bookshelves of doom

Frenemies -- Alexa Young

Avalon Green and Halley Brandon have been best friends forever.  They've survived their first real separation -- Halley is finally home from her summer-long art camp -- and now they're back together, about to start eighth grade, co-edit the school's fashion blog and plan a huge party in celebration of their friendship.  But a lot has changed over the course of the summer -- both girls have made new friends and developed new interests.  It doesn't take long for the new changes to cause a clash, and sometimes the people who know you the best can make the worst enemies.  Will Halvalon split forever?

While Frenemies will certainly act as a good pick to tide some Clique fans over until the next installment, I personally had a hard time finishing it.  It read rather like Mad Libs:  storyline, brand name, product, storyline, insult, OMG, blog post, brand name, product, insult, brand name,  etc.  I just didn't feel much heart, even when Avalon set her "Waterford crystal tumbler of fresh-squeezed orange juice next to the NUMBER ONE DAD coffee mug [she] had made for her father when she was eight" to illustrate that yes, her parents are fantastically wealthy, but that they are also caring and down-to-earth. 

Maybe I only have room in my heart for one Tween Mean Girls series*. 

*The Clique is pretty darn vapid, I grant you, but I still find it strangely entertaining and, even more strangely, almost charming.  Maybe Lisi Harrison just happened to pick a formula that works for me, but I think it's more than that -- The Clique books occasionally feel like the author herself is poking fun at their ridiculousness, and that makes them a bit more palatable.  They feel fresher, they have a little bit of zing and zip, whereas Frenemies just felt like the first book in a knock-off series.

"Wow, I did not know that "authenticity" actually means "shameless huckstering"."*

Add Jezebel to the We're-Grossed-Out-by-HarperCollins-Susan-Katz-and-Tina-Wells Club:

Ms. Wells claims that brand sponsorship will not interfere with Mackenzie Blue's content. "Mackenzie loves Converse...Does Converse want to work with us? I have no clue. But that doesn't negate the fact that Mackenzie loves Converse," Wells told the Times. When reporter Motoko Rich asked her if she would refuse a lucrative contract from Nike even though Mackenzie is a "Converse girl," Wells said, "Maybe another character could become a Nike girl." Don't you see, brands won't be dictating her content at all!

[Later:]  While you're feeling the Jezebel love, don't miss the Witch of Blackbird Pond Fine Lines:

As we soon learn, Kit has been forced to leave Barbados not only because she is now penniless, but because a friend of her late grandfather's with "pudgy red fingers with too many rings on them" wanted to forgive the debt and marry her instead. Not so much. But not so fast with escaping from the wealthy, stocky suitors, either! Kit soon catches the eye of William Ashby, one of the wealthiest young men in town, unwittingly tearing him from the hands of Judith. Judith doesn't care, however, because Kit has brought along a new friend in the form of handsome scholar John Holbrook, and she "sets her cap" for him, inconveniently failing to realize that he is desperately in love with her gentle sister Mercy, who no one really notices because she's so pure-hearted and crippled and everything.

*Comment by user Hamsterpants at Jezebel.

Gross. GROSS.

From the NYT (via Read Roger):

In “Mackenzie Blue,” on the other hand, a new series aimed at 8- to 12-year-old girls from HarperCollins Children’s Books, product placement is very much a part of the plan. Tina Wells, chief executive of Buzz Marketing Group, which advises consumer product companies on how to sell to teenagers and preteenagers, will herself be the author of titles in the series filled with references to brands. She plans to offer the companies that make them the chance to sponsor the books.

Well, that's just super.

Not.

Josh Swensen* would approve.

From Wired:

Renegade artist and head-hunter the Decapitator has been bombarding the streets of London with a signature style of graffiti tag - eerily removing the heads from major adverts around town, replacing them with ghastly, gory stumps. (Before and after images of a gruesomely guillotined model in a print ad, right).

I'm in awe.

*From The Gospel According to Larry.

It's Not Easy Being Mean: The Clique #7 -- Lisi Harrison

Yes, I read another one.  No, I don't know what is wrong with me.

This time, the girls have been un-expelled from OCD, but they have been forced to join an extracurricular activity.  They've also been given a quest by the eighth-grade alpha, Skye Hamilton:  To earn the right to take charge of the Secret Room* at OCD, the girls have to find the key, which Skye has hidden under the mattress of a boy she's kissed.  The list is LONG, and the Pretty Committee is not the only group looking for it.

Meanwhile, Claire's acting career is taking off.  She's set to audition for a movie with a multi-Oscar-winning director, which is awesome, but she's feeling left out of all of the Pretty Committee fun**.

• Still with the brand names.  There were at least fifteen fashion labels mentioned in the first chapter alone.  That's not counting the plethora of consumables, electronics, magazines, etc.  Also, there are fifteen pages of ads at the end of the book.  (I fully admit that it could be worse -- at least the ads are for other books.)
• Lisi Harrison does have a real talent for extremely catty -- but extremely funny --description:

"Stand up, you!" bellowed Kori Gedman as she approached their table.  A tight tan sweater accentuated her notoriously bad posture.  She looked like a croissant.

• Why in the WORLD would the girls choose soccer as their extracurricular activity?  (Discounting Kristin, of course, who is already a star player on the team.)  They mention that it'll burn calories and get them closer to the boys, but I find it odd that they wouldn't have considered the embarrassment factor.  Massie's a beast, but she's not stupid.
• Massie's crush, Derrington.  Good God, that boy is obsessed with butts.  Every time he appears, he's shaking his butt at someone or something.  And then, when he's talking about kissing Another Girl, he says, "Her lips were too puffy.  They felt like a butt."  Le sigh.  This is what dreams are made of.
• Speaking of Derrington, I'll be surprised if he and Dylan don't get together, ultimately.  They have that whole bathroom humor thing in common -- he's obsessed with butts, she's obsessed with burping at people.

In the Q&A at the end, Lisi Harrison says that there will be eight Clique books.  Only one more, and my torment will end.  Oh, wait.  She follows that up by saying: "But if you want more, I'll write more".  Damn.

She does sound like a good egg, though -- in the section on Becoming a Writer, she says "If someone tells you you'll never be a writer, put on your pointiest boots, take a deep breathe, and kick them in the shin.  Write about that!"

I'm curious to see if I'll be able to exert my will power and avoid the next one.  Either this one wasn't as entertaining as the last couple, or I've matured.  (I'm going to go with less entertaining.)

*A room that the teachers don't know about.  Yeah, I don't quite get it either.

**Because it's so much fun to be bossed around and mocked 24/7?  I still don't get it.

Rash -- Pete Hautman

It's the mid-2070s, and the United States has changed.  It's not the USA anymore, for one thing.  It's the USSA -- United Safer States of America.  People are encouraged to wear helmets when they walk, beer is illegal, and football was banned for being too dangerous.  The Child Safety Act of 2033 made protective gear mandatory in the school sports.  And we're not just talking mouth guards in field hockey.  Here's what students of the time wear to run the 100-meter dash:

... AtherSafe shoes with lateral ankle support and four layers of memory gel in the thick soles, knee pads, elbow pads, and a FDHHSS*-certified sports helmet.  We raced on an Adzorbium track with its five centimeters of compacted gel-foam topped by a thick sheet of artificial latex.  It's like running on a sponge.

Jail has been abolished.  When people break the law, they are sent to work camps.  Almost a quarter of the adult population is serving time -- not surprising, as breaking the law is not very difficult:

"Littering is only a class-four misdemeanor--you don't get sent up for that."

"Mr. Stoltz did."

"That was for assault.  Melody Hynes got hurt."

"But all he did, really, was litter.  He dropped an apricot when he was unloading groceries from his suv."

"Yeah, then Melody slipped on it and got a concussion."

"She should have been wearing her helmet.  My point is, Bo, all the man did was drop an apricot and they sent him away for a whole year.  A year of hard labor on a prison farm.  For dropping an apricot!"

"But if he hadn't dropped it, Melody wouldn't have gotten bonked," I said.  Sometimes my grandfather could be kind of dense.

The men in Bo Marsten's family tend to be quick-tempered (his father is serving time for road rage and his older brother for getting into a fight) and Bo is no exception.  Though the Levulor he takes usually prevents violent outbreaks -- it slows his anger reflex (and, in an unfortunate side effect, every other reflex) by a tenth of a second -- but he occasionally "forgets" to take it.

Given his family history, it's not real surprise when sixteen-year-old Bo is sentenced to serve three years for a plethora of violations.  (Verbal assault, physical assault -- well, he tried to punch someone -- and causing the outbreak of an itchy rash at his school.**)  He is send to Canada (which was annexed to the USSA in 2055) to work in a gourmet pizza factory.

This arm of McDonald's Rehabilitation and Manufacturing Corporation is a terrifying place, full of sharp corners, non-padded clothing, and people who have no qualms about verbally assaulting (not to mention physically assaulting) others.  The factory is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a tall fence, beyond which are ravenous, man-eating polar bears.  The warden runs an illegal football team. 

If the team wins the Tundra Bowl, they will all be treated to early release.  If they lose, they'll be Polar Bear Chow.

AWESOME.  It's a sports story, a futuristic dystopia story, a juvie camp story and a story that mocks consumer culture.  It explores Big Ideas, about government and free will and safety vs. freedom, but without ever feeling like a Frying Pan***, and without ever feeling heavy.  It's rare for a book to be both thoughtful and thrilling.

Highly recommended.  I'm planning on trying it out on older fans of Holes, as well as teens into Uglies and So Yesterday, Feed and Jennifer Government.  Also fans of thoughtful sports stories -- I think there are a lot of Chris Crutcher fans who will enjoy it.

*Federal Department of Homeland Health, Safety and Security.  Also, that description totally made me want to re-read Harrison Bergeron.

**Good thing that Those In Charge don't know about the possibly-sentient AI entity that he (oops) accidentally created.  He could get twenty years for that, easy.

***Frying Pan Message Books:  Books that are so message-driven to such an extent that you feel you are being battered with a Message-Laden Frying Pan.  Duh.

Yuck-o.

From GalleyCat:

And Mary-Lou Galician, head of Media Analysis & Criticism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University, says to expect more of the same. "It's more and more difficult to reach consumers who are able to tune out ads that they don't want," Galician says. "The best way for advertisers to get their messages across is to put them in places where consumers have no choice but to see them."

I need to re-read So Yesterday.  And Jennifer Government.  And heck, preachy as it is, The Gospel According to Larry.

So.  Your favorite anti-consumerism books?

Okay, I'm done.

I'm officially grossed out.  (Via Fuse#8)

It's funny, because I literally just finished responded to a commenter back at my post about VidLit who suggested that it was silly to complain about the advertising in this dayandage because entertainment and advertising have become so intertwined. 

Then he went on to plug his book.

I agree that what he said is true. Advertising and entertainment are intertwined.  He mentioned music videos -- but music videos are nothing.  And sure, product placement has been going in in movies forever, there are infomercials, there's QV Effin C, for crap's sake.

But what I said is true, too:  Just because it's true doesn't mean I have to like it.

I'm sorry.  Meg Cabot teaming up with Clinique?  That's just... gross. 

She doesn't NEED to do it.  Her books fly off the shelves regardless -- all it takes is her name slapped on the front and girls eat 'em up.

I took the VidLit for what it was -- an entertaining ad for Meg Cabot's books.  I took the blog for what it was -- very entertaining ads for Meg Cabot's books. 

But now she's hawking cosmetics?  Ick.  Ick ick ick ick ick.

On a related note:  Due to a comment made over at Fuse's site, I've come to a major decision, and I'm going to make a public apology.  Ahem.

Tamora Pierce, I'm sorry. 

There was this horrible woman in her mid-thirties who used to come into the bookstore I worked in, and for hours on end, she used to lie all over the floor of our very small Chapter Book/Young Adult section reading your books -- always your books -- and she never bought anything and she was always in the way and the other customers had to step over her and we had to step over her while shelving and we always asked her (nicely, with gritted teeth) to move but she never would and I hated her with a burningseethingraging passion, and I held it against you.

I'm so totally going to give your books another try because YOU ARE VERY, VERY COOL.

Blarg.

Why is it that some forms of advertising don't bother me at all while some make me grind my teeth all night long after projectile vomiting on my computer monitor?

Eeeeek.

I KNEW IT.

GROSS.

Only in Your Dreams: A Gossip Girl Novel -- series created by Cecily von Ziegesar

For a while, I really thought there was less brand-name dropping in Only in Your Dreams than in that Clique novel I read recently.  That was before I realized that rather than one or two a page, CvZ (or whoever, whomever, whatever) would go a few pages without mentioning any, and then WHAM!  Seven in one paragraph.

She patted the two old monogrammed red-and-white-striped Kate Spade tote bags beside her.  They still smelled deliciously like the ocean and suntan lotion and contained a stash of Cosabella underwear, one of her brother Erik's old Brown t-shirts that she'd swiped the last time he'd been home, a flimsy Milly sundress, her most comfortable Michael Kors flip-flops, a Cynthia Vincent pink-and-black paisley print jersey dress, her trusty Seven jeans, a second pair of flip-flops, just in case, and a white embroidered Viktor & Rolf top.  Only the essentials.

Seven if you don't count Brown, that is.

Take a look at the cover art.

Now.  I'm going to give you one guess.  One.

What do you think is listed on the verso page?

Yup.  The designer/brand names of the clothes.

GROSS.

Okay, consumerism/blatant subliminal (oxymoron much?) advertising aside, here goes...

Honestly, it was kind of boring.  Spoiled rich kids run around NYC (for the most part), most of them with jobs for the very first time, being spoiled rich kids.  One of them is starring in a movie, one of them is the director of photography for said movie, one is working wardrobe for the same movie, one of them is working at the Strand (He loves to read and write really, really bad poetry -- odd parallel to The Clique there...), one of them is spending his summer being punished by his lacrosse coach.  (The punishment is manual labor.)  I'm probably forgetting someone, but you get the idea.

All of the hype had led me to expect page after page of debauchery.  Orgies and hard drugs and so on.  They swear a lot, drink a lot (mostly beer and wine), Nate smokes a lot of pot, and a bunch of them are cigarette smokers, but that's about it.  The book practically includes PSAs about not smoking, though -- most of the characters who do smoke regularly are always wheezing.  There's talk of sex -- Blair wants to Do It with her current man, Lord Marcus, but he seems to be more interested in his cousin, so that peters out.  There was no actual sex in the entire book.  This was probably the raunchiest bit:

Nate could picture him popping Viagra and jacking off to the pornos he probably kept in the glove compartment.

Snore.  Obviously I can't speak for the whole series, and maybe you have to read the earlier books to appreciate the later ones.  (I doubt it.)  It had its moments -- there were bits that made me smirk.  But those 'bits' were few and far between -- nothing so special that I feel the need to recommend the book.  To anyone.  Even as a beach book. 

The characters aren't famous because they're interesting or talented.  They're famous because they're rich.  If you're obsessed with Paris Hilton & Co., you might like these books.  Otherwise, I'd skip it. 

Of course, if you want another opinion, read the comments at Amazon.  Jeepers.  People LOVE this series.

The Pretty Committee Strikes Back: A Clique Novel -- Lisi Harrison

Okay.  After reading this book, I really think that someone out there (not you, Naomi Wolf) should write a book about this series.  Either that, or a grown-up book club should read 'em all.  Suggestions for discussion:

Celebrity Idolatry.

She was even starting to embrace the fact that he wore shorts in the dead of winter.  It was his "thing".  And every famous athlete had to have a "thing", or else his fans wouldn't have anything to copy.  Massie's stomach suddenly tightened at the thought of Derrington surrounded by hordes of shorts-wearing fans, because in this scenario she would be the glamour girl standing by his side.  The girl every other girl wanted to be.  And nothing was more ah-mazing than that.

Note that Massie isn't disturbed by the fact that everyone emulates famous people.  She knows it and likes it -- because she wants to be one.  I read this passage at least four times, and it creeped me out every single time.  Honestly, there wasn't a whole lot about actual celebrities in the book, unless you count the the girls as such -- which is certainly a fair reading, given that that's exactly how they seem to view themselves. 

Consumerism.

I'm especially fond of this bit:

Massie ballooned with pride.  Her crush was the most popular guy in her grade.  And she was the most popular girl.  They were a perfect match, like DK and NY.

I'd say that, on average, there was at least one brand name mentioned on every page.  That's two-hundred and sixty-five instances of name-dropping.  Are companies going to start paying for this service?  Are they already?  It's pretty gross.  The fictional 'Glossip Girl' lip gloss is mentioned again and again -- it comes in a ridiculous array of flavors, I couldn't help but think of Bertie Botts -- but doesn't it seem like some sort of weird subliminal advertisement for the Gossip Girl books?

Peer Pressure:

Missing one of Massie's get-togethers meant spending a sleepless night tossing and turning, wondering if you were missing anything good and wondering if anyone was saying anything about you behind your back.  And nothing was worth that kind of torture.

Succumbing to peer pressure is what Claire is all about.  Over and over again, she scurries back to Massie & Co., even when she doesn't want to -- because she wants to be one of the shining ones.  Yes, that is pretty realistic, I agree.  But knowing that doesn't make her seem any less shallow and pathetic.  She's supposed to be the most sympathetic character of the whole crew, but she comes off as the most unattractive.

I really hope that girls aren't using this series as a place to garner advice:

"You're a sex goddess in three...two...one," she told herself.  When her countdown was over, she lifted her head and dabbed on a final coat of Cinnabon Glossip Girl, making sure the center of her bottom lip had an extra dollop, to make it look fuller.

GROSS.  Who wants to kiss THAT?

Miscellaneous:

There are strange food issues throughout -- Massie can't eat because of her nerves and Dylan won't shut up about losing ten pounds due to her recent bout of the flu.  She's so proud.  Her specific size is mentioned:  Size 2.  TWO.  A size 2 plus ten pounds does not equal fat.  Period.  The rest of the girls are sick of her yammering, partly because she won't shut up and partly because she wasn't fat in the first place, but no concern is raised.  Of course, all of the girls are extremely self-centered, so that is in character.

The book involves the girls going on a three-day 'camping' trip for a school field trip.  The camping trip costs $1500 each and the girls bring, on average, four suitcases each.  I assume that the kids who read this series understand that there are points where our heroines are being mocked.  At least, I hope they're being mocked.  If they aren't, Massie's 'lavender angora slippers' are a lot less funny.

Layne, Claire's sort-of friend, gets her period and is upset because she's 'the first one to get it'.  What the hell grade are they IN, anyway?  The average age for a first period is 12.  I've been assuming that the girls are in middle school and if so, I refuse to believe that no one else has it yet.  Over and over again, Alicia is described as having huge knockers.  Yet she doesn't have her period?  IT JUST MAKES NO SENSE.

I'm very serious when I say that these examples are just scratching the surface.  I'm so strangely fascinated that I might go back and read the others.  I've kind of been comparing my relationship with The Clique to my relationship with Days of Our Lives:  I can read one, skip three, pick up the fifth and still know what's going on AND even though I don't care about a single character, I still want to know what happens next.

Okay.  I admit it.  I'm also hoping for some more amazingly bad poetry:

I never liked him as more than a friend;
I was hurt because I got dissed.
Please don't say that this is the end:
I won't be happy till we've kissed.

[Edit: A Few Hours Later]

I have a confession to make:  After looking at Lisi Harrison's website, I kind of want to read the other Clique books.  She's really funny. 

[Even Later]

Gail Gauthier's posts on the subject are also worth reading.  (She's the author of the fabulous A Year with Butch and Spike, among others.)

Pattern Recognition -- William Gibson

A while ago, I posted about this book--said that I had started it and that the beginning was great.  Now I've finished it, and the rest of it was great as well.  I loved it while I was actually reading, and when I could be persuaded to actually put the book down, I babbled about it to whoever was around. 

Cayce Pollard is a cool hunter and design consultant.  She's become so sensitive to (and in some cases, revolted by) logos that she dresses entirely without them--to the point of having the buttons on her Levi's ground down to erase the emblem.  Some brands even set off an allergic reaction:

But down here, next to a display of Tommy Hilfiger, it's all started to go sideways on her, the trademark thing.  Less warning aura than usual.  Some people ingest a single peanut and their head swells like a basketball.  When it happens to Cayce, it's her psyche.

Tommy Hilfiger does it every time, though she'd thought she was safe now.  They'd said he'd peaked, in New York.  Like Benetton, the name would be around, but the real poison, for her, would have been drawn.  It's something to do with context, here, with not expecting it in London.  When it starts, it's pure reaction, like biting down hard on a piece of foil.

A glance to the right and the avalance lets go.  A mountainside of Tommy coming down in her head.

My God, don't they know?  This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra.  A diluted tinture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row, flavoring their ready-to-wear with liberal lashings of polo knit and regimental stripes.  But Tommy surely is the null point, the plack hole.  There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul.  Or so she hopes, and doesn't know; but suspects in her heart that this in fact is what accounts for his long ubiquity.

She's also a footagehead, part of an already large (and rapidly expanding) world-wide sub-culture--for some time now, someone has been uploading short clips of a mysterious and strangely beautiful film to the internet--as of yet, no one has been able to trace it. 

A businessman offers her unlimited resources to find the creator.  Shortly after she agrees to the job, the apartment she's staying in is broken into, the records from her former therapist's office are stolen, and she's sure that she's being followed.

There's also the added mystery surrounding her father's disappearence in Manhattan on September 11th.

That's just the bare bones--there's a whole lot more to it.  It's worth reading, and I think it'll be worth re-reading, as well.  Collomia, if Gabe hasn't already read this one, I think he'd definitely like it. 

Be More Chill -- Ned Vizzini

I think that YA boy books are changing.  They seem to be going more the way of Then Again, Maybe I Won't than the way of Gary Paulsen.  (Christopher Paul Curtis's new book even falls into this category).  In Be More Chill, Jeremy Heere masturbates so much that you wonder how he has time to get his homework done.

He's a pretty classic geek--actually, he's a little over-the-top in his geekdom.  He even carries a Humiliation Sheet around with him at school, "to keep track of [his] social status in a concrete, quantitative way":

I don't really know what a fudge-packer is, but when I think about it, it's pretty clear.  Meanwhile, Rich laughs and calls me a bitch again.  He leaves without washing his hands.  I pull out my Humiliation Sheet and press it against the mirror with my wet wrist,  scraping tally marks next to Laugh and Snotty Comment.  It never ends with this school, and with Rich; for every one of him there are mini-hims like George or Ryu, and sometimes I think about renaming all of them, about standing inside the front door or Middle Borough on a stepladder and stamping their foreheads as they come in in the morning:  Mouth Breather, Waste of Sperm, Ingrate, Troll, Skank, Retard, Pus Head, Junkie, Fetal Alcohol Casualty, Yellow Teeth, Stinky, Preggers, Soon to Be Featured on World's Scariest Police Chases, whack, whack, whack.  I know them all so well.

Everything changes, of course, when he learns about the squib.  A squib is a supercomputer that you swallow--it fuses to your brain, and tells you (in a Keanu Reeves voice--they couldn't get the rights to use Brad Pitt's) how to BE COOL.  Of course, learning about the squib and actually getting a squib are two totally different things--Jeremy's get rich quick scheme involves pilfered Beanie Babies.

Okay.  I loved this book so much that my boss just walked by, and I took time out from writing this to tell her all about the book and how great it was.  So read it.

So Yesterday -- Scott Westerfeld

Okay. I loved this one. Again, granted that I really have a thing about the anti-consumerism books, but this one was great--and the narrator manages to tell the story without using any brand-names. (Well, almost none).

According to the book, there is a pyramid of cool. Here it is, top to bottom:

Innovators: "When you meet them, most Innovators don't look that cool, not in the sense of fashionable, anyway. There's always something off about them. Like they're uncomfortable with the world. Most Innovators are actually Logo Exiles, trying to get by with the twelve pieces of clothing that are never in or out of style.

Except, like Jen's laces, there's always one thing that stands out on an Innovator. Something new."

Trendsetters: "The Trendsetter's goal is to be the second person in the world to catch the greatest disease. They watch carefully for Innovators, always ready to jump on board. But more importantly, other people watch them. Unlike the Innovators, they are cool, so when they pick up an innovation, it becomes cool. A Trendsetter's most important job is gatekeeper, the filter that separates out real Innovators from those crazy people wearing garbage bags."

Early Adopters: "Adopters always have the latest phone, the latest music player plugged into their ear, and they're the guys who download the trailer a year before the movie comes out. (As they grow older, Early Adopters' closets fill up with dinosaur media: Betamax videos, laser discs, eight-track tapes.) They test and tweak the trend, softening the edges. And one vital difference from Trendsetters: Early Adopters saw their stuff in a magazine first, not on the street."

Consumers: "The people who have to see a product on TV, placed in two movies, fifteen magazine ads, and on a giant rack in the mall before saying, "Hey, that's pretty cool."

At which point it's not."

Laggards: "Proud in their mullets and feathered-back hair, they resist all change, or at least change since they got out of high school. And once every ten years they suffer the uncomfortable realization that their brown leather jackets with big lapels have become, briefly, cool.

But they bravely tuck in their Kiss T-shirts and soldier on."

Not only is there all of the above wonderful-ness, there is a kidnapping, a huge conspiracy, lots of action, a romance, and some really interesting and informative digressions, including the answer to this question: What actually was the deal with that Pokemon episode that gave people seizures?

Unfortunately, I only know two other people who have read (or attempted to read) this one. One liked it until the end, which she said was "too crazy", and the other couldn't finish it. So am I crazy for loving this book as much as I do? C'mon. Help me out.

Jennifer Government -- Max Barry

It's not that far off. For real!

Steve will have to remind me how he felt about Jennifer Government, because I LOVED it.

It certainly helped that I began the book with a great attitude about it, after having read the 'About the Author', which starts:

Max Barry is an Australian, for which he apologizes. He is the author of the cult hit Syrup, although he spelled his name "Maxx" for that novel, "because it seemed like a funny joke about marketing, and I failed to realize everyone would assume I was a pretentious asshole."

There was also Author's Note before the actual novel starts, in which he covers his butt from lawsuits. So the author himself seems like a good egg.

The story is set mostly in Australia in the not-so-distant future. Taxes have been abolished throughout a good half of the world. The Government exists, but in a crime-prevention capacity. If someone wants the Government to go after a murderer, thief, etc., that person has to fund the operation. People take the last names of the companies that they work for. Schools are run by companies like Mattel and McDonald's. No job, no last name, effectively not a real person in most people's eyes. After all, who's going to protect you if you don't have your employer to turn to?

Everything starts when Hack Nike, a lowly Merchandise Distribution Officer, (who I pictured as the main character in Office Space--the similarities become more apparent later on in the book) is approached by two guys, both named John Nike, and railroaded into signing a contract without reading it first.

"Now. What do you know about Nike Mercurys?"

Hack blinked. "They're our latest product. I haven't actually seen a pair, but...I heard they're great."

The Johns smiled. "We started selling Mercurys six months ago. You know how many pairs we've shifted since then?"

Hack shook his head. They cost thousands of dollars a pair, but that wouldn't stop people from buying them. They were the hottest sneakers in the world. "A million?"

"Two hundred."

"Two hundred million?"

"No. Two hundred pairs."

"John here," the other John said, pioneered the concept of marketing by refusing to sell any products. It drives the market insane."

"And now it's time to cash in. On Friday we're gonna dump four hundred thousand pairs on the market at two and a half grand each."

"Which, since they cost us--what was it?"

"Eighty-five."

"Since they cost us eighty-five cents to manufacture, gives us a gross margin of around one million dollars." He looked at Vice-President John. "It's a brilliant campaign."

"It's really just common sense," John said. "But here's the thing, Hack: if people realize every mall in the country's got Mercurys, we'll lose all that prestige we've worked so hard to build. Am I right?"

"Yeah." Hack hoped he sounded confident. He didn't really understand marketing.

"So you know what we're going to do?"

He shook his head.

"We're going to shoot them, " Vice-President John said. "We're going to kill anyone who buys a pair."

Awesome. Awesome, awesome book. I loved it, I'm going to hunt down Syrup ASAP, and I'm going to hopehopehope that they make this one into a movie. Because it would be a kick-ass movie.