The Wheel of Nuldoid

by Russ Woody, Norman Felchle (Illustrator)

After one of his students is kidnapped by two small creatures, Warren Worst and his neighbor Lily journey to the center of the Earth to a place called Nuldoid to try and find him.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy

381 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 2009

About the author

Russ Woody is an Emmy and Golden Globe winning television writer. He has written and produced Murphy Brown, Mad About You, Cybill, Becker, The Slap Maxwell Story, The Middle and The Drew Carey Show, among other comedies. He has also written for Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.

Visit: russwoody.com

His new book TUESDAYS WITH TED: An uplifting, heartbreaking, occasionally funny story about a man with ALS, a sitcom, its star and just enough time for a son to say goodbye

ALAN ZWEIBEL (Original SNL Writer) says:
Tuesdays With Ted belongs alongside Phillip Roth’s Patrimony and Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays in its expression of love for those who loved us first. I had always known Russ Woody as a writer whose work was funny with heart. But in Tuesdays with Ted he has done the opposite – written a most passionate memoir that will make you laugh as well. A must for read for anyone who has ever had a parent. I also wanted to smack him for writing something I wished I’d written.

https://www.amazon.com/Tuesdays-Ted-F...

Reviews

[Russ Woody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, come on, I wrote it, so, yeah, five stars.

[Issendai · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cliched characterization, cliched dialogue, cliched imagery, and an aggressive tell-don't-show policy crushed the life out of this story. It's regrettable, because there's something there--the author is a decent writer, better than the average self-published author--but the book needs strong, sharp editing that it didn't get.

For example, one of the main characters is a teacher who wants to be good and engaging, but rules and regulations have ground him down into one of the boring teachers he hated so much when he was a boy. That's interesting! But do we get to see him teaching a class? ...No. Do we get to see his frustration at not being allowed to teach the way he knows his students need him to teach? ...No. We get to see him sitting around his house with his cat while the narration drones on about his history for several paragraphs. Even when he gets up and starts doing things, the narration gets in the way. The dialogue is clogged with it, the action sequences are padded with it. Every time something looks like it might happen, the narrator yanks on your sleeve and tells you what to think and why. Often the narrator is so busy telling you what to think that the action itself passes by in the background, and the narrator has to fill you in after the fact.

So as you might have guessed, I'm focusing on the writing skills because the story... wasn't there. After four chapters, nothing had happened. Sure, there was an earthquake, but it didn't seem to matter. None of the characters seemed much bothered by it, even the two strange little creatures with Yooper accents who watched part of their city collapse. Nor did I like any of the characters; they were all frustrated, bored, annoyed, and annoying, mostly patterned on worn old types with little or nothing to give them individuality. I stopped reading after the fourth chapter because the characters and I were becoming too much of a oneness, frustrated, bored, and annoyed.

And yet, the rest of the book _sounds_ interesting. Things happen, people die. I'd like to be able to read it. I just can't. Perhaps someday the author will go back and rewrite it, yanking out the cliches and the excess narration. When that happens, I might return and try it again. Until then, I'm going to have to advise that people give this one a miss.

[Katie Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

257 pages into it, I'm almost done. It's BRILLIANT. Russ is a flawless writer. I could eat his words all day long. Even better, they're fat free.

[Robin]

So,
I ran into Russ on Shelfari and decided to download the Kindle sample - what a charming beginning!! I definitely think this is "one to watch". I'm going to get a copy right away.

[Chris Meichtry · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I only read this book because it was written by a cousin of my wife's father (which I suppose would make him her cousin as well). I had nothing against the premise; it just didn't sound like my kind of book so I don't think I ever would have bothered. I did bother, however, and I thought it was a fun story. Although a bit long-winded at times, there was a good amount of adventure and humor. The novelty of Nuldoids regularly doing the opposite of what we would normal expect grew old fairly quickly and started to feel like one big Yakov Smirnoff bit. The Nuldoid dialog was also hard to follow despite how often I read it.

The biggest knock against this book is the ending. Without spoiling anything...let's just say that I was surprised with what happened toward the end...and then some of the following events kinda ruined the whole thing for me and took away the impact. It also felt super predictable. Personally, I wouldn't have kept the fourth segment of the story.

Overall, though, it was a decent book and I won't let a bad ending spoil the rest of experience.

[Reni]

Interessant und rasant.
Sollte ein Film werden können?
Arbeiten wir zusammen.

Meine kurze Vorstellung
Ich schreibe auch Lieder, comedy, comics, Liebesromane, Musicals.
Schauen sie auf meine YouTube Seite, f.e. ein Link zu einem Script für ein Musical, https://youtu.be/v_OdxYxYiME
I look for Sponsoren, Investoren, true business partner,

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed my trip to Nuldoid. Russ Woody has a most intriguing imagination with a good dose of sentimentalism thrown in. The story reminded me in parts of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series and I could definitely see other stories about Nuldoid come from Woody. I liked the way he didn't talk down to a YA audience and used some pretty big words. It's good to introduce YA's to vocabulary, especially when the Nuldoid-speak is such a grammatical mess! But by the end of the book I could practically speak Nuldoid myself, which really scares me.

All in all, I think The Wheel of Nuldoid was a very nice foray into the YA market and look forward to where Russ Woody goes from here with it.

[Ángel Huerta · Rating 5 out of 5]

An AMAZNG book!!! It definitely takes you to another world, all inside our own. The writer does a fantastic job describing the universe the book is set and makes you feel for the characters. I loved the book and definitely put it in my collection as one of the best stories Ive ever read.

[Isabel Trafficante · Rating 5 out of 5]

i LOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE this book! i met th author and im curretnly awaiting his next creation!!!!

[Steve]

First chapter was pretty funny but for some reason I wasn't in the mood. Will revisit sometime in future.

[Bradoicich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just couldn't get into it. I will pick it up again.