The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook from Quirk Books, and written by Jason Heller, is entertaining and well presented with plenty of light humour throughout. If you like these sort of books, it's as good as any of them with pictures from the movies and an entertaining and informative style. The chapters of the book cover such important issues as: • Piracy 101 - a basic introduction to the subject. • Maritime skills - contains some interesting facts about seafaring although it is slightly weakened by being liberally sprinkled with non-piratical advice on how to be safe on a boat. • People skills - mostly how to be nice to your crew and other people with some useful advice on cross dressing. • Acquiring booty - how to get and keep your treasure with minimal bloodshed. • Cheating death - the arts of survival including ways to avoid fights and how to escape from a desert island. • Mysteries of the deep - mostly a summary of the monsters met in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. • Appendix on piratical lingo. There are many humourous messages in the book. Whilst it is unlikely that the reader would laugh out loud on very many occasions, the style is light and entertaining, and it is a quick and very easy read. It's a book based on a Disney franchise and, so, as you would expect, it can be severely constrained by the Disney corporate requirements to always be wholesome and to send the right message for Mid Western America. So, even though it is presenting the life of a bunch of murderous outlaws it is constantly providing advice to the would-be pirate to not fight, to share with your crew, to work hard, to uphold a moral life and other such worthy advice. Hence, for some readers it may come across as somewhat schizophrenic. For example, in the section entitled "Swimmers never quit", it advises the reader to take swimming lessons at the local YMCA. Perhaps not very piratical advice. There is, however, one exception to all this wholesomeness and that is the advice on crossdressing which is slipped in under the title "How to hide your gender." The author has done quite a bit of commendable research into real pirates but, as it is the Jack Sparrow handbook, the text is littered with token references to Jack Sparrow and the Pirates of the Caribbean storyline, and so the presentation can become confused. In one sentence you can read interesting material about real pirates and their lives and in the next sentence you read about Jack Sparrow escaping from the Kraken. It is a pity that the author could not include more details on the reality behind pirates as well as the sanitised excerpts from the movies. It would also have been excellent if the book was able to differentiate the movies from real pirates. The book includes a few snapshots of scenes from the movies scattered throughout but they are few and far between. This means that the book could not be used as a coffee table book which is perhaps its most obvious market. The language used in the book is also quite sophisticated in places, often using complex words which are not really necessary (although when the author uses the words "evince obfuscation" they really are the right words). For example, the description of Davy Jones starts with the following: '"Do you fear death?" It's a question asked rhetorically and with no small amount of nefarious menace by the supernatural scourge known as Davy Jones.' This is a moderately complex statement and there are several other examples which may be confusing for some of the intended readership. So, is the book meant to be for adults - in which case more sophisticated details of pirates could have been included - or is the book for children - in which case less complex language should sometimes have been used? Thus, while the book is an entertaining read it can contain too many compromises to be satisfying for any one readership. It will certainly appeal to die-hard fans of the series who may want to collect every scrap of associated memorabilia, but it is perhaps not to be recommended for the serious reader. Those who read my reviews will now be ready for the Awards and this is one book that practically demands that it be satirised. I give it the following positive awards, which the author and publishers will probably like. They are all out of five: • Three of Shakespeare's sonnets for quality of writing. That is, it's three fifths of a sonnet. • Three episodes of a BBC period drama for effort in historical research. I also give it the following awards which the authors and publishers may not appreciate quite so much. • Four reputation management campaigns for shoe horning equal opportunities for women into a culture that historically treated women appallingly. • Five bath tubs full of soap suds for being so squeaky clean. • Three American war movies for blurring the line between historical fact and fiction. • Three thesauruses (or is that thesauri?) for the inclusion of so many complicated words. To summarise, it’s a mildly entertaining book if you like this sort of book, but it's hard to define exactly what sort of book it is meant to be. The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook (2011). Review by Wayne J. Harris. |
 |
