I don’t know much about Sarah Vowell. To me, she’s the female David Sedaris on This American Life. She’s a funny writer with a funny voice.

But then Craig went and picked Vowell’s new book The Wordy Shipmates for our February book group discussion. Although I should be reading January’s book (the tedious Main Street by Sinclair Lewis), I’m actually further along in Vowell’s. (This is mostly, however, because I have Vowell’s book in audio form, which lets me listen to it as I drive hither and yon.)

It turns out that Sarah Vowell is a self-professed history nerd. She seems to be particularly obsessed with American history. She reads about it. She talks about it. She spends her vacations visiting historical sites. The Wordy Shipmates is her book about the Puritans coming to North America in the early 17th century. It’s educational, insightful — and hilarious.

As always when I find an author I like, I did some research on Vowell and her other books. Many reviewers seem to think that her best work is an essay called “The Nerd Voice” from The Partly Cloudy Patriot. So I bought the book.

“The Nerd Voice” is a prolonged meditation on the 2000 U.S. presidential election. It contrasts Al Gore and George W. Bush. The former, says Vowell, is a profoundly intelligent man — a nerd. The latter isn’t just dumb, but actively dislikes intelligence — he’s a jock. She doesn’t seem to hate Bush (the book was written in early 2001, however), but she does like Gore. After all, like Vowell, he is a nerd.

Vowell writes that Gore lacks one important characteristic that allows nerds to be accepted by society at large: the capability to be self-deprecating. She equates this with the ability to use the stereotypical “nerd voice” to make fun of oneself, to practice “preemptive mockery”. By mocking yourself before others can, you become a less threatening nerd.

Anyhow, all of this is set up. What I really want to share are the last two pages of Vowell’s essay. (And really, it’s the last paragraph I want to highlight, because I read that and say, “Amen!” But to get to the last paragraph, I need the three paragraphs before…)

While the preemptive mockery software is automatically included in most nerd brains under the age of forty, it still needs to be installed in Gore. Self-deprecation is not standard baby boomer operating procedure — they were the most aggressive self-aggrandizing generation of the twentieth century and aren’t particularly good at making fun of themselves.

Any politician tricky enough to get elected to the House, not to mention the vice presidency, must necessarily have the kind of postmodern mind which thinks simultaneously about both what he is saying and the way he is saying it. As a national Democrat, Gore has had to frame his arguments about, say, energy policy, remembering that his support base includes both the United Auto Workers and the members of the Sierra Club. So he already has the cerebral capability required to give a proper name-heavy speech about the China conundrum followed by an icebreaking wisecrack about not going to the prom. It’s silly, demeaning, and time-consuming, for sure, but for a nerd, what part of driving a tank or pulling on cowboy boots is not?

Any person who wants any job, who knows he would be good at the job, knows he has to fake his way through the dumb job interview before he’s actually allowed to roll up his sleeves. I asked [my friend] Doug what he thought would have happened in the campaign if, instead of donning khakis and cowboy boots and French-kissing his wife on TV, Gore had been truer to himself and said what he thought and knew and believed using the nerd voice. Doug didn’t hesitate: “Oh my God, he’d be president for life.”

I wish it were different. I wish that we privileged knowledge in politicians, that the ones who know things didn’t have to hide it behind brown pants, and that the know-not-enoughs were laughed all the way to the Main border on their first New Hampshire meet and greet. I wish that in order to secure his party’s nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickenson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Two Sleepy People”, Johnny Cash’s “Five Feet High and Rising”, and “You Got the Silver” by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on earth dealing with the most complicated problems in the history of the world — poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes.

Have I mentioned that Obama reads comic books?

There are things that everybody else loves but which, whether due to character flaw or discerning taste, I do not. I’m always baffled by this phenomenon.

Recently, for example, I decided that I’d waited long enough. After five years, I was ready to watch The Lord of the Rings films again. Surely they had improved with time and distance, right?

I was disappointed to find that they had not. The pacing was still glacial. The music was still omnipresent, as were the special effects. (”This is more cartoon than film,” I thought at one point.) I couldn’t even make it out of The Shire.

Then Kris decided that she wanted to watch the series over the Thanksgiving holiday. While I worked in my office, I could overhear the screeching Nazgul and thundering orcs and the omnipresent music. When she started the third film, The Return of the King, I sat down to watch with her. This had, after all, won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2003.

Ugh.

I hated it. I’m trying not say “The Return of the King is awful” because I know that implies that I am some sort of universal arbiter of taste. But it’s hard. I really want to say it. I do not like this movie — not one bit.

And so there are things that everybody loves but which I do not.

The books of Barbara Kingsolver are another example: brightly-painted straw men (and straw women) dancing across a broken stage. Every time somebody proclaims Barbara Kingsolver as her favorite author, I want to shake this person and shout, “What on earth is wrong with you?” (I also want to hand her Proust, which is probably further evidence of my pathology.)

Other examples: House, Friends, beach volleyball, cream cheese, and blog entries that are simply lists of dozens (or hundreds) of “tips”. And, finally, the book that made me start this tirade: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

For the past five years, friends and total strangers, when they learn that I’m a writer, are inclined to gush, “Have you read Bird by Bird? It’s wonderful!”

No, I haven’t. But I’ve tried many times. I usually make it to the end of the introduction. I want to read the book — so many people I know think it’s wonderful! — but I’m tripped time and time again by the author’s twee turns of phrase, by her constant attempts to be cute and funny. With me, a little of this goes a long way, but a lot of it goes nowhere.

Today at 43folders, Merlin Mann wrote that real advice hurts. This is a brilliant salvo against a type of blog entry that is currently very popular, but which offers nothing to the world: the afore-mentioned lists of dozens (or hundreds) of “tips”. Mann writes:

In more instances than we want to admit, tips not only won’t (and can’t) help us to improve; they will actively get in the way of fundamental improvement by obscuring the advice we need with the advice that we enjoy. And, the advice that’s easy to take is so rarely the advice that could really make a difference.

This is something I’ve been wrestling with at Get Rich Slowly. For a long time, I too, like Mann, was a purveyor of tips. And I still believe there’s a place for tips. A limited place. More and more, though, I think that tips address the symptoms and not the disease. They lead to a belief that there are easy answers. But you know what? There aren’t any easy answers — at least not often.

Anyhow, Mann leads his article by praising Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Once again I thought to myself that I should give the book a try. So, once again, I sat down and read the introduction. And, once again, I hated it. Sample:

I believed, before I sold my first book, that publication would be instantly and automatically gratifying, an affirming and romantic experience, a Hallmark commercial where one runs and leaps in slow motion across a meadow filled with wildflowers into the arms of acclaim and self-esteem.

This did not happen for me.

Imagine that passage repeated for 21 pages and you have some idea of what it’s like to read the “introduction” to Bird by Bird. If you like that sort of thing — and obviously, many people do — I recommend the book to you. I’ll even loan you my copy. But for me, this stuff is hard to swallow. I don’t find it cute or funny or informative. I just find it annoying.

Is this a character flaw? Is it discerning taste? I don’t know. I tell myself that I’ll just suck it up and read the damn thing, but I don’t know if I will. At least it’s not Barbara Kingsolver.

Nicole recently posted her responses to a book meme. I tend to shy away from memes, but in the spirit of self-congratulatory smugness, I’ll actually participate in this one. Because I happen to have read a lot of the books in the list, I can feel all proud that I’m more educated than you are! (Actually, for whatever reason, this list has a lot of overlap with our book group reading list, so I’ve read a lot of these books in the past decade, not just in my lifetime.)

In the list below, I’ve bolded books I’ve finished, italicized books I started but did not complete, made blue the books that I particularly love, and used red to indicate books I particularly dislike. The only problem with this list? No Proust.

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter (reading right now)
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

What about you? Has your book group managed to read a lot of these books in the past ten years, too? Or are you just an uneducated little waif?

During our Thanksgiving road trip to bend, we listened to the audio version of The Golden Compass. Kris and I have both read the book several times, but since the film is coming out soon, we decided to refresh our memories.

Tiffany enjoyed the book so much that she insisted on borrowing my iPod so she could finish it on Saturday. (Tiff, Kris has finished the second book now, if you’re interested.)

When we got home, I decided to search for information on the film, which opens on December 7th. What I found made me worried. I was initially excited for the film, but recent trailers have me wary. I’m afraid the girl who plays Lyra may not be a good actress, and I’m afraid that the film may be over-produced. This clip does nothing to allay my fears:

Can you say “wholly invented” and “made from whole cloth”? This scene has no relation to the book. I am baffled. The following episode is a little better, combining two scenes from the book:

I’ve continued to listen to the book during my commute. I always forget how slow it starts. It’s leisurely, and doesn’t seem to be heading anywhere. But by the half-way point, you come to realize that everything that has been mentioned before is important, that story elements have been accumulating like a snowball. It’s quite effective story-telling, actually.

In fact, there’s an extended section about two-thirds through the book (starting with “the lost boy”) that is one of my favorite passages in any book. (I’m speaking of Tony and his fish, of course.) I only wish the rest of this trilogy held up to that last half of The Golden Compass. There are moments of brilliance throughout — including the dirigible chase near the end of The Subtle Knife — but I think that things eventually go flat.

Apparently there’s an uproar about the movie in certain parts of the Catholic church. They don’t appreciate that the series ultimately takes a dim view of religion. I never understand why religious people get hacked off at this stuff, especially in the U.S. What about freedom of speech? And why feel so threatened? Christians make up a vast majority of this country’s population. Why is it okay to have thousands and thousands of books that depict atheists in a poor light, but a single series that questions organized religion (and Catholicism in particular) is taboo? Give me a break.

Kris and I braved the icy roads — which turned out to be not so bad — to drive down to Canby for dinner with Ron and Kara last night. We were joined by Jenn and the kids. It was wonderful.

Kara prepared a meal entirely from Cook’s Country, the new(-ish) companion magazine to Cook’s Illustrated. Among the goodies were a citrus salad (tossed in an Asian dressing that even I liked — and I hate dressing), Italian pot roast, and a decadent chocolate pudding cake for dessert. Kris and I brought a bottle of wine which we’d received from Andrew and Joann at Thanksgiving. It turned out to be a perfect complement to the meal.

Between dinner and dessert, Ron and Kara gave us a tour of their newly-remodeled home. The house was built in 1891, and has been home to Ron’s family ever since. His family, Jeremy’s family, and my family are all founding members of Zion Mennonite Church, and have a long, intertwined history. When our hosts showed us their new kitchen island, they pointed out the butcher-block countertop. “That came from the old kitchen in the Zion basement,” Ron said. It was a lovely piece of wood, scarred through decades of use: circular burn-marks covered the surface.

“Look at that,” I said. “It’s not too hard to imagine my grandmother in the basement canning with the other women. And maybe Ron’s grandmother is there with her. And Jeremy’s, too.” The thing is: this probably did occur, and on more than one occasion. It’s been a long time since I marveled at the connections of community I feel when in the Whiskey Hill neighborhood, but they’re real, and they are strong. (I can imagine forty years from today Harrison and Ellis and Noah standing around a kitchen discussing the same thing.)

After dinner we chatted and let Hank read us trivia questions from his new book (Guinness World Records for Kids 2007, or something like that). Daphne managed to injure herself when leaping from the bannister-less stairs. I browsed Kara’s collection of old books, and in doing so I found a gem: Touchstones of Success by “160 present-day men of achievement”, published in 1920. The book, which is already falling apart, contains advice on success from business leaders of the era.

The within pages tell what the price [of success] is, and as our ambitious young men read in these wonderfully fascinating testimonies of really successful men they will disovered that the making of money was by no means their chief aim. They got that, and they got it because their main purpose in life was to serve, and work. Integrity, courage, a clear conscience, and a real fine character were the most valued and cherished of all their possessions.

Kara allowed me to borrow the book, and I look forward to mining it for gems — both humorous (to my 21st century eyes) and practical. I don’t that I’ve mentioned it here, but reading through “the success literature” has become something of a hobby for me. I enjoy it. The stories are uplifting, and I’ve found that many of the anecdotes and admonishments have real application to my own life.

(Barbara Ehrenreich, in the latest issue of Harper’s, attacks the personal-development field as purveyors of false hope, as scammers and charlatans. This makes my blood boil, so much so that I’ve not yet been able to set down a suitable well-reasoned response. All I can think to do is call her a disillusioned old bitch, but that’s hardly rational, hardly fair, and just plain stupid. Yet it’s where I am in my response. Maybe by next week I’ll have calmed down enough to craft some sort of rebuttal. (My biggest complaint about Ehrenreich is that “personal responsibility” seems to be a foreign concept to her.))

There’s a film coming next winter — it’s set to open on December 7th — that’s sure to excite many of my friends as much (or more than) the next Harry Potter movie. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is finally being turned into a major studio production, and the stills from first film have been released. Here are ten of them.

These are from The Golden Compass (which is known as Northern Lights in the U.K.). The second part is The Subtle Knife and the third is The Amber Spyglass.

This must be near the beginning of the film: Lyra roaming Oxford.

Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond, is Lord Asriel.

Nicole Kidman should make an excellent Mrs. Coulter.

Sam Elliott is Lee Scoresby. “Sometimes there’s a man…”

Coulter meets Lyra. Run, Lyra, run!

Scoresby to the rescue.

Lyra with the titular golden compass.

No Iorek yet (I can’t wait) and no daemons. Digital effects take longer to produce, of course, so we probably won’t see examples of those until the summer at least. Still, I’m heartened by these stills. Kris and I are excited by what we see.

Blogathon status: 8 sponsors for $151. Come on, folks: sponsor me! Even $4 or $5 makes a difference.

Lee wonders:

What’s the first book you remember reading?

That’s a difficult question to answer. As long as I can remember, books have been a part of my life. Mom and Dad did a wonderful job of making me a reader. As I look at the kids I know now, I’m ecstatic to see that in almost every instance, their parents are fostering a love of books. (Jenn and Jeremy have been especially great: Hank and Scout fairly breathe books.) But the kids I know are universally well-off. Rich, even. They can afford books, and their parents believe in the value of reading. Not every child has this advantage.

But what was the first book I remember reading? I don’t know.

I remember having Small Pig read to me at a young age. Also Millions of Cats and Dr. Seuess’ Sleep Book.

A moose is asleep. He is dreaming of moose drinks.
A goose is asleep. He is dreaming of goose drinks.
That’s well and good when a moose dreams of moose juice.
And nothing goes wrong when a goose dreams of goose juice.
But it isn’t too good when a moose and a goose
Start dreaming they’re drinking the other one’s juice.
Moose juice, not goose juice, is juice for a moose.
And goose juice, not moose juice, is juice for a goose.
So, when goose gets a mouthful of juices of mooses
And moose gets a mouthful of juices of gooses
They always fall out of their beds screaming screams
So, I’m warning you, now! Never drink in your dreams.

I have strong memories of each, including memories of going to the public library for Small Pig.

I can remember learning to read in first grade using the Star Reader books: The Wee Light, We Feed a Deer, etc.

I can’t remember which book I first picked up on my own, though. It was probably something in my grandmother’s parlor, something like The Bobbsey Twins or the Hardy Boys in The Tower Treasure.

Getting kids to read is vital. It lays the groundwork for lifelong learning. Because of this, I’m raising money for FirstBook this month. On July 29th, I’ll be blogging for 24-hours straight at Get Rich Slowly. Your sponsorship helps, even if you just give a buck. Please take the time to pledge your support.

Lately I’ve begun to read “success” books: self-help and motivational tomes and biographies of famous people. A common thread among these is: successful people read — a lot. I’m thankful to my parents for having made me a reader. Now I have a chance to foster reading in others.

Look! It’s one of those rare days on which I’ve made a weblog entry every year since I started:

Contest! Want to win some free science fiction books? Read on…

Why isn’t science fiction respected as mainstream literature? Take a gander at these book blurbs, each of which was taken from the latest flyer for the Science Fiction Book Club. These are hilarious, and not in a good way.

Here’s a contest: Tell me which blurbs are real and which blurbs are fake. Whoever has the most correct answers by next weekend wins three books recently purged from my scifi library. (Please do not cheat. That takes the fun out of it. Just make your best guesses without any outside support.)

1. Changelings — When a scientist gets wind of the shapeshifting ability of the Shongili twins, she plans to kidnap them for study and experimentation. They must flee their home on Petaybee, for though the planet is protected from exploitation, its people are not.
2. Definitely Dead — When mind-reading cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is summoned to be Queen of the Vampires in New Orleans, she’s more puzzled than worried. But that’s before all those folks start trying to kill her.
3. In Fury Born — Aided by a self-aware computer and a Fury from Old Earth mythology, an ex-Marine seeks vengeance when raiders murder her family.
4. Mammoth — When ruthless billionaire Howard Christian’s arctic team turns up a frozen mammoth, a watch-sporting 12,000-year-old man and a time-travel device, he can’t decide which he wants more. Until the device brings rampaging mammoths to Downtown L.A.!
5. The Protector’s War — Nine years after the Change rendered technology inoperable only a few pockets of civilization remain. Two communities thrive in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. But the army of the Protectorate is coming for their priceless farmland.
6. Dragon’s Fire — Pellar, a mute orphan boy, is taken in by Masterharper Zist and his wife, Cayla. They are concerned with the fate of the Shunned, particularly with the Red Star due to return soon. In time Pellar decides he must unravel the disappearance of Moran, Zist’s previous apprentice. Pellar also finds a reclusive community of watch-wher breeders, led by a half-mad woman named Aleesa. They were driven from their homes by the local feudal chief, D’gan, who hates the watch-whers. Pellar convinces the group to trust him and to allow him to take an egg away with him. The egg is extremely valuable. But is it worth the risks Pellar takes to transport it?
7. The Ghost Brigades — Three alien enemies are moving toward war against humanity, aided by a turncoat scientist. Cloned from the traitor’s DNA, Jared begins to intuit his motivations. But time is running out…
8. Queen of the Slayers — The forces of darkness are more eager than ever to regain dominance. As apocalypse draws near, the mysterious Queen of the Slayers emerges. She turns Champions against each other in her determination to claim the intoxicating Slayer essence.
9. Promise of the Witch King — The assassin Artemis Enteri and the dark elf Jarlaxl search for the Witch-King’s treasure. At the gate of the Bloodstone lands, they find themselves in the midst of a struggle between the ghost of an evil lich and an oath-bound knight.
10. Heir of Autumn — Ruled by eight Children of the Seasons, the city of Ohndarien falls to tyranny when Brophy, the Heir of Autumn, is accused of murder and exiled. Brophy must find a way past treachery — and the secret held within the dreams of slumbering child.
11. Solstice Wood — When Sylvia meets the women of her grandmother’s sewing circle, she learns why she’s been called home: Lynn Hall is the door between this world and Faerie — a realm the circle seeks to bind with magical stitches. And Sylvia is now its heir…
12. The Wizard of London — Two mismatched girls at an Edwardian boarding school reveal startling psychic gifts under the watchful eye of headmistress Isabelle Harton. But when a power-mad Elemental Mage also learns of their rarified gifts, Isabelle’s quest to shield them puts her on a collision course with the greatest Mage in England — the Wizard of London.
13. Danse Macabre — Anita Blake should be thinking about the ardour, the sexual power that flows between her and Jean-Claude, Master Vampire and Richard, her werewolf lover. It is reaching new levels…perhaps evolving into something altogether new. The unexpected effect of this is that Jean-Claude’s own power as a master vampire have grown. Richard, always unpredictable is changing too. On top of all this, Anita may be pregnant. And while not knowing whether the father is a vampire or a werewolf or someone else is bad enough, life as a Federally licensed vampire killer is no way to raise a baby.
14. High Druid of Shannara — Pen Ohmsford had paid dearly in his quest for the darkwand, the wand made from the ancient tanequil. His friends hide from Druids while the trolls are besieged by savage Urdas. Can the scattered friends join forces in time to defeat the evil.
15. Southern Fire — On the Aldabreshin Archipeligo, magic is anathema. When magic-wielding savages terrorize a southern realm, warlord Kheda must act to save his domain. He turns to Dev, a man who is everything Kheda despises, a peddler of vice…and a wizard.
16. Crystal Gorge — The enemy is close to the Treasured One’s secrets, while the Dreamers are in danger of delivering a nightmare to the Elder Gods. It falls to the humans to fight back the Vlagh…if the realm of Dhrall is to live.
17. Crown of Stars — In the series finale, Sanglant fights to legitimize his rule with Liath as his queen. As the Ashioi sow discord among the humans, Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad try to seize the crown, while Liath seeks forbidden magic to heal the war-torn land.
18. Memories of Ice — A new threat looms over beleaguered Genabackis. The Pannion Domin’s fanatical minions devour all who refuse its sadistic priest-king’s creed. When the city of Capustan is threatened, Dujek Onearms rebel army must forge peace with their old enemies.
19. The Stardragons — Eons after humankind is gone, when the Universe itself is collapsing, only the Stardragons remain. They begin an epic quest to find the Birthplace — source of all life in the universe.
20. Micah — A routine assignment turns difficult when Anita Blake must deal with her feelings for were-leopard Micah while raising the most dangerous zombie of her career.
21. Geodesica — The post-human Exarchate controls both ftl technology and the Naturals of the far-flung system — until a mysterious alien construct threatens their rule. But Geodesica will prove more dangerous than anyone can imagine.
22. The Anubis Gates — When a 20th-century scholar time-travels to 1810, he’s soon face to face with a the ka of an ancient Egyptian sorceror, a deformed clown of crime, and a body-stealing werewolf…all involved in a sinister plot to change history.

Each of the real blurbs was copied exactly — spelling, punctuation, and all. I think the Science Fiction Book Club needs to hire a new blurb writer. A couple of these are from well-known authors or are highly-regarded books, but you wouldn’t know it from these summaries!

“You know,” Kris said to me as I read some of the blurbs to her, “It’s no wonder they have to sell these five for a dollar.” And it’s no wonder that people don’t take science fiction seriously.

When the contest has finished, I’ll go through and post Amazon links to the real books. Have fun!

My startling transformation from a hoarder to a purger continues.

“I want to get rid of more books,” I told Kris last night.

“Which books?” she asked. She looked skeptical.

“Nearly all of them,” I said.

That was going to far, Kris protested. “You don’t need to get rid of any more literature,” she said. “If you want to get rid of something, get rid of your comic books. And the science fiction.”

Over the years, I’ve amassed a large science fiction library, one that takes up about 360 inches of shelf space. Maybe more. But I don’t read science fiction much anymore. I haven’t read a single book from my scifi library since we moved to the new house.

To make matters worse, the scifi books live on a pair of bookshelves in the guest room, a room that I keep complaining doesn’t give me enough room to work. (It doubles as my writing office.) I want to get rid of the guest bed, but Kris thinks I should get sell the science fiction bookshelves instead. We purchased them for $20 each from a disgruntled Borders employee. The shelves are angled so that the base rests on the floor several inches from the wall. They take up a lot of space. And they’re ugly.

“Yeah, I could purge some science fiction,” I said. “Maybe I could move the remaining books to a shelf in the other room.” We have a pair of bookshelves in our ‘cat room’ that we use mainly as storage for children’s toys. Since we have no children, these could probably be kept out of sight.

“Maybe I could move the small bookshelf from the media room into here,” Kris said. “Then we could put the kids books on it, and you could move your science fiction books over.”

“Could we get rid of the guest bed?” I asked, though I already new the answer.

“No!” said Kris. After a moment she added, “But we could move the guest bed into a corner, which would give you more space to work in.”

We’ve made a decision to re-arrange several rooms again. This happens once every few months, and I love it. I derive great pleasure from shuffling books between rooms, from dragging furniture to-and-fro. It’s as if we’re gradually seeking the ideal layout for every room in the house.

You gotta love Anthony Lane. The man is a comic genius. Check out his review of the The Da Vinci Code — both the film and the book — a review so deliciously scathing that I had to read it twice. And laughed at the same jokes each time.

How timid — how undefended in their powers of reason — must people be in order to yield to such preening? Are they reading “The Da Vinci Code” because everybody on the subway is doing the same, and, if so, why, when they reach their stop, do they not realize their mistake and leave it on the seat, to be gathered up by the next sucker? Despite repeated attempts, I have never managed to crawl past page 100. As I sat down to watch “The Da Vinci Code,” therefore, I was in the lonely, if enviable, position of not actually knowing what happens.

Oh, goodness.

I’ve tried to start The Da Vinci Code, too, but can’t make it past the first couple pages. They’re awful. Kris read it and pronounced it rubbish. It’s a shame that poorly-written stuff like this makes a gajillion dollars while better-written stuff languishes unread.

Alas.

What else does Lane have to say? Well, let’s see:

Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, except at Columbia Pictures, where the power lunches won’t even be half-started. The Catholic Church has nothing to fear from this film. It is not just tripe. It is self-evident, spirit-lowering tripe that could not conceivably cause a single member of the flock to turn aside from the faith. Meanwhile, art historians can sleep easy once more, while fans of the book, which has finally been exposed for the pompous fraud that it is, will be shaken from their trance. In fact, the sole beneficiaries of the entire fiasco will be members of Opus Dei, some of whom practice mortification of the flesh. From now on, such penance will be simple—no lashings, no spiked cuff around the thigh. Just the price of a movie ticket, and two and a half hours of pain.

The Da Vinci Code: 23% at Rotten Tomatoes (11% from big-name critics) — that’s worse than RV or The Shaggy Dog.

Anyone surprised?