Mr. Hurd, say no more


Blog / Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

Finished another book, thought I would review it quickly in order to sway you.

A SpineHolder’s Manual by Neil Hurd

It is an interesting story as to how I came about this book. It was an early night at work this past semester and I was walking home in the rain. As I walked up the hill I saw a plastic bag with something inside of it. I looked and lo and behold it was this book. A note was taped to it (and still is for that matter) which read ‘Free – to one who will read’. I thought to myself, ‘I read, looks like it is talking about me.’

An thus I read.

Turns out that this book is about self spinal adjustment. The book details a few methods on how to go about straightening your lumbar, cervical, and thorax portions of your back. Better yet, they do it with humor…or try to. This book is a humorous attempt at an attempt to write a humorous book.

When you start reading, you notice right away that this book is not serious as they state and continue to state almost every other page throughout that no doctors or physicians were consulted when writing the book. Well obviously. I am pretty sure that if you think that hanging over a 2×4 placed on the backs of two chairs is going to straigten your spine, you deserve whatever pain it may call. There is a good 80 pages of different methods on how to potentially straighten your back, and on how to create the supports needed to do so. Honestly? A humor book about back alignment? Ugh, could it get any worse? Yes.

After Mr. Hurd finishes with his method he takes the next thirty or so pages to babble. He talks about cars mostly. Some situation where one could potentially kill two other people. I think he relates this to being one of the risks of hurting your spine in some way. It was so bad that I did not care enough to pay attention to what he was talking about. I was racing to get done, so I could be done.

A final thing that one might notice while reading are the poorly constructed sentences. Believe me, I am a huge fan of elipses (they rank number two on my list of favorite punctuation marks following the interrobang), but Mr. Hurd uses them far too often. I came across numerous sentences where an elipses was used four plus times. Far too much. Also, I do not think there was any sort of copy editing before this book was printed seeing as how wordy it is. So wordy that at times I had to reread sentences three or more times just to figure out what was being said.

Do not get me wrong, the book was not completely bad, it just was not good. There was one line that I did particularily enjoy: ‘Any trip can be shortened 3 seconds by tailgaiting.’

Now I must sway you to not pick up this book, even if you find it in a plastic bag in the rain with a note attached to it pleading for someone to read it, also being autographed…as I did.

One Reply to “Mr. Hurd, say no more”

  1. One here must say he is most heartened to so serendipidus see this post – as it was “we” (i work for FineSpine Ltd) who so placed the book(s) in the bag(s) – in late winter on UW campus – below the seat of Lincoln towards the Cap (and there abouts)!

    Tho maybe the review is “…not so good…” it is yet soo good to see the reading was so accomplished!

    Tanks for taking the time…to post! (my first time on googleblogsearch)

    Perfect!

    Neal Hurd,

    President

    FSLtd

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