RATED F

I finished RATED F (by Todd C Noker) on the weekend and I've been meaning to post a review but I've been getting back into school after taking a week off for my trip to Montana and also Battlefield 2 came out and I found out I'm addicted to the online play. But I'm on step 12 now so I think I'm going to be OK. Ever read Fight club? I love that book. There are some parallels with that and Noker's RATED F. Not so much the story as the feel and the style. The plot, interesting as it is, seems to be the perfect vehicle for Noker to make social commentary about censorship, dominant religious cultures, obesity, and anything else he feels like. The reading remains smooth, despite the lengthy and ranting departures from the main story. If anything the rants flesh out the main character and make him a complete person with all the emotions and concerns that we experience in real life. While the world from the main characters perspective is fascinating, I would have liked to see more of how other view him. The story is set in Provo where a video rental store owner gets the idea to edit the "bad parts" out of popular movies. The entire town escalates from there. People start to censor home videos, they start to censor real life using violence, and competing stores start looking for blood. All in the name of decent family entertainment. The satire is superb. My biggest disappointment was the book was too damn short. It took me several days to read it, but that was at 20-30 minutes a day. Normally I sit down for hours at a time to rip through pages and I think I could have finished this in an afternoon. The plot was finished but I liked reading the rants. The language and imagery were very creative and fresh. Over all, I give it an B+.