a lucky find

i was idling my time away last sunday (i was waiting for the traffic to clear so i could go home in relative peace), so i stopped at Booksale to browse among the items there. after 15 minutes i grew bored and was about to leave when i glanced at a corner and saw this book.

it doesn't look impressive i grant you that, but for some reason it beckoned to me. so i opened a few pages, and to my surprise i actually chuckled loudly before i even finished a page. this rarely happens to me, so i jumped a few pages and was promptly beguiled by several pages of illustrations inside — no they weren't particularly good or even eye-catching. it's just that the caricaturish way the figures (bad spelling and all) were drawn blended well with the humorous way that the author has laid out the story.

How to Train Your Dragon is presented as a translation (originally in old Norse, according to its playfully imaginative author, Cressida Cowell) of the memoirs of a famous Viking chieftain, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III – specifically on how he progressed from being an undersized but sensible warrior wanna-be to a still-undersized but moderately acceptable Viking hero by training his own undersized, unremarkable and ornery dragon (which he calls Toothless – go figure).

This book is basically for male juveniles but grown-ups with overdeveloped sense of humor will also appreciate the concept and the humor (both slapstick and implied) interlaced in almost every situation that the author can think of.

with names like Hiccup (son of the chieftain of the tribe of the Hairy Hooligans), Thuggory (his counterpart in the Meathead tribe), Gobber the Belch, Snotface Snotlout, Dosgbreath the Duhbrain, etc. for your characters, how can you go wrong? anyway, if you're looking for mindless fun and are fond of Viking culture, How to Train Your Dragon is right up your alley. enjoy (P120.00).