcock and Neil Gaiman wrote most of the reports that were the funniest and most inventive. It's not an Earth-shattering good book, but it's nice way to pass the time here and there. Toss if on your coffee table and read a disease or two a day.
alperezq's review against another edition
3.0
This is a fun, weird book. A collaborative book where different writers submitted imaginary diseases fro a medical guide coordinated by the fictitious and mysterious Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead. It is however more interesting as an idea than as an actual book to read.
Some of the diseases are really cool, and they all have an usually fun description relating the symptoms, the first known case, the history of the disease and possible cures. The illustrations are also suitably weird. Some of my favourite diseases in the book:
-Ebercitas: an intense infatuation with Eber M. Soler, a lady living in Cordoba, Argentina.
-Internalized Tatooing disease: elaborate artworks psychosomatically imprinted in internal organs.
-Logopetria: words spoken by the patient are physical objects
-Rashid's syndrome (Fictonecrosis, popularly "Bibliophagia"): self-explanatory
-Motile Snarcoma (Motile agglutinate snarcoma of the subperineal pondus): see below
and quite ominously,
-The Wuhan Flu: entropic disordering of the body's atoms cause by pronouncing an unknown set of words
Two things however diminished my enjoyment of the book:
-Because the disease are devised by writers many of them deal with symptoms relating to words, books, paper.. etc and they can become repetitive.
-The second part of the book, that consists of fragments of the "guide" through history as well of stories about Dr. Lambshead, has a couple of good stories but mostly it's a bit too long and just drags. Most of it (because the writers are pretending to be doctors, and pretending the guide is real) feels like a private joke that the reader is not a participant in.
Overall, I believe the book is to be read sporadically and not in one sitting in order enjoy it better. And if you read only the first half that's the description of the diseases and avoid the second part, you really don't miss much.
Music for this book:
Anatomy Theater - David Lang
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Your snarcoma may turn out to be a motile snarcoma. A motile snarcoma exhibits mobility under stress. In layman's terms, it can crawl. I fact, it will stretch out its fiibrous micelia like tentacles and drag itself around your patient's guts like a bleached baby octopus on Benzedrine"
"Thackery Trajan Lambshead was born on St. Genesius the Comedian's Day (August 25th), 1900, in Wimpering on the Brink, Devon (county), England".
"May it continue to thrive for another eighty-three editions".
Some of the diseases are really cool, and they all have an usually fun description relating the symptoms, the first known case, the history of the disease and possible cures. The illustrations are also suitably weird. Some of my favourite diseases in the book:
-Ebercitas: an intense infatuation with Eber M. Soler, a lady living in Cordoba, Argentina.
-Internalized Tatooing disease: elaborate artworks psychosomatically imprinted in internal organs.
-Logopetria: words spoken by the patient are physical objects
-Rashid's syndrome (Fictonecrosis, popularly "Bibliophagia"): self-explanatory
-Motile Snarcoma (Motile agglutinate snarcoma of the subperineal pondus): see below
and quite ominously,
-The Wuhan Flu: entropic disordering of the body's atoms cause by pronouncing an unknown set of words
Two things however diminished my enjoyment of the book:
-Because the disease are devised by writers many of them deal with symptoms relating to words, books, paper.. etc and they can become repetitive.
-The second part of the book, that consists of fragments of the "guide" through history as well of stories about Dr. Lambshead, has a couple of good stories but mostly it's a bit too long and just drags. Most of it (because the writers are pretending to be doctors, and pretending the guide is real) feels like a private joke that the reader is not a participant in.
Overall, I believe the book is to be read sporadically and not in one sitting in order enjoy it better. And if you read only the first half that's the description of the diseases and avoid the second part, you really don't miss much.
Music for this book:
Anatomy Theater - David Lang
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Your snarcoma may turn out to be a motile snarcoma. A motile snarcoma exhibits mobility under stress. In layman's terms, it can crawl. I fact, it will stretch out its fiibrous micelia like tentacles and drag itself around your patient's guts like a bleached baby octopus on Benzedrine"
"Thackery Trajan Lambshead was born on St. Genesius the Comedian's Day (August 25th), 1900, in Wimpering on the Brink, Devon (county), England".
"May it continue to thrive for another eighty-three editions".
nwhyte's review against another edition
http://nhw.livejournal.com/195017.html[return][return]Based on the title, and the list of contributors, I expected this to be a real riot. I have to say I was somewhat disappointed; too much repetition of disorders where writers get consumed by their own work or vice versa, or suffer random medical explosions, or limb-rotting. The humour is grotesque rather than witty or satirical, and basically didn't appeal to me much. The narrative sections towards the end were best.
cindywho's review against another edition
I got about halfway through and finally asked myself if I was enjoying this book. Sadly - not really, so back to the library it goes... It was just a little too creepy to read the short bits over breakfast - I had expected short stories, but these are encyclopedia entries.
sunn_bleach's review
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.75
A collection of fake illnesses and reports on those illnesses by a myriad of different authors. Sometimes subversive, sometimes pretentious.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror
Moderate: Death
morporum's review
5.0
This is probably the paradigmatic example of the category I call "unreliable reference" . . . Jeff Vandermeer and his circle of weirdos got together and decided to write stories in the surprisingly fecund format of a diagnostic guide to diseases. Since said circle includes such luminaries as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, and the underrated but astounding Michael Cisco, the maladies in this book are sometimes so perfectly True that you may find yourself infected. Thankfully, the editors have marked the most infectious diseases with a quarantine stamp. Unfortunately for me, and possibly for you, I ignored it.