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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
Meh. I've watched a lot of MASH: the TV programme is what goes on as white noise to break severe procrastination deadlock (got two years of tax returns done in two days once, hurray, AND a refund) and I think the movie is fairly brilliant, and I can quote a lot of both. Colonel Flagg is my favourite.
So this was filler on the last night of term when my brain wasn't up to anything else, and it's a disappointment. It rattles along with little meaning, a good bit of irony, little humour that I recognise as such, quite a lot of medical detail (some of it repeated verbatim in the show) and too much exceedingly dull detail on the football game (also my least favourite part of the film). Mostly interesting (where at all) as the source material for the later iterations.
So this was filler on the last night of term when my brain wasn't up to anything else, and it's a disappointment. It rattles along with little meaning, a good bit of irony, little humour that I recognise as such, quite a lot of medical detail (some of it repeated verbatim in the show) and too much exceedingly dull detail on the football game (also my least favourite part of the film). Mostly interesting (where at all) as the source material for the later iterations.
It's sad that, even though people still love the movie and the series, the books are so hard to find. I guess this first one has been re-released and is on Kindle, but the rest of the series is just...vanished.
Anyway, this book started everything and it's pretty great. Hawkeye and Duke are the main characters while Trapper is kind of a supporting character. (Not sure why they took Duke out of the tv show, but there you go.) There's no real story here. It's mainly just a series of stories about these guys in the MASH unit, causing trouble and saving lives. I went back and forth between thinking of the actors from the movie and the show. It seems like they both captured different aspects of the original characters. Except for Colonel Blake. The movie version was WAY closer to the original than the tv version.
The book remains a great "war is hell and you have to be crazy to survive" story. Sure, it doesn't fit our times. The women are treated like women were treated in the times of the Korean War, but that makes sense. Absolutely worth reading, though.
Anyway, this book started everything and it's pretty great. Hawkeye and Duke are the main characters while Trapper is kind of a supporting character. (Not sure why they took Duke out of the tv show, but there you go.) There's no real story here. It's mainly just a series of stories about these guys in the MASH unit, causing trouble and saving lives. I went back and forth between thinking of the actors from the movie and the show. It seems like they both captured different aspects of the original characters. Except for Colonel Blake. The movie version was WAY closer to the original than the tv version.
The book remains a great "war is hell and you have to be crazy to survive" story. Sure, it doesn't fit our times. The women are treated like women were treated in the times of the Korean War, but that makes sense. Absolutely worth reading, though.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Picked this up for 50 cents at a resale shop. Part curiosity, part research. It was fascinating to discover the origins of the characters we know and love mostly from the TV show, though this edition is a movie tie-in. Parts of it were great--the quippy dialogue and wacky situations. But some of it was pretty dry--all those medical procedures. Overall pretty cool, but not quite a page turner for me.
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I think I'm suffering from testosterone poisoning.
The medical details I could understand, but there was a chapter based around golf jargon and one around football, so neither made any sense to me.
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I grew up in Port Waldo and never once heard anyone say "finest kind."
The medical details I could understand, but there was a chapter based around golf jargon and one around football, so neither made any sense to me.
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I grew up in Port Waldo and never once heard anyone say "finest kind."
One of the funniest books I've ever read. I read it because I had grown up watching the show with my mom, but the only thing it has in common with the show is basically the setting and some names. The movie is much funnier than the tv show, and I think that's because it sticks so closely to the book on many points.
I grew up with the M*A*S*H tv show and loved it, as well as the movie. So it was only natural that I read the book they were all based upon. Prior to reading this I hadn't realized the author was himself an Army surgeon in Korea during the war, and while the book is fiction, the events and characters were all based on real-life people and their antics.
In light of the huge impact the movie and tv show had on American culture, this is quite an important novel for without the book we wouldn't have had anything else. For that reason alone I enjoyed reading it. And it was a fun read. I do think the book wasn't very well written, and had it not been immortalized on film it would have been quickly lost to time. But if you can ignore that (remember it was written by a physician, and not by a trainer writer) you can just go ahead and enjoy it for its inherent entertainment value.
In light of the huge impact the movie and tv show had on American culture, this is quite an important novel for without the book we wouldn't have had anything else. For that reason alone I enjoyed reading it. And it was a fun read. I do think the book wasn't very well written, and had it not been immortalized on film it would have been quickly lost to time. But if you can ignore that (remember it was written by a physician, and not by a trainer writer) you can just go ahead and enjoy it for its inherent entertainment value.
This was great, just my style in that it doesn't waste any time getting to the point. And it was laugh out loud funny, too. The book is aging gracefully but may drop out of sight in the next 20 years or so, which would be a shame.
This seemed like less of a book and more of a series of stories someone tells about some buddies he/she knew way back when. There isn't much in the way of description or understanding into the characters; the stories are just placed there for the reader to decide.
This does have many of the characters who are more fully developed in the TV series. You find Hawkeye, Trapper, Hot Lips, Radar, Frank Burns, etc. Then there are a few that didn't stay around after the first season or two. (Ugly John, Spearchucker)
Interesting to see where they came from.
This does have many of the characters who are more fully developed in the TV series. You find Hawkeye, Trapper, Hot Lips, Radar, Frank Burns, etc. Then there are a few that didn't stay around after the first season or two. (Ugly John, Spearchucker)
Interesting to see where they came from.