'Living Lost: Why We're All Stuck on the Island'

Living Lost is an excellent reference to the first two seasons of Lost. Lost fans with a liberal bent will love it cover to cover. Lost fans who are conservative or simply don't care about political issues will probably want to skip the Triangulating chapter, but should thoroughly enjoy the rest of the book.

What do twins, body parts, and three Enlightenment philosophers have to do with the Lost? If you missed those concepts as you watched the show, you can find out by reading this book. Living Lost is divided into three sections: Narratives and Nodes, Triangulating the Signal, and Appendix: The Manifest Destiny.

Narratives and Nodes covers the various themes that run through Lost. Included is a list of literary works seen in Lost and a look at the possible meaning of the character's names. The second part, Triangulating the Signal, is where the author gets political and the book shows its liberal bias. He relates the situations in Lost to current events and goes on to make judgments about them. Some I agree with, most I don't. In my opinion, the book would have had a wider appeal if he had just pointed out possible connections to current events without commenting one way or the other on those events. Let the reader draw his own conclusions.

Manifest Destiny describes each character one by one. It's a good review of what they have done so far. I often found myself saying, "Oh, I forgot about that." Also included are characters from The Lost Experience which is great for those of us who missed it.

Unfortunately, the book's typos and mechanical errors detracted from the well thought out flow of ideas. Several words ran together, some words had missing letters, and part of the author's name is chopped off on the front cover, to name a few. Deciding how many stars to give this book wasn't easy. I have tried to put aside my own political bias and rate this book on how it will appeal to the average Lost viewer. In the end I decided on 3 and a half, which means I think most Lost viewers will probably "really like" the book but probably not absolutely "love" the book. It's a good read and gave me food for thought for the next time I watch Lost.