In October, we make our best conscious efforts to become monsters and inspire fear and dread in our fellow humans. But now we head toward Thanksgiving, that special time of year when we do all of that naturally and effortlessly. So I thought before some of us sit down with our families and carve a turkey (and the others sit down with the turkey and carve into our families), we should take a look at something fun and lighthearted, like Armageddon. No, not the awful Michael Bay movie that mistakenly compares the ancient and hallowed battlefields at Tel Megiddo in Israel with “Bruce Willis vs Space Rock.” Let’s focus instead on Good Omens, the collaborative effort of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett about the end of the world and the major players to try to avert it.

My first impression of this novel involves not just a few flashbacks to high school trigonometry, as it required epic levels of concentration to follow its many tangents, although to be fair, I felt much more positive about the outcome of Good Omens than high school math. Roughly speaking, the plot begins as a parody of the Gregory Peck film, The Omen, which everyone agrees is a classical masterpiece and forgets is terribly boring and slow-paced. Satan arranges to switch his own son, the antichrist with the child of an important American diplomat in England, so that he may initiate the Final Battle from within the world of politics. However, the Satanic nun in charge of the ol’ switcheroo, in a display of concentration and competence worthy of the McDonald’s cashier who never remembers to take the onions off my order, they accidentally give the harbinger of the world’s destruction over to an accountant with the social charisma of a potted fern. The resulting story focuses on the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, who appropriately enough as aspects of God, you never see and who barely do anything to affect the plot and resolve the issues that threaten the world.

What follows amounts to nothing more than a collection of skits and comedic dialogues, tiny shreds of stories thrown together in the same book. We’re told they’re important and we assume there’s some connection between them all, even though it’s not at all apparent. Ultimately, we have no choice but to trust that it’ll all come together in the end. So yeah…in short, it’s written exactly like the Bible. I read the book because I enjoy Neil Gaiman’s work. I see his influence in certain sections, especially the American-Gods-ish portions of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse being called to action. War, re-imagined for modern times, succeeds as a war correspondent by somehow getting to all the good international disputes just before they break out, and Famine has created an empire capitalizing on the weight loss craze by selling unhealthy diet food that kills via malnourishment. I would have enjoyed more of that. And since I’ve never read a Terry Pratchett book before, I’ll just assume all the parts in Good Omens that came off as shallow and inane were written by him.

I’ll describe these tangential stories pretty much the same way I describe congressmen; if you look at them individually, you’re bound to find something amusing, awkward, or just plain funny, but if you try to put them all together and see if they make any progress, you’ll just find yourself confused and frustrated. The book has enough characters to film citizens fleeing from your average Godzilla attack, and as such, their assumed imminent deaths appear to be the only thing they have in common for most of the story. Near the end, there are about two pages (in Gaiman’s typical style) comparing Heaven and Hell to two gangs fighting over which one is the best. The story really comes together there, and by “comes together” I mean all of the characters somehow find themselves in the same place, and it just so happens that they each have some role to play in the apocalypse. Imagine if you went to a frat party and found out that everyone there, say, drove a 2006 Volkswagen Beetle.

Was it worth the read? I certainly could have done worse things with my time. I met a guy once who built working replicas of famous lighthouses in his front yard. I have to say, Good Omens is at least more productive than some weird hobby like that. Personally, I’d probably have read it just for the scenes with the Other Four Horsemen, Hell’s Angels that the original Horsemen picked up in a bar, who jumped at the chance to literally become Hell’s angels, as they chose—and re-chose—names for themselves. But for the most part, the two authors’ styles don’t mesh well. Gaiman is one of my favorites, but he doesn’t quite have the Monty Python aloofness that the book struggled for, and his usual dark tone kind of brought down what Pratchett wanted to accomplish. Two good things in their own right, but not so much when you mix them together. Like dunking Oreos in Tobasco.

Could there ever be a better tale of winning love, fighting evil, pursuing evil and buckling swashes than The Princess Bride? Yeah, probably. But the movie is still a cult favorite today, and since I don’t want people coming after me with candles and ceremonial daggers and other cultish cutlery, I have to find a tactful way of trashing the book. Much like the Elixir of Life, the Loch Ness Monster, flying cars and universal wifi, mentioning in public that a movie might be better than its book runs the risk of having people cart you off to a hospital and giving you a coat with extra-long sleeves. Nevertheless, I’ve read the entire main story, some of the forwards and special messages, and the first few pages of the “sequel chapter,” Buttercup’s Baby, and I’m so underwhelmed with the story that I stopped writing in the middle of this sentence because cleaning up a backpack that my cat peed on sounded more interesting.

The Princess Bride, as a movie, is actually pretty good. I tried to pin down the class of people I remember from high school who would have heated it up and injected the film straight into their veins if they knew how. Of course there were the love-struck girls, the girls for whom torrid love affairs were a constant source of entertainment, the students of unknown sexuality (S.O.U.S.) who liked the idea of pretending to be straight while still dressing like a pirate, the drama students who routinely laugh in the face of copyright infringement by writing illegal stage adaptations, and the hipsters who just appreciate the witty dialogue. In fact, the film is so unobjectionable, that if we could capture its essence and spritz it around Washington D.C., we’d probably put an end to American politics as we know it.

So with such universal acclaim what does the book add to the experience? Short answer: about 400 pages and eight hours. Pretty much everything that happens in the film also happens in the book. Westley works on Buttercup’s farm until he declares his undying love by getting on a ship and sailing a few thousand miles away from her. Prince Humperdinck finds her, promotes her to princess, then plots to have her abducted and murdered because he’d rather start a war with a neighboring country than bang a hot chick every night. Westley returns to chase her abductors, gets captured and killed by Humperdinck. Fezzik and Inigo decide they’re so inept that they need help from a dead man, Miracle Max brings Westley back to life, then he saves the day.

There are cuts that were made for the movie, of course, but you could shave the gristle off of a steak and I’d miss it more. Rather than just Inigo’s back story, Goldman tells us about how Fezzik never wanted to be a wrestler. He repeats ad nauseum how much Humperdinck likes to hunt as though it were a vital piece of propaganda meant to sway the mindless masses. And Fezzik and Inigo have to fight their way through a Zoo of Death to save Westley, which mostly serves as an excuse to exchange a few wisecracks and play out a gag based on Fezzik’s hobby for rhyming.

But the major difference is the author, William Goldman’s biographical information about abridging the book, originally written by S. Morgenstern, that his father read to him as a child and that he wanted to adapt for his son Jason. These sections of the book are personal, sentimental, deeply meaningful, and completely fictional. Morgenstern, a contemporary of George McFly, Beedle the Bard and Kilgore Trout, is only slightly less fictional than the country he hails from. Goldman says he has a son, but in reality only had two daughters, meaning he talks about his children exactly the opposite way as would a disapproving father after his son came out of the closet. He also throws in stories and anecdotes about Hollywood and celebrities he’s met with all the veracity of a supermarket tabloid. The only thing he’s missing is a heavily photoshopped picture of a heroine addict he claims to be Andre the Giant after his stunning plastic surgery meant to fake his own death.

As the story goes, Goldman gave the book to Jason for his birthday, only to realize that his own father had heavily edited the story when reading it. Anyone who’s picked up classic literature will know that any highly respected author includes tangents so far off the main path of the story, they’re discovering new continents. Meanwhile, 21^st century readers sit in utter confusion as to why they’re being asked to dwell on the spiritual philosophies inherent in whale lard for 200 pages. Morgenstern, apparently, is no exception, and Goldman constantly interrupts the story to tell us about a large section of text he cut out, and what is being described for how many pages and for what literary, satirical reason.

Now I have a master’s degree in English, I can recognize complex symbolism and metaphor on my first reading, and I pride myself in my skill for answering student questions with intelligent, well-thought out and meaningful arguments that I totally made up on the fly. But I have no fucking idea why Goldman wants us to know so much back story behind the story itself. His quest to eliminate long, irrelevant passages might ring a little more true if he didn’t replace them with even more long, irrelevant passages. Also, being more fictional exposition than fictional narration, it isn’t nearly as entertaining or—dare I say—meaningful as Columbo reading a fairy tale to the kid from the Wonder Years.