Book Review

  • On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington 1), David Weber

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1993, 422 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-72163-1

    I’ve been eyeing David Weber’s Honor Harrington series for a while now, feeling as if I should give it a try while simultaneously being intimidated by the series’ growing number of volumes. I kept buying the books at second-hand stores, hoping to complete the dozen-book set before diving in. But that could have taken a while. Happily, Baen neatly solved the problem with the tenth novel in the Honor Harrington series, War of Honor: The C$41 hardcover included a CD-ROM containing, yep, the whole series (and more) in electronic format. No more worries about missing volumes; I could just start reading what I had and “fill in the blanks” with the electronic version on my trusty PDA.

    First stop, then: On Basilisk Station, Honor Harrington’s first adventure.

    Who’s Honor? She’s a starship captain who, at the start of this first novel, assumes her first command, a decrepit cruiser optimistically christened Fearless. But Honor is the embodiment of her ship’s name and at the first training exercise opportunity she gets, she severely embarrasses a cocky superior by beating him at his own game.

    Mistake. Before long, she’s exiled to a trivial faraway post, where she meets an old nemesis who -in cowardly fashion- flees and leaves her to perform a wide variety of tasks with almost no assets. What others would consider impossible, Honor sees as opportunity: before long, she shapes up everything in fine fighting form. But don’t be bored yet; an enemy attack looms…

    A lot of things are obvious from On Basilisk Station: First, that it’s a classical underdog-against-all-odds story featuring a plucky heroine who deserves our unqualified admiration. Second, that it’s a direct descendant of the Horatio Hornblower naval adventure stories. Third, that’s it’s completely successful as an introductory volume to the Honor Harrington series.

    I’m hooked, no doubt about it: Weber writes honest military SF, sure, but unlike too many of his immediate colleagues, he never forgets that he’s primarily telling a story, not recreating a tactical engagement for the enjoyment of the armchair strategists in the audience. His secondary characters take a while to come in focus, but they do and Honor Harrington herself is the type of archetypical heroine worth absolute devotion. Similarities with Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan go beyond the fact that they’re both published by Baen books.

    At least Weber’s political prejudices are obvious. The evil Havenites have a policy of expansion made inevitable by “almost two T-centuries of deficit spending to shore up an increasingly insolvent welfare state.” [P.52] Tee-hee! Then there’s the not-so-good Liberals, whose dedication to maintaining a military presence on Basilisk Station is traitorously suspect. The political system in which Honor lives is adapted directly from the English’s parliamentary monarchy: a nod to Hornblower and C.S. Forrester, sure, but also a rather convenient setting for true-blood Anglo-Saxon space opera… but I’ll hold off on any potentially embarrassing comments on the ethnicity of the series until I’ve read more of it. At least the complete gender integration of Honor’s universe is a laudable assumption.

    In short, On Basilisk Station is addictive reading. I’m definitely in for the duration of the Harrington series. At one book per month (and, presumably, one review per month), I should reach War of Honor by October 2003. Stay tuned!

  • Terminal Event, James Thayer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon & Schuster, 1999, 347 pages, C$37.00 hc, ISBN 0-684-84210-6

    Don’t trust Terminal Event‘s cover blurb. It says something about an air-crash investigator fighting against colleagues who think a crash was human error. It suggests something about a battle of wit between the investigator and a mad serial bomber. It’s even more deceitful than the usual cover blurb. (Though it gets the protagonist’s name right) It’s a disservice to the book, really, because Terminal Event is a much, much better book than what the blurb may lead you to think.

    This novel opens with a harrowing scene: Narrator Joe Durant, formerly of the National Transportation Security Board, walks through a forest peppered with the aftermath of an airplane crash. Metal fragments are scattered along with human body parts as Durant quickly assesses the situation and realizes what has to be done. He barely has time to cede control to authorities before upchucking his lunch. His wife was on the flight.

    Before long, he’s back in with the NTSB. Grieving (but not too much), he helps in piecing together a theory about what happened. His is not the only theory: others ideas are floating around, and one of Terminal Event‘s rare pleasures is in tracking down some very different red herrings. In some ways, it’s an interesting dilemma: Joe’s theory isn’t sexy, but it’s his. As readers, do we want the drama of, say, a surfaced-launched missile or do we want to see our hero being proven right with a decidedly less exciting theory?

    Joe is not alone, of course. In addition to his colleagues, he’s also assigned a hard-as-nail female FBI liaison. She gets to see what he does at the NTSB; he gets to see what she does at the FBI. In one of those easy dramatic shortcuts jaded readers learn to ignore, Joe ends up being present at almost every twist and turn of three different investigations. He’s threatened, bribed, confused, decried and -surprise!- ultimately triumphant… though not in the way anyone could expect.

    There is no doubt that Terminal Event is a techno-thriller that veers very close to engineering fiction. The details about the work the NTSB performs are endlessly fascinating, but for a specific crowd. Tom Clancy fans will go nuts for the nuts-and-bolts minutia of air-crash investigations. But more casual thriller writers shouldn’t despair; Thayer is remarkably efficient in turning out accessible prose. Terminal Event passed the acid test of thrillers by making your reviewer read far too late in the night for “just one more chapter.”

    There’s a lot to like about this book, from the narrative energy to the sympathetic narrator. Even better is the book’s multiple competing plot threads, one (or none) of which may just be the solution to the whole sorry mess. Unlike other novels, Terminal Event seldom tips its hand, keeping those storylines equally compelling all the way through. Also refreshing is a light romance that never overwhelms the book, and the resolution of said romance.

    What isn’t as successful is the storyline following the narrator’s grief, which is seldom brought up and almost ends up as an incidental subplot. A long time passes during which the issue of the dead wife isn’t even brought up. The discovery of her body, for instance, is mentioned almost casually as something having happened days before. In fact, the subjective duration of the events in Terminal Event is puzzling; all the action is supposed to “fit” in ten days, but it seems considerably longer, especially during the first half of the book.

    But no matter; Terminal Event is a deeply original, constantly interesting thriller. It’s readable like few others and contains enough details about the NTSB to double as a light non-fiction article on the mindset of its investigators. Just buy it without reading the cover blurb.

  • The Bridge, John Skipp & Craig Spector

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1991, 419 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-29027-4

    A drum filled with toxic chemicals falls from a truck into a body of water. It breaks open, releasing nasty industrial waste into the wilderness. Then a horrible mutation takes place and people start to die!

    The above is the initial story trigger for EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, a delightful 2002 comedy that apes the hackneyed conventions of 1950s giant-insect B-movies. As it happens, it’s also the premise behind The Bridge, a gore-filled horror novel by John Skipp and Craig Spector. Whereas EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS is a comedy, well, there’s not much to laugh about in The Bridge —even as ludicrous as it is.

    The problems start early on in this quasi-earnest tale of environmental catastrophe. It’s hard not to giggle as a random accumulation of toxic waste somehow creates a brand-new monster. You thought that type of easy plotting went out with comic books and B-movie from the fifties, but no, Skipp and Spector seem determined to play this silly concept in a relatively straightforward manner. (Or rather as straightforward as they want, which may not be very much given the whole novel’s overblown quality.)

    Suffice to say that in a few dozen pages, our eeevil toxic dumpers are severely punished and that a toxic overmind is attacking a small town in Northeastern America. Even at this point, the level of nastiness exhibited by the authors is impressive: Characters are killed before we can even get to know them. (I’ve heard “splatterpunk” used to describe this book, but even if I can recognize a heck of a lot of splatter in The Bridge, I’m not familiar enough with the sub-genre to be comfortable in designating the novel as such.)

    But no problem; there are always more characters to feed in the good old gore-chipper. Too many of them, in fact; while Skipp & Spector need ever-expanding battalions of monster-fodder in order to tell their story, it quickly becomes apparent that none of them is going to be important enough to remember. In fact, it’s worth noting that The Bridge doesn’t have a plot as much as it has a list of victims. There is scarcely any further narrative arc than the characters discovering that the toxic blob is out to get them. No serious efforts are conducting at fighting back; there is only escape, and not a very effective escape at that.

    The cumulative effect of this realisation is a steady loss of interest in a novel that is already too scattered to be gripping. While The Bridge constantly teases us with interesting elements and the promise of hard-core horror, it never achieves critical mass.

    Another part of the problem is that Skipp and Spector try to have it both ways: First, as a serious commentary on the environment (including, I kid you not, an eighteen-pages appendix on how to be an environmentalist), but also as a novel of supernatural horror. One defuses the other in much the same way that Peter Straub’s Floating Dragon trivialized its man-made threat by putting it alongside a supernatural monster. Who even cares about pollution when zombies want to eat your brain?

    On the other hand, there’s a steadily mounting glee at seeing Skipp and Spector overturn almost every tradition in their quest to kill as many characters in the messiest ways possible. The last few pages will have even the most jaded readers go “eew” as the novel moves far, far away from the watered down simulacrum that passes as “horror” nowadays.

    But even though a good ending can redeem a lot of things, The Bridge‘s conclusion seems to stop for lack of people to kill, not out of story to tell. Heck, the real story of The Bridge begins after the last page, and the authors quit before it truly gets interesting.

    In the end, The Bridge is a half-interesting, half-frustrating novel of hard-core horror. Readers with strong stomachs might enjoy aspects of it even as the sum of all parts fails short of satisfaction. While it’s considerably nastier than “mainstream horror”, it’s equally less successful in narrative qualities. On the other hand, it’s an effective cautionary tale against the evils of toxic waste dumping… Oh, who am I kidding!? Let’s go watch EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS again.

  • Long Bomb: How the XFL became TV’s biggest fiasco, Brett Forrest

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Crown, 2002, 254 pages, C$37.95 hc, ISBN 0-609-60992-0

    The more cynical among us (your reviewer included) would like to make you believe that we live in a age where everything is controlled, calculated, test-marketed and over-designed. All of our entertainment options are manufactured to order in a society dominated by consumerism and obedience. Britney Spears is less of an artist than a marketing vision given curvaceous form. MBA-holding executives are assembling movies from pieces defined by statisticians, psychologists and market analysts. We simple-minded consumers have no chance: we can only bleat and accept what we’re given.

    In this context, the complete failure of the XFL in early 2001 is something worth celebrating. World Wresting Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) CEO Vince McMahon buddied up with NBC executive Dick Ebersol to given us a brand new football league, the XFL. Combining NBC’s sportscasting expertise with the WWF’s flair for showmanship, the XFL was supposed to be a more exciting, less expensive alternative to the tired old NFL.

    In retrospect, it’s hard to say whether this was a great or terrible idea. Certainly, NBC thought it was getting good broadcasting material for almost nothing: Founding the XFL was considerably cheaper than forking out billions for NFL licensing. Vince McMahon wanted a respectability that wrestling could never provide. Hundreds of players wanted another chance to strut their stuff in front of an audience. And maybe, just maybe, the American public could find a spot in their schedule for another sport league.

    It didn’t turn out that way.

    The first game of the XFL drew respectable numbers. Rating for subsequent games, though, melted down until the last few games, which pulled in the lowest numbers ever recorded for prime-time shows in network broadcast history —scarcely a few hundred thousand viewers across North America. Pundits, journalists and comedians skewered the new league mercilessly. The experiment was not repeated; no second season of the XFL was ever seriously considered once the ratings crashed through the floor.

    Long Bomb recounts all of the above is sarcastic glee. Brett Forrest presumably hung around the league as everything happened, and if the book doesn’t feature his own adventures (indeed, there are scenes where a gaping obscurity occupies the place where a first-person narrator should be), the narration clearly indicates someone who paid attention. Far too much of the book reads like a sardonic description of the TV newscasts, but from time to time we go behind the scenes and get a glimpse in the life of the real players in the XFL.

    The writing style has its moments, but all too often loses itself in flight of fancies that are not entirely appropriate to the subject being discussed. Still, Long Bomb is a compulsively readable account of a recently fascinating subject. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s no DVD companion featuring telecasts of what he discusses, but given the difficulties Forrest had in dealing with XFL, WWE and NBC executives, well, maybe we should just be happy that the book exists at all.

    But maybe above everything, Long Bomb is an account of a gigantic failure, one of the most spectacular miscalculation in recent memory. The XFL existed at the crossroads of sports and entertainment, and an account of its history must consider implications in both fields. In some ways, it’s a refreshing reminder that despite all the expert advice and pre-manufactured elements you can throw at a money-making venture, it can still fail as soon as no one is watching. And even gibbering football fans familiar with wrestling can choose not to watch.

    Somehow, that’s a reassuring thought.

  • Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 2002, 260 pages, C$37.95 hc, ISBN 0-385-50447-0

    The newest Chuck Palahniuk novel is here, and as you may expect, it’s a blend of weirdness, hypnotic prose, self-loathing characters and strong images. What’s new is a fascinating premise and a willingness to delve into supernatural horror.

    It starts out with a washed-up journalist investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. There is one catch, though: He knows what causes it. And it’s not anything rational: Merely reading a specific poem, a culling song (page 27 of a library book that happens to be at each victim’s bedside), will kill anyone.

    The journalist ends up memorizing the poem. Tries it on his editor. Finds that he now has the power to kill anyone by the power of his voice. It gets worse; he realizes that his bottled-up anger is so fierce that he is actually able to kill people remotely, merely by thinking the poem.

    In typical Palahniukian fashion, a blackly comedic sequence follows, as our protagonist commits a mini murder spree against everyone who annoys him. Serial killing has seldom been more amusing. It gets funnier when he gets annoyed by radio announcers.

    What’s not so amusing are the consequences of his discovery. In an hypnotically terrifying passage, (Chapter 7) Palahniuk imagines the effects of “a plague you catch through your ears.” [P.41] It’s not an entirely new idea (see, oh, David Langford’s “comp.basilisk FAQ” for a similar premise) but it’s still a good one, and Palahniuk is willing to play it for all it’s worth, not even once mentioning “memetic epidemiology”.

    Eventually realizing that he’s completely out of control, our protagonist decides to destroy all copies of the book which contains the fatal lullaby. In order to do so, he enlists the help of a realtor who specializes in haunted houses (because you can sell those again… and again… and again…), an eco-terrorist and a Wiccan girl. A motley crew, or an ultramodern nuclear family? Turns out there isn’t much of a difference.

    Killing library clerks, burning down used bookstores, scamming restaurants and sight-seeing a bit, the protagonist’s quest eventually uncovers something even more sinister, a spell-book that promises to unleash even more devastation if it falls in the wrong hands.

    Which it does.

    There’s always been a sub-theme of apocalyptic renewal in Palahniuk’s fiction (from Tyler Durden’s ultimate goal in Fight Club to the fist-fight climax of Survivor) and this fascination is magnified here. Indeed, elements of previous novels pop up here and there, like Choke‘s scamming or Invisible Monsters‘s road trip and -naturally- the hip and rhythmic prose of his entire oeuvre.

    This time, Palahniuk leaves weird-but-realistic fiction behind and imagines a warped tale of urban fantasy. Charles de Lint on acid, in one way. While Choke already showed signs of dipping in the fantastic pool, Lullaby jumps right in with magic spells and haunted houses. Add to that the strangely altered universe in which the tale takes place, and it gets a bit messy.

    But messy fun: This is probably Palahniuk’s most enjoyable novel since Survivor. Whereas Invisible Monsters was trashy fun, Lullaby has more unity and content than Choke while offering a more interesting reading experience. All the usual Palahniuk elements are there, so fans know what to expect. Newer readers, on the other hand… should expect something weird. But good.

  • The Drudge Manifesto, Matt Drudge & Julia Phillips

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    New American Library, 2000, 247 pages, C$32.99 hc, ISBN 0-451-20150-7

    I’m a news junkie. Always was, always will be.

    Can’t resist the flow of info. Plugged in every evening for the news; acute withdrawal symptoms if I can’t get my fix. Hit me, feed me, I need to know.

    Give me the latest update. News aren’t just news. They’re the most important story of our lives. Heck, news are the soap of our lives. We’re not reading about it in history books.

    This is here. Now. We’re lucky to live history.

    I know the Drudge Report. Ugly layout, monospace typeface, right-wing leanings, often sensationalist headlines. Rather doubtful authenticity.

    But it brings the news. Links to the news. Breaks the news. Drudge is on top of things as they happen.

    Drudge is a junkie like me. But whereas I’m wired, he’s superplugged in the middle of the web. He slurps the news wires and links to the interesting stuff. From time to time, he’ll uncover a presidential scandal.

    Naturally, sooner or later he’d write a book about it.

    This is it. The Drudge Manifesto. 250 pages of free-form stream-of consciousness musings on himself, conventional media, the internet and associated subjects.

    Short paragraphs. Sentence Fragments. POAs (PlentyOfAcronyms). MashedUpWords. Sweeping generalisations. Bing. Bang. Pow. J-school jargon at the speed of thought.

    This is today’s style. Bing. Bang. Boom. No time to edit. Or even use the space bar. You can always upload the corrections later.

    Drudge says he’s better than the New York Times.

    Says print media is dead.

    Says TV is dead.

    He might not believe it, but it’s his job to make us argue against it.

    Drudge says: Anyone can now be his own journalist. Publish any story. Reach the world.

    Sure.

    But not everyone deserves my belief. My attention. My eyeballs.

    I still love the CBC, state-sponsored journalism institution as it is.

    But then again, I’ve never watched FOX News.

    His manifesto is a screed against the so-called staid old institutions.

    His readers (see endnotes/links/appendices) think they’re getting the whole story. Without interference from “the staid and leftist drivel from the TV.” [P.241], they think they read something “IMPARTIAL, UNBIASED and TRUTHFUL”.

    The irony here is so thick you couldn’t cut it with a cigar.

    Drudge thinks of himself as a journalist. Does he make mistakes? He says it’s not important, because old media also makes plenty of mistakes.

    Some rationale.

    I could have fun with it, but I think I’ll just move on.

    (Don’t believe your fan-mail, Matt.)

    Drudge is not journalist. He’s a well-connected web surfer with the guts to re-print rumours people send him.

    He stands above, besides, under, outside the system.

    It doesn’t make him a superhero. He’s the spider at the center of the news web, but he would quickly starve without the flies getting caught in his net.

    Without traditional media, he’d starve to death. Without the newswires, he’d have only rumours to report. Without the attention given to him, the rumours would go someplace else. His much-lauded revelations about the Lewinski affair are diminished in the telling; the story would have gone out anyway. Just maybe a few hours later.

    If your main reputation is that you crack stories by minutes, you may want to re-think your line of business.

    We can’t have all Drudges and no journalists; no one would be able (understand; paid, trained, given the time) to present the rough draft of history that is journalism.

    But let’s not be too dismissive of Drudge. He may be bombastic and overly confident in the Internet, but he’s useful. As an overseer of media. A check and a balance on another set of checks and balances. When he points out that the convergence of media acquisitions can’t be good, he’s speaking the whole truth.

    At his most lucid (see Appendix A, the transcription of an interview at the rather sceptical National Press Club), Drudge is a knowledgeable media pundit.

    But even Drudge can’t fight a bigger force than old media; time.

    2000 seems so far away, barely twenty-five months after its last few days. As of January 2003, we’ve got global terrorism, a moron in the White House, a right wing left to curtail civil liberties in the name of homeland security and a bunch of civilian hawks anxious to start a war without UN approval.

    One president wants to have sex with curvy young women. The other wants to bomb a foreign country for no good reason at all.

    Guess which one I identify with.

    Yes, 2000 seems so far ago. And among other things, Drudge now has to content with a powerful opponent.

    It’s called news.google.com

    It spiders thousands of recognized news sources, sees what’s hot and presents the most popular material in a single page. Without fuss. Without bias. Heck, without human intervention, because everything is run by algorithms.

    You may be obsolete, Drudge.

    What you do, the computer can do too.

    But the computer can’t be a journalist.

    Maybe that’s your way out.

  • Red Rabbit, Tom Clancy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 2002, 618 pages, C$39.99 hc, ISBN 0-399-14870-1

    It’s no accident if Tom Clancy has decided to incorporate under the name “Jack Ryan Ltd.” His fictional protagonist has starred in no less than eight best-selling novels since 1984 (with cameo roles in two others) as well as four blockbuster films. This is nothing compared to some mystery writers who are still churning out series novels decades after inventing their lead protagonist (Robert B. Parker and his “Spencer”, for instance), but unlike them, Clancy has been willing to make his characters evolve. From a humble intelligence analyst in The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan has become, post-Debt of Honor, nothing less than the President of the United States. After dealing with what was almost a nuclear war in The Bear and the Dragon, there isn’t much left for Ryan to do: Step down —or die heroically.

    While that particular story might be told in Clancy’s next opus, [September 2003: Alas, no] that hasn’t prevented him from squeezing out one more Ryan adventure out of his imagined universe. With Red Rabbit, he takes us back sometime between Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October to tell us of his involvement in countering an assassination attempt on the Pope.

    Now this attempt is part of the historical record; in May 1981, Pope John Paul II was severely wounded by a Turkish terrorist named Mehmet Ali Agca, who was using a weapon obtained in Bulgaria. Since then, various rumours have credited the KGB with this attempt. Red Rabbit is a peek behind the Iron Curtain, a fictionalization of the events surrounding this event.

    It’s an unusual novel for Clancy; an attempt at meshing historical fact and fiction (he has written “historical” novel before –Without Remorse-, but it didn’t attempt to integrate itself with any known historical fact), a simpler plot than the previous novels (notice how the book is “merely” six hundred-odd pages long) and a curiously non-violent book too: The only shots fired are part of the historical record, and the body count equals exactly one —and that takes place off-screen at the very very end of the book.

    It’s also unusual in that it’s Clancy’s purest “spy” story so far. Whereas The Cardinal of the Kremlin contained a substantial touch of spycraft, this novel is packed with what feels like authentic descriptions of real-life spy stuff. Even the low thrill-factor of Red Rabbit works at evoking real-world danger here; By toning down the spectacular, Clancy makes even a simple playground conversation seem tense. Surely real spies do not behave like James Bond!

    Instead, we’re treated to a historical drama made more prescient with the benefit of twenty year’s hindsight and declassified material. The role of the papacy in the fall of communism is now fairly well-documented, and Clancy can draw upon these new revelations to solidify his story.

    On the other hand, he can’t resist the temptation to give his protagonists almost perfect foresight. Jack Ryan is almost cocky when he confidently asserts that the Soviet Empire will soon crumble upon itself. Other more serious anachronisms abound, mixing dates between 1980 and 1982. As a teenage Transformers fan, I was rather shocked to catch Clancy referencing the cartoon series at least three years before it was aired. Gotcha, Tom!

    This laziness doesn’t stop there: on a sentence-per-sentence level, Red Rabbit is as sloppily edited as Clancy’s latest few novels. Anachronistic expressions abound, and so does a certain repetition of terms (most egregiously the infamous “pshrink”), though nowhere as bad as in The Bear and the Dragon. I have noted previously that Clancy needs an editor who will not be swayed by his best-selling status, and this is still true; you could lop at least one hundred pages off this novel without undue harm.

    On the other hand, the novel as it stands right now is still fun for Clancy fans or spy novel buffs. The meticulous description of spycraft establishes an engrossing atmosphere of authenticity. While this is in no way an essential Clancy novel nor even a particularly well-integrated one (unlike Patriot Games, no mentions of the events in Red Rabbit are ever uttered anywhere in the series, which is unusual for Clancy.), it’s a pleasant read, certainly a better one than any of Clancy’s sharecropped ghost-written novels. It’ll do until Ryan’s next (and probably last) adventure.

  • The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New, Margot Rosenberg & Bern Marcowitz

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 2002, 190 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-30067-0

    I love books. I really do. I could go on and on about how many books I read and own and cherish and how I once almost went over a table to stop someone from dog-earing a book, but just take my word for it; I love books.

    The first time I saw The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New in bookstores, I knew it was something I had to get. Sagacious advice about cleaning, keeping and repairing books? Hey, I need this stuff. What Rosenberg and Marcowitz have put together is nothing short of a manifesto for serious bibliophiles. Inside its delightfully retro-looking dust jacket, there is enough advice to allow any book-lover to put his or her own library back into shape.

    These two booksellers have plenty of real-world experience and their delightfully practical wisdom amply demonstrates it. Wrapped in a commonsense prose, reading this is a lot like spending a few hours with two quirky librarians with a lot of stories to tell. Take notes, because you won’t find this advice anywhere else. Most of it is simple common sense, but the rest is illuminating. This is a Complete Idiot’s Guide to Book Stewardship by another name.

    This is a book that goes well beyond simple how-to advice. Some its best passages are simply about books. What they mean, what they can do, why we love them so much and why someone who is not kind to books is someone who doesn’t deserve any pity. Serious bibliophiles will read this book and feel their spirits soar through the roof of their library; it’s nothing short of a love letter to their favourite subject. There’s plenty of quotable material here, and twice as many passages to reflect upon. Expect to re-read passages every so often.

    The best complaint anyone can make about this book is that it’s not long enough. It’s a shame to see it end. What’s more serious, though, is the lack of illustrations. It would have been useful to be shown some of the repair methods explained here, compare before-and-after images and quickly associate specialized terms with their visual equivalents. The authors spend so much time extolling the visual, odoriferous and tactile pleasures of books, it’s a shame to see at least the visual aspect given short thrift.

    I must also confess that, as a cat-person (or, more accurately, a no-pets kind of person), the authors’ constant references to dogs, dogs and more dogs got a bit tiresome. Granted, their “real” job is selling dog books (go visit them at www.dogbooks.com). It is also true that this is, in fact, their own book (if I’m not happy, I just have to write my own). Still, it gets somewhat ironic to see them grumble against ill-mannered book handlers while scrupulously avoiding any mention of volume-chewing dogs. I have no doubts that their own dogs are particularly well-trained in this regard… but such is not the case with all pets and kids. On the other hand, this eccentricity gradually becomes charming, reinforcing the very human aspect of this book.

    And ultimately, this is what The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New is all about; the connection between books and humans (canines not excluded). Beyond the cleaning-up of books, the careful storage of volumes and the ethics of book-lending, this is about the happy life of bibliophiles, the peace of reading, the beauty of written thoughts and the satisfaction of communicating. In short, it’s an essential purchase for anyone who loves books.

  • Media Virus!, Douglas Rushkoff

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ballantine, 1996, 344 pages, C$16.95 tpb, ISBN 0-345-39774-6

    As someone who started reading Adbusters! magazine in high-school during the early nineties, media jamming and memetic theory aren’t much of a discovery at this point in time. Still, “Hidden agendas in popular culture” is a tagline that’ll get me every time, so it’s no surprise if I picked up Media Virus.

    Culture commentator Douglas Rushkoff wants to do two thing with this book. First, to show how media, far from being a fearsome monolithic entity that that tells everyone what to do, is in fact controlled by the public. Second, to give specific examples of how individuals can manipulate media to transmit ideas they have created and optimized for maximum impact.

    At least, that’s what I was able to gather. Media Virus is so scattered, so free-wheeling that it’s hard to constrain. Like a channel-hopping teen wired on Jolt Cola, Rushkoff switches from one theme to another with a breathless energy, telling good stories but seldom bothering to pull them together. “Media Virus! Media Virus!” he shouts here and there. Well, okay: ideas can be propagated through the mindspace like their biological counterparts, but what happens then?

    To be fair, though, you won’t spend too much time worrying about the unity of the book as you rush through it, thrown from one field of interest to another with scarcely a moment’s pause. Media Virus! is an exhilarating read even six years (and a full Internet revolution) after publication. (Unfortunately, some cultural references now need a footnote or two, and this caveat will only grow worse with time.) Highlights include a wonderful analysis of the 1992 presidential election and explanations of the cultural significance of Ren and Stimpy, Peewee’s Playhouse and The Simpsons. Rushkoff shows us a television rushing toward greater realism fully four years before the reality show craze. (What did he write about “Survivor”?)

    From a certain perspective, Rushkoff also shows us a society ready for the Internet. His forays on the Internet circa 1994 take on a nostalgic quality, but clearly show a society only a click away from Kazaa, ICQ and virulent political chat boards.

    Oh, the first half of the book is more interesting than the second—mostly because after reading “Media Virus!” so many times, it’s easy to be bored. (We’re the MTV generation, Rushkoff. Our brain assimilates information more quickly. Don’t you forget it.) It’s also an unfortunate effect of his chosen field of study -media theory- that he has to rely on anecdotal “evidence” and personal interpretation of facts rather than harder numerical data in the form of, say statistics and survey. Media theorists have to apply, essentially, the tools of historians to subjects that haven’t even had time to cool down. This makes his speculations fun and interesting to read, but rather less than convincing from a purely objective perspective.

    But it may be a mistake to apply scientific thought to this subject. Maybe it’s more accurate to consider Media Virus! as a bunch of ideas and thoughts half-way corralled in book form. That a lot of them are obvious would only mean that Rushkoff either did his research or was dead-on in predicting the prevalent Media Viruses of 1995-2002.

    In any case, Media Virus! is great good fun. Even limiting itself to anecdotal evidence, it manages to explain (and defuse) the success of such latter pop icons as Eminem, Teletubbies, Survivor and a whole bunch of other things. As maybe the last book about the pre-Internet media, it may even be a historical curio of sort. In any case, this is a splendid thought-piece, a book to read whenever the success of the latest pop sensation looks too bizarre to be believed.

  • The Voices of Heaven, Frederik Pohl

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1994, 280 pages, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 0-312-85643-1

    Frederik Pohl hasn’t become the living embodiment of a science-fiction professional for nothing. When even his average efforts like The Voices of Heaven end up being more fun to read that most SF published that year, it’s a sign that the man knows what he’s doing.

    It’s not as if this novel has any particularly original element. Bring together a maniaco-depressive protagonist, a love triangle, a suicidal cult, a far-away colony, barrels of anti-matter, musings about religion, mix well and… there you have The Voices of Heaven.

    It’s not immune to some of the traditional Stupid Stuff that contaminates so much quickly-written SF, mind you: Pohl’s assertion that political parties would be eliminated in favor of religious voting blocs is so silly it’s hard to know where to begin. But given that this is Pohl’s Religion Novel, some slack must be cut.

    He certainly knows how to bring us in the story, as an unnamed questioner interrogates our narrator about his life leading up to the “present”. Who is asking the questions? What is at stakes? The answers are ultimately disappointing, but it doesn’t matter when it comes to make us read the novel.

    This narrator, Barry di Hoa, is a technical specialist, an antimatter loader living a hard but comfortable life on the Moon, working in the only antimatter production facility in the solar system. Everything seems to be going well for him. He’s even thinking about marriage when he’s drugged by a rival and put on a colony ship headed light-years away. When he wakes up, he finds himself shanghaied on a faraway solar system. Without his beloved. Without the medication that keeps him stable.

    The colony is not only ill-prepared to receive him, but it’s also helpless against most things. Accidentally established in an earthquake-prone region, the colony has been so far unable to develop, stagnating at the same level for decades. It doesn’t help that fully a quarter of the colony’s population are Millenarists, a cult that openly encourages suicide as a way to atone for all past sins.

    Yikes.

    Well, if you actually find such a belief sustainable.

    But stranger things have happened.

    Barry, as a can-do type of guy, finds himself with precious little to do there. Naturally, it gets worse when he starts cycling through his manic-depressive roller-coaster again…

    It’s a short book, and a fairly simple plot, but Pohl’s got too much professionalism to turn it into just another SF novel. He infuses his narrator with a gradual amount of empathy, making the book far more interesting than you’d expect. Barry, for all his faults and shortcomings, is someone we can really cheer for. Ironically, his greatest moment of triumph is related in an offhanded, almost embarrassed tone of voice, as he seems reluctant to take responsibility for actions committed when he was in the maniacal half of his cycle.

    In short, The Voices of Heaven, despite unsubtle anti-religion shortcuts, predictable developments (oh, can’t you predict part of the conclusion whenever it’s obvious that our hero will remain virtuous?) and generally unexciting plotting, manages to be a worthwhile read. The writing is clear and enjoyable, the characters are well-defined and it ultimately amounts to a good time.

    A true professional’s job.

  • The Accidental Theorist, Paul Krugman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Norton, 1998, 204 pages, C$34.99 hc, ISBN 0-393-04638-9

    I don’t know all that much when it comes to the science of economics, but I do love a good argument.

    Paul Krugman wrote The Accidental Theorist for me.

    It’s a vulgarization book about economics, or more accurately a collection of essays that aim to dispel some of the most prevalent myths about the economy. In here, Krugman takes on the effects of globalization, the trickle-down economy, currency speculation, unemployment and much more. His favorite target is the type of empty rhetoric propagated by right-wing icons who don’t understand the issues they’re discussing… and I can’t think of any more deserving targets.

    Readers of Microsoft’s slate.com magazine should be familiar with Krugman, as several of the articles reprinted here were originally published on the site. Not being a Slate reader, though, this was all new material as far as I was concerned.

    And pretty good material too. Krugman’s got everything he needs to be a good communicator: not only a thorough knowledge of his own field and the ability to make it understandable to the public, but also a set of strong beliefs and a passion to share them. His writing style is compact (don’t be fooled by the low number of pages; this book packs more ideas than other works twice the size), exact, to the point and often devastatingly funny.

    Yes, funny. Economics and humor. Stranger things have happened.

    Krugman also has the requisite disdain for people who ignore or ignore the truth. His step-by-step deconstruction of Richard Armey’s The Freedom Revolution [“An Unequal Exchange”, P.52-61] is utterly convincing: Armey must have intentionally mis-quoted freely-available statistics in order to sustain an untenable point to his readers. This kind of dishonesty is inexcusable, and there’s ample room for Krugman to make his point in exposing it. The Accidental Theorist really hits its stride when debunking bad economics.

    Mind you, bad economics are prevalent across the political spectrum. Blaming Krugman for “taking sides” would be inappropriate, even if he seems to be an avowed liberal: he takes on sacred cows from both sides of the fence. Supply-side economics and globalization on one side, government size and currency control on the other.

    [December 2003: In twelve short months, Krugman has, through a series of lively weekly opinion columns, emerged on the American political scene as a vigorous opponent of Bush II’s economic practices. Vilification by the right ensued in the best tradition of polarized debate. How dare one “liberal” argue for smaller government and balanced budgets!]

    All and all, it’s a heck of a read. Krugman does more here to raise the profile and reputation of economists than anyone else I’ve ever read. He convinced me that this can actually be a fascinating field. I found myself, thanks to Part 5 of the book, enthralled by currency trading scenarios. Imagine that!

    Though all of The Accidental Theorist, Krugman proves to be a witty, affable and constantly interesting commentator. He obviously loves his field and can’t wait to share this enthusiasm with others. It works; I found myself asking questions I never thought about before, and watching the financial news with renewed interest. His interests go beyond simple economics matters, especially in the last section where he applies the tools of his trade to matters such as environmentalism, health care and traffic jams with conclusions you might not necessarily expect. Krugman loves to play with ideas, and that’s an attitude I can only respect. The last essay of the book alone contains enough ideas for a full-fledged science-fiction novel… if anyone is bold enough to screw around with what “common sense” has been telling us for the past few years.

    All in all, even though I accidentally picked up The Accidental Theorist without too much attention to the author, I’m now suddenly curious to find out what else Krugman has written. In the meantime, this collection is staying on my shelves besides Sagan and Pellegrino, smack-dab in the scientific vulgarization section.

  • Ad Nauseam: The Onion, Volume 13, The Onion

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Three Rivers Press, 2002, 264 pages, C$26.00 tpb, ISBN 1-4000-4724-2

    Looking for Christmas presents? The helpful folks at The Onion can rescue everything by rolling out their newest volume in time for gift-wrapping season.

    Unlike the previous three Onion books, (two best-of selections and one book of original content), this is a true collection. All 44 issues of The Onion published between November 1st 2000 and October 31st 2001 are contained here, reprinted from the original paper version of the humor periodical. Yes, that includes the famous September 27th 2001 “HOLY F—ING S—T: Attack On America” issue, which tackled the September 11 events well before the rest of America was ready to deal with it.

    Compared with their latest best-of collection Dispatches from the Tenth Circle, there’s no denying that Ad Nauseam is, overall, not quite as funny. The Onion can have weaker issues like any other periodical, and this collection also includes those. Still, sifting through the pages, there’s still plenty of amusing material.

    Highlights include “New Girlfriend Tests Poorly With Peer Focus Group”, the special “Mayhem 2000” election edition, “I’m Like a Chocoholic, but for Booze”, “Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested” (also found in Tenth Circle, mind you), “Everything in Entire World Now Collectible”, “Girlfriend Changes Man Into Someone She’s Not Interested In”, “Bush Regales Dinner Guests With Impromptu Oratory On Virgil’s Minor Works”, “Author Wishes She Hadn’t Blown Personal Tragedy On First Book”, “Gore Upset that Clinton Doesn’t Call Anymore”, “Stephen Jay Gould Speaks Out Against Science Paparazzi”, “Toaster-Instruction Booklet Author Enraged That Editor Betrayed His Vision” and an article I wish I’d have written; “Everybody Browsing At Video Store Saying Stupid Things”

    All of this should be enough to make you laugh for a while. Noticeably thicker than its three predecessors, Ad Nauseam compensates quality by quantity. Even as a cash-grab endeavor, it’s still more than a worthwhile buy for fans of The Onion.

    Two things emerge from a linear read of a year in the life of The Onion, though, things that may not be obvious from reading The Onion on their web site:

    The first is the developing stories of the “Community Voices” columnists. While I had traditionally considered the recurring columns to be among the weakest sections of the periodical, reading a bunch of them in short succession can really help in making those “columnists” being interesting. I even came to feel a strange affection for Jim Anchower’s “The Cruise”, Hertbert Kornfeld’s tales’o’tha’Accountz Reeceevable Bruthahood and even -gasp- Jean Teasdale’s formerly insufferable “A Room of Jean’s Own”. Go figure.

    The second is strictly an accident of history: Reading months of Onion-accentuated silliness before the September 11th 2001 events is a lot like witnessing a nation whistling on its way to a good solid mugging. “A Shattered Nation Longs To Care About Stupid Bulls—t Again” [P.241] indeed. (Fortunately, even recent history shows that America is resilient and does, indeed, care again for stupid stuff.)

    One nice side-effect of the “include everything” mission of Ad Nauseam is that I got to re-read one full year’s worth of those terribly sarcastic one-liner “Horoscopes”, which has become one of my favorite features in The Onion over the past few months. Those hadn’t been included in previous collections.

    An annoying detail, proving that nothing is perfect: I loathed the splitting up of stories over two, sometimes even three pages. Even though I understand the production constraints leading to that decision, no amount of rationalization could make it look good.

    Enthusiasts of The Onion need to encouragement to rush out and grab a copy of this book. Newbies would be best-advised to pick up Our Dumb Century or Dispatches From The Tenth Circle as an introduction: Though there’s nothing specifically wrong about Ad Nauseam, it doesn’t reach the dizzying heights of the first two books.

    So… can we hope for Volume 14 next year?

    [March 2005: Annual volumes 14 and 15 are out, and if they do deliver hard doses of The Onion‘s trademark type of satire, they’re not books fit to be read all at once and they don’t measure up to the dramatic arc leading to and stemming from 9/11. Recommended, but only for those who already are familiar with The Onion.]

  • The Popcorn Report, Faith Popcorn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Business, 1992, 268 pages, C$15.00 tpb, ISBN 0-88730-594-6

    Oh, I so do love futurists. They’re like stunted Science-Fiction authors who had all the imagination beaten out of them by MBA-holding Zen masters. Futurists say they explore new ideas and extrapolate from existing trends, but when you look at it ten years later, does their track record hold any better than SF writers of the time?

    Not really. Exhibit number one: The much-celebrated Popcorn Report, by Faith Popcorn. Written in the early nineties, it was supposed to give us pointers on the ten following years. Well, ding-dong, the decade’s up and it’s time to take a look at what she said then.

    Ten trends. Okay, here they are: Cocooning in a New Decade, Fantasy Adventures, Small Indulgences, Egonomics, Cashing Out, Down-Aging, Staying Alive, The Vigilante Consumer, 99 Lives and Save Our Society.

    Okay. Sure. Spot anything incongruous here? You shouldn’t.

    And that may very well be my point. Re-read The Popcorn Report today and while some cultural differences may have evolved, it’s not as if it’s totally alien. Neither particularly prescient nor exceptionally wrong, this book could be re-issued today with only a few dates rubbed out and it would still be publishable.

    So what does that say, exactly? That Popcorn was right enough ten years ago that she’s still on track? Or rather that by predicting bland middle-of-the-road generalities, you can’t go wrong? Of Popcorn’s “ten big trends”, a lot of them look like stuff consultants spout off to companies just to be one the safe side: “be honest or your customers will hate you.” Ooh. “They will pay more for a premium product.” Gee. “They love it when they get something that’s customized for them.” Wow. Smart thinking there, Einstein.

    Of Popcorn’s ten trends, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that’s not true today. But then again, it’s been the case for thirty years. Yes, everyone wants to save the environment. Yes, everyone wants to have a safe thrill or two from time to time. Don’t you say that people want to retire as soon as they can afford to? Heavens!

    Meanwhile, the Internet whooshes by Popcorn, who still goes bonkers for the oh-so-early-nineties virtual reality. But maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on her for that, as a lot of people didn’t see it coming either. ANd yet, that was the biggest business story of the decade. Whoosh. Business seers are ill-equipped to deal with technological discontinuities.

    At least it’s a dynamic read. If you’re familiar with espresso-laced business consulting literature, The Popcorn Report‘s writing style will be familiar: All pow-pow-pow rhetoric, “backed” by fringe anecdotes that might actually mean something if you believe everything you read.

    Please excuse my cynicism (or better yet; embrace it), but I have already seen far too many of those so-called “analyses” deceive over-eager “decision-makers”. By fishing extreme anecdotes as indicative of trends, Popcorn marginalizes her propositions for anyone used to seeing facts and figures. How about a poll tracking attitudes over a five-year period? Wouldn’t that be a more convincing method to prove or disprove how attitudes will evolve? But The Popcorn Report is heavy on stories and light on figures…

    Despite my skepticism, though, The Popcorn Report still makes for good wish-fulfillment reading. It’s argued in an interesting fashion, and probably stands best as a timeless reminder of ways one company can hope to distinguish itself from competitors. But the decade that has elapsed since the publication of the book certainly offers a more accurate assessment of the books true “predictive” worth.

  • Murphy’s Gambit, Syne Mitchell

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    ROC, 2000, 377 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-45809-5

    Reviewer’s Note: As I couldn’t muster up the interest to review this mid-list SF novel, I simply stuffed it in my brand new ReviewMatron™ and let it cough up an automated review. Here are the results: (Warning! The ReviewMatron™ has an unfortunate tendency to spoil novels it doesn’t like.)

    Genre: Science-Fiction Adventure

    Author Profile: searching… none…. first novel.

    What the only cover blurb tells you: Mid-list SF author Eric S. Nylund says “Adamantine-hard science fiction with heart… a ripping good read”

    What the only cover blurb doesn’t tell you: That Eric S. Nylund is Syne Mitchell’s husband.

    Plot: Outsider gets embroiled in conspiracy revolving around piece of high-technology with potential to overthrow existing social order.

    Protagonist: “Thiadora Murphy”, a “floater” -zero-gee-optimized human- sent to a military college.

    Protagonist’s clichés (list): absent father… outsider amongst her peers… red-hot pilot… something to prove to the universe… meaningful tattoos…

    Initial Plot Complications (list): Ostracism by peers… job offer from shadowy organization (refused)… framed… kicked out of academy… best friend killed… forced to take the job against her will…

    Contrived or cliché?: Hard to say.

    Author’s unsubtle theme: Discrimination.

    Assessment of first third of novel: Poor. Cliché. Dull. Déjà-vu.

    Plot shift into second act: High-tech vessel stolen from company, then stolen back by company. Meanwhile, protagonist meets first ally.

    “Ally” characteristics (list): “Kyle”: Opposite sex… rather sympathetic to heroine… exceptional hard-to-explain skills… shadowy loyalties… secretly connected to powerful organization…

    Thrust of Second Act (list): recovery of ship… discovery of capabilities of ship, including time-travel… forces pursue the ship… protagonist isolated from all sources of support…

    Return of father: Check. (Sort of)

    Explanation of Ally’s willingness to help protagonist: Check.

    Assessment of second third: Better. Now that all clichéd pieces are in position, magnanimous readers merely have to follow them around.

    Capture of heroine as start of third act: Check.

    Torture: Check.

    Awful doubt that ally has betrayed her: Check.

    Ally still comes through: Check.

    Best friend back from the dead: Check.

    Best friend pissed: Check.

    Hot lesbian love scene between protagonist and best friend: No.

    Escalation of third act into galaxy-spanning political reform: Check.

    Revolt of the ostracized masses: Check.

    All seems lost: Check

    Heroine figures ultra-clever scheme to restore rightful social order: Check.

    Happy Ending: Check.

    Assessment of Last third: Fair.

    Assessment of writing skills: Okay. Enough to keep reader’s attention once everything gets going.

    Assessment of Novel: Takes a while to get going. Slowly evolves in average mid-list SF novel.

    Double-meaning title: Check.

    Hard-SF? No.

    Recommended action re Author’s next novels: Acquire at used book sales if price is right.

    Final state of mind: Blah.

  • Where Angels Watch, Randall Wallace

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Crime Line, 1992, 323 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-29254-4

    If you’re a movie buff, the name “Randall Wallace” should mean something to you. He wrote the screenplays for the Oscar-winning BRAVEHEART and the execrable PEARL HARBOUR. He directed WE WERE SOLDIERS from his own script. He’s buddy with Mel Gibson. In short, he’s what we’d call a Hollywood insider.

    It’s not a secret that he didn’t start out that way. His biographies (check out his sort-of-official web site at www.thewheelhouse.net ) mention that he wrote a few novels before breaking into the Hollywood big-time in the mid-nineties. Finding those novels, however, isn’t an easy matter given that they didn’t sell all that well and are almost all out-of-print by now.

    I was lucky enough to catch Where Angels Watch at a used book sale. It’s the second novel in a series (technically a sequel starring the characters from Blood of the Lamb, though with a presumably brand-new all-exciting villain!), but I couldn’t very well wait and hope to find the first novel anytime soon, so I dove right in.

    In many ways, this is a strictly-business police thriller. In Los Angeles, a killer preys on hookers and strippers, leaving them dismembered and displayed as an unmistakable challenge to police forces. Protagonists Tom Ridge and Scarlet McCullers are now faced with a new mystery—and a killer than may be a policeman…

    I’m sure you’ve read something similar before. It’s not exactly original. But there’s always some place for a well-written entry, and that’s exactly what Where Angels Watch manages to be.

    It all depends on a pair of sympathetic protagonists: Tom Ridge is a by-the-book policeman with some religious training and a mind like a computer. Everyone is a bit in awe of his cognitive capabilities, and indeed, he often intuits clues and conclusions well before the experts can confirm what he’s already deduced. The only person not afraid to try to one-up Ridge is, of course, “Cully” McCullers. She’s brasher, more willing to throw suspects around and always trying to prove her worth. Together, they make an unstoppable team. Except that… they’ve been together -in a biblical sense- and that only complicates matters.

    It still wouldn’t have worked if Wallace hadn’t been able to give the required spark to his characters. But he does, and also manages to deliver a good crunchy police thriller with plenty of tasty passages. This being L.A., we get a look at the city’s biggest industry, the relationships between police and celebrities, a believable look inside a police precinct and all sorts of other good stuff.

    Wallace’s writing is clear and easily readable. Even better; he also succeeds in wringing honest emotion out of passages that would be booed off the stage in any other context. (Though even he can’t make the ridiculous strip-tease scene work.) I could explain the meaning of the novel’s title to you in a few words, but then you’d look at the screen with a look of corny disbelief. But Wallace manages, and that’s all that matter when you’re reading the novel. (On the other hand, it may explain why Michael Bay’s ham-fisted triumphant direction made such a mess out of PEARL HARBOR’s sentimental scenes. But I digress.)

    Understand that I’m not raving about this novel; for all its qualities, it doesn’t come close to, say, Michael Connelly’s work. But it’s good stuff, it sticks to the point and it delivers what it’s supposed to. Plus it’s got curiosity value; how many novels on your shelves have been written by acclaimed screenwriters/directors?