Chariots of the Gods: A Book Worth Burning

Chariots of the Gods: A Book Worth Burning

ALIENS! The Chariots of the Gods makes bold bold bold (i.e., moronic) claims that there is evidence of alien visitors from centuries past.....it goes downhill from there.

For those of you who have read the "about" section of this blog, you'll know that this blog is an unapologetic (and obviously enlightened) approach to a book club. Full of plenty of sarcasm, jest, and comedic relief. That being said, the English Major really did me (personally) a solid by picking this trash for our final book of a mostly successful year - why might you ask, well, because it finally supplanted an accidental garbage book that I chose back in 2022 as the absolute worst book we've ever picked. Now, based on our group chat (which we agree is largely our "safe space"), I suspect the English Major will eventually write some English Majory (ie?, shut up, it's a word) thing to try to convince you otherwise, but, trust me, this. book. is. trash.

I'm not personally a big fan of advocating for burning books, nor have I ever in fact, burned a book, yet, here I am, very seriously* advocating that the village townspeople storm every book store, every library, and every home, to collect this entirely unreadable gar-baag (imagine me in my head saying that like a French man) and collectively burn it in some ceremony to all past, present, and future Gods of literature, intelligence, and general happiness.

So, let's just start with the fact that Mr. Erich Von Daniken is a pseudo-science peddling idiot. The book starts with the following gem:

it took courage to write this book and it'll take courage to read it.**

He then goes on to essentially dismiss all science by attacking the very premise of scientific evidence, and says that, taken as a whole, the geological record, cave paintings, religious texts, and some other random not evidence, suggests that aliens visited our ancestors centuries ago, perhaps multiple times, and then left us to our own will. The book not only is offensive to science, it's legitimately boring and completely unorganized. If you're going to spin a bunch of horseshit and attack the scientific method, at least do us the favor of being entertaining. After being on a hot roll (4 or 5 books over a month), this literary travesty brought my reading streak to a halt and made me sad to be a reader. I haven't recovered (and it's been almost a month).

In response to his opening sentence, my response is the following:

No sir, this book did not take courage to write, it took being brain dead, and no sir, this book did not take courage to read, it took a lot of alcohol and several tears.

The English Major has promised to take two shots of malort for lowering our IQ by several points. I'm holding him to it.

So, my single sentence review on this one.....here it goes:

If you're out of toilet paper, and have this book lying around, the solution is clear, wipe, and flush, because that's where this book belongs.

On a positive note, this marks the end of my book club journey for 2024, I'm the first to victory, and, I'll never let the other two live that down.

~The Illiterate


*not seriously at all.....but seriously, it's total shit.

** this book will surely have several quotes in our soon to exist "notable quotes" page.