About Netsurfer Books

Netsurfer Books is a bi-monthly e-zine offering short reviews of books and related items. We include listings based on recommendations from our staff and reviews from other individuals. Are we bribed to include any of these items? No. Do we receive a commission if you purchase an item through one of the links included here? Yes. Are we waiting to hear from you about what you'd like to see reviewed? Definitely.

EDITOR'S CHOICE

Wallace and Gromit Gift Set

Wallace and Gromit Gift Set
Aardman Animations
BBC Warner

Chicken Run made it to video this week and it's no empty boast that this charming escape and rescue escapade was the best reviewed video of the year. It's a clever, funny, and touching story given voice by fine comic actors like Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha (Absolutely Fabulous), Jane Horrocks (Little Voice and AbFab), and Miranda Richardson (Blackadder). This stop-action poultry's pedigree is better than excellent, too. It comes out of Aardman Animations, home of obliviously naive inventor Wallace and his bemused pooch Gromit. Our favorite, of course, is the marvelous The Wrong Trousers, wherein a malevolent penguin takes the sleeping Wallace for a walk in the titular Frankenpants, turning him into the unwitting accomplice in a diamond heist - and those aren't even the inventive parts! The Wrong Trousers and A Grand Day Out each won Academy Awards. A Close Shave completes the Wallace and Gromit trilogy in this collection. In A Close Shave, smitten inventor Wallace wants to impress the lovely Wendolene Ramsbottom. Unfortunately, her larcenous dog, Preston, foils his plans and steals his latest invention to boot, leaving it to Gromit to save his sweet-natured master and the day. If you're not in a rush, you might want to wait for the DVD of the same three half-hour (or thereabout) shorts. By the by, to learn how Park and Lord work such affecting magic with plasticine and wire, take a look at Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie.

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

The Monster Book (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

The Monster Book (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Christopher Golden, Stephen Bissette, Thomas Sniegoski
Pocket Books; ISBN: 0671042599

Don't be quick to dismiss the show or these books as mere trifles of teen culture. Disgracefully overlooked by all those self-regarding entertainment awards, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is judged by many reviewers and fans to be among the smartest and funniest series on television. We agree. Like many successful series, it boasts a respectable marketing machine and among the merchandise you can cadge are several books. We can't speak to the library of 'teen' novels that make up the inventory, but we are familiar with the reference works associated with the series - and they're mighty impressive indeed. The latest is The Monster Book, a compendium of the demons and other Big Bads that have stalked the show's soundstage. Predictably, too, there's a section on the regular characters who stalk the stalkers, but the book's no breathless hagiography of either the actors or the show. Buffy's demons have always had a less literal counterpart; doubt, fear, insecurities, and broken hearts haunt us all. Where the book really shines is in its semi-scholarly discussion of the myths that series creator Joss Whedon has mined to find just the right demon to bring to life the real personal demon of the week. Viewers who appreciate the layers of subtext that characterize the episodes and season-long arcs will appreciate that this book wasn't dashed off just to add one more item to the marketing basket. Younger viewers might also be interested in The Watcher's Guides, Vol. 1 (for seasons 1 and 2) and Vol. 2 (for seasons 3 and 4).

Wheelers

Wheelers
Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
Aspect; ISBN: 044652560X

About 300 years into the future a mysterious object is discovered on Jupiter's moon Callisto. Alien complications, as they say, ensue. The object leads to the discovery of a civilization in the clouds of Jupiter, a civilization which has the power to manipulate the orbits of Jupiter's moons. Before you know it a giant comet is heading for Earth and it's up to our heroine and assorted friends and enemies to foil the looming disaster. A good old fashioned first contact sci-fi book, perfect for filling those restful holiday vacation hours.

Rendezvous with Rama

Rendezvous with Rama
Arthur C. Clarke
Lightyear Pr; ISBN: 0899684491

2001: A Space Odyssey has so defined first order science fiction that we forget the bulk of Clarke's other contributions. Before Hollywood got literal with films like Armageddon and Impact, Clarke told the story of Earth's precautions after a comet kills 600,000 people in the Mediterranean. One hundred and thirty years from now, the new defense system giving Earth early warning of possible collisions spots a massive comet near Jupiter. Close observation reveals the comet, Rama, to be not a comet at all but a gigantic cylinder so perfect that it cannot be a natural phenomenon. Led by Commander Norton, a mission meets and boards the cylinder. Inside the spinning hulk, wondrous technology has spawned an artificial gravity and ecology on continents separated by a sea. The explorers encounter a database that seems to hold the key to Rama's origins and purpose, but they have no means to interpret the intent or identity of this extrasolar intelligent life. First published in 1973, Rendezvous with Rama won the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, and Jupiter awards. Clarke wrote a trilogy of Rama novels, but the enigmatic first is still judged by serious science fiction lovers to be the best.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution

Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution
Richard Fortey
Knopf; ISBN: 0375406255

Of all the past aeon's extinct animals the dinosaurs have received most of the press. But long before they bestrode the Earth the planet was ruled by trilobites - creatures whose very name evokes alienness. It also happens that trilobites provide us with a unique window on the world as it existed 500 million years ago as well as with crucial insights into the workings of evolution itself. The book is not just a fine popular science work - you'd expect no less from the award winning author of Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth. It is also a tribute to a passion for and one man's love affair with the craft of science. Wonderfully written and effortlessly educational.

Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival

Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival
Frances M. Ashcroft
Univ California Press; ISBN: 0520222342

What happens to the human body under extreme conditions? Ashcroft is a physiologist at the University of Oxford and in this engrossing book she tells us just what happens to our bodies at high altitudes, under high water pressure, in space, under extremes of heat and cold, and under the stress of exertion to the limits of endurence. Aside from being a great read for anybody with a general scientific curiosity this book is also a worthwile guide to the human body for those who's jobs or hobbies place them in harsh environments.

BUSINESS AND FINANCE

The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
Emanuel Rosen
Doubleday; ISBN: 0385496672

Viral marketing is the sexy new buzzword for the old concept of buzz - that word of mouth which makes consumers either go nuts for a product or utterly shun it. In this book Emmanuel Rosen, a former marketing VP, presents a wealth of examples of how buzz helped to market some of the most popular consumer goods and services around. While the book is full of examples it is not exactly a how-to manual. At the moment generating buzz is more art then science. However the examples it contains might just prove useful for launching your big idea. The book is topped off by an extensive bibliography for those who want to delve deeper into this fascinating subject. Essential reading for marketing types.

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
Roger Lowenstein
Random House; ISBN: 037550317X

These guys were living the financial geek's dream. A bunch of genius academics came up with some Nobel Prize quality economic math which let them in effect predict and exploit the ebb and flow of financial markets. They raised piles of money, went into business investing it, and made even larger piles of money. One day, the world changed - just a minor thing, the overthrow of Soviet communism - and their dream came crashing down, nearly taking the Western economy with it. A fast-paced, page turner of a story all the more remarkable because it happened and probably influenced the price of diapers in your local mall. If you're into the markets, you've got to read this.

BIOGRAPHY, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY

Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900-1945

Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900-1945
Edward J. Escobar
Univ California Press; ISBN: 0520213351

It's fascinating how history turns in on itself and then resurfaces in a different form. To understand the police culture that can give rise to the Rodney King and Ramparts Division scandals (to name only two) that have rocked Los Angeles, take a look at Escobar's chronicle of relations between the LAPD and the city's minority populations, especially the Mexican-American community. Escobar's history ends with the Zoot Suit Riots and stops short of the 1951 Bloody Christmas scandal, but both events gave impetus to the activism that created the Community Service Organization and Cesar Chavez' United Farm Workers. Despite police participation in the street beatings that mark the Zoot Suit Riots, it was another seven years before authorities were sufficiently moved by police brutality to pursue the first grand jury indictments of serving officers and the first convictions for excessive use of force in LAPD history. The brutal Bloody Christmas police beatings, fictionalized in L.A. Confidential, set those wheels in motion. (See our fiction section in this issue to follow up.)

Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery

Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery
by Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, WGBH Series Research Team
Harvest Books; ISBN: 0156008548

The kidnapped inhabitants of West Africa probably understood better the future of their children than the colonists of Virginia understood the legacy they were leaving to their own descendants when they came together in slavery. Almost four centuries later, race is still a defining issue in American life. Maybe it's not surprising. Slavery was a fact of life in the American colony for two and a half centuries; freedom has been an ideal for less than 140 years. American history tends to focus on colonists' righteous struggle toward democracy, not history as slaves of the African diaspora knew it. Africans in America takes the road less traveled. It looks at the history of slavery itself, including short-lived uprisings, slave laws, presidential slave owners, the contradictory value of slaves under the Constitution and early American law, life in the free states, the models of slave uprisings outside the American colony, and compromises that maintained the institution despite an active abolitionist sentiment. The VHS box set gives more voice to this history so seldom told.

White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History
Gregg Stebben and Jim Morris
Cumberland House; ISBN: 1888952687

While the latest US election has earned points for suspense, presidents generally have at least four years to make voters wonder if they put the wrong man in office. If it's any comfort, this month's fiasco isn't likely to put into office the worst chief elected official that the country has ever seen. For proof of that, we direct you to White House Confidential. There's pretty reliable evidence, for instance, that at least 14 of the 41 men to occupy the office had illicit sexual liaisons (at least by some voters' standards). The numbers are sufficient to support the book's centerpiece, a presidential adultery chart. If Nancy Reagan gave credence to astrology in planning her calendar, it's not surprising that Ronald thought that knocking on wood would genuinely ensure luck. Certainly, there's general acknowledgement that Warren Harding's administration was the most corrupt; Stebben and Morris award first and second runners-up standing in detailing White House corruption, though. There's nothing in the way of original research here; you may recognize one factlet and another from here and there. What's really intriguing about this book is that it tackles the cult of manufactured and marketed personality that has come to define partisan politicking at the highest level. There's some comfort in knowing that in the end, it seems, a president's most remembered legacy boils down to his public policy after all.

The World Whiskey Guide

The World Whiskey Guide
Jim Murray
Carlton Books; ISBN: 1858688698

Single malts, blended, bourbon. Enjoying whiskey can be as varied as enjoying wines, and fine whiskey certainly is enjoying a renaissance among drinkers. Truth to tell, though, developing a real palette for the range of singular whiskey can be far more challenging than developing a palette for wines. After all, while oenophiles describe the fruitiness and crispness of their wines, whiskey lovers may rhapsodize on peat and smoke, or even essence of cow pat. Flavors vary from one distillery to the next, or even from one cask to the next. Murray is the acknowledged world's foremost expert on whiskey. Fittingly, as the world's expert, he looks to distilleries and varieties beyond the traditional ones in Scotland and Ireland and includes Canada and the United States. (Our favorite: Laphroaig.) Here's a book for every whiskey aficionado on your list.

Parties and Projects for the Holidays: Christmas With Martha Stewart Living

Parties and Projects for the Holidays: Christmas With Martha Stewart Living
Martha Stewart Living
Clarkson Potter; ISBN: 0609805932

Martha's lifestyle isn't exactly what we aspire to - but we'll admit that this is the time of year that we might appreciate some help putting together our little soirees. If you or yours need inspiration for the season, or you'd just like to have someone else take some responsibility for the planning, Martha's right there for you. Recipes, decor, little projects to keep us from our holiday shopping. Actually, it sounds pretty appealing to us.

Ultimate Car Spotter's Guide 1946-1969

Ultimate Car Spotter's Guide 1946-1969
Tad Burness
Krause Publications; ISBN: 0873416295

Antique cars on the road always catch our eye, and the successes of the revivified Beetle and the sleekly retro PT Cruiser confirm our appreciation for the classics. Classic cars aren't all that rare yet, but the people who can tell one from the other are few and far between. Just like bird watchers, we need our guides. Whether you're stalking the wild Thunderbird or lying in wait for the elusive Edsel, this is the field guide for every species of North American car for a quarter century. It includes specs and original sales material for many of the cars, so you'll be able to do a lot more than just name that Studebaker.

NONFICTION

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Anthony Bourdain
Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA; ISBN: 158234082X

Anthony Bourdain is one of New York City's elite chefs, but he's come a long way to rise to that exalted status. From far humbler beginnings, he's not much awed by himself and his colleagues. The fact is, culinary glamor isn't very pretty at all. And, if it's not pretty just imagine what the more mundane restaurant business is like. Bourdain tells tales out of school about the sex and drugs that can fill the haute artists' days and nights. The chef as rock star might be palatable for most of us; after all, it's really none of our business. But, Bourdain also offers his professional experience to alert us to things we really should know about restaurants - but would probably prefer not to be aware of. Don't order the fish special on Mondays, he advises; that fish has probably been sitting in the cooler since last week. And Sunday brunch? He spells out its unappetizing origins, processed in the hands of the restaurants' least skilled staff. Bourdain covers a lot of territory, including recommendations for the kitchen tools most necessary for home chefs. Although there's minimal narrative, the dish here is so good that there are rumors the book will be turned into a film with Brad Pitt in the central role.

Some Acquired Tastes: A Recipe Album

Some Acquired Tastes: A Recipe Album
Jurgen Gothe
Douglas & McIntyre Ltd; ISBN: 1550544292

Canadian and northern US Netsurfers might recognize author Gothe as the host of CBC Radio's DiscDrive, a daily three-and-a-half hour flight of fancy built around music from classical to blues to folk to international. Gothe isn't your average DJ. He's a soft-spoken gourmand and oenophile who hosts treks to California and Italy's wine country and opera houses, and who offers prizes for limericks in which words like 'newel-post' dictate the rhyme. Gothe also has eclectic culinary tastes and by way of recommending his lovely little album of recipes and remembrances he's collected from restaurants and friends we offer a short but representative inventory: walnut bread, chilled Okanagan apple soup with peppered horseradish, pancetta mashed potatoes, blue cornmeal-fried oysters with chipotle cream sauce, Tanqueray'd tenderloin, Gilroy was here garlic chicken, Kahlua-fried bananas, strawberries Romanoff with Russian cream, and minted chocolate pastry shards. 'Nuff said?

The Great Sex Weekend: A 48-Hour Guide to Rekindling Sparks for Bold, Busy, or Bored Lovers

The Great Sex Weekend: A 48-Hour Guide to Rekindling Sparks for Bold, Busy, or Bored Lovers
Pepper Schwartz, PhD and Janet Lever, PhD
Putnam Pub Group; ISBN: 0399143777

Routine slips into our lives as simplicity and before we know it, we're sleepwalking through our days and even our nights. Schwartz and Lever don't think that most couples need major therapy for their sex lives; instead, they just need to find a way out of the routine and fatigue that can accompany career, family, and all the other activities that we try to squeeze into our days. So, here's what they recommend. Block out a weekend for yourselves, just the two of you. Then, let Schwartz and Lever take you through both days and nights, when neither of you may talk about work and you must let intimacy replace routine. Take time to fantasize about the time together beforehand. If you've become a bit reticent with each other, you can let the authors make the suggestions that you're reluctant to broach. The goal is to break old habits and take the renewed passion home with you. (You A-types will find a 24-hour variation.) Stow the outings to flea markets. Those eaves can go one more week without new paint. You have better things to do - and we like the prospect of making it a regular getaway.

Stocking stuffers that last a year

Stocking stuffers that last a year
Various
Time, like an ever flowing river...

You're looking for stocking stuffers? Tailor the stuffers for bibliophiles with The 2001 Book Lover's Calendar: 365 Days of Good Authors, Good Books & Good Reading; appeal to potophiles with 365 Bottles of Beer for the Year 2001 Calendar; Antique Maps; for microbiophiles Dennis Kunkel's Microscopic World; swingers might appreciate 365 Golf Holes from the editors of Golf Digest; for the horticulturist ailurophile there's Cats in the Garden: Garden Tips for Cat Lovers; historians can consider for a year 12 American Heroes of Black Heritage; the man on your list who takes his home improvement seriously will find inspiration in 365 Days of Duct Tape; dermatosiophiles might sublimate the siren song of the local pec decorator with The Art of Tattoo; canophiles can moon over Dog Codependents; and you can close the case with the very strange Edward Gorey's Neglected Murderesses.

Time Passages

Time Passages

Stewart House; ISBN: 1894455371

These unusual calendars give you the full 365 days for your money - but those days might have happened three or four decades ago. From 1945 onward, the calendars remind us of the days' events. Two days before the music died in an Iowa field in 1964, Lee Petty won the Daytona 500 with an average speed of 135.521 mph. Bobby Darin's Mack the Knife entered the charts on July 30, 1959, and took more than two months to climb to #1 on October 11. On February 22, 1960, JFK said he was "not presently a candidate" for the presidency. And, on June 20, 1964, Ken Venturi won the US Open Golf championship, taking home $17,000 for his trouble. We daresay he makes a few dollars more now as one of golf's premier commentators. (Jack Nicklaus topped the money list in October with $113,254 for the year.) Hey, George Harrison and our editor share a birthday! We could pore over these pages for hours; you could well too. The links we're providing will get you to the specific years we've mentioned, but Amazon hasn't made it easy to track down the year you might want otherwise. We suggest that, once you get to Amazon, you search using "Time Passages 19xx", specifying the year for which you're looking.

FICTION

L.A. Confidential

L.A. Confidential
James Ellroy
Warner Books; ISBN: 0446674249

James Ellroy wouldn't be happy to hear us say so, but we think he's king of noir. (His personal definition of noir actually takes him out of the running.) L.A. Confidential, streamlined for the screen in 1997, is the best known of his titles. Driven by a dimly perceived conspiracy outside their control, three LAPD detectives at odds with themselves and each other try to right the wrongs they've done despite their best intentions. Everything is facade in 1950s Los Angeles, and a brutal cop, an isolated opportunist, and an ambitious prig discover that they're actually among the most naive people in their world. As the conspiracy begins to unravel, Ellroy fictionalizes real events, including the Bloody Christmas scandal and the violent reign of the notorious Hat Squad. L.A. Confidential is just one-third of Ellroy's Los Angeles trilogy, which includes The Black Dahlia and Ame rican Tabloid. If you're a fan of noir, as we are, you can enjoy classics of the genre from two different eras - though with noir, the era in which it was produced seems pretty much irrelevant. Look for the conspiracy in blinding daylight in Chinatown and the sexual tension stretched to its limit in the deliciously complex The Big Sleep.

MUSIC TO READ BY

Whistling in the Wind

Whistling in the Wind
Leon Redbone
BMB/Private; ASIN: B0000000LM

If laid-back were money, the name atop Fortune's 500 would be Leon Redbone. From his natty three-piece suits with Panama hat to his onstage easy chair, this perpetually unplugged guitarist and singer is as cool as they come. If you don't know him, it's hardly surprising. He purposefully shuns the usual marketing machines and cults of manufactured personality that accompany the music business; just take a look at the artwork on the cover of this CD to get some inkling of his ego. The man has sown so many contradictory tales about himself that no source is even clear about his nationality. (We saw him play 25 years ago in Toronto, where he first came to attention, and there's speculation that he's Canadian. But, that's just spec; he's certainly not telling.) Redbone's repertoire is hardly bleeding edge. Even his own new compositions, sometimes laced with mumbling baritone scat, hark back to early jazz and pay tribute to Dixieland. All of Whistling in the Wind is a treat, but Dancin' on Daddy's Shoes and Truckin' 101 are special delights. 'Course, that's not to slight Redbone's sly duets with Merle Haggard (Settin' by the Fire) and Ringo Starr (My Little Grass Shack). After a long day in your cubicle, do you really want to hear Mariah Carey wale on your money? Leon Redbone's the man for you.

B.B. King: His Definitive Greatest Hits

B.B. King: His Definitive Greatest Hits
B.B. King
Pidm; ASIN: B00000JARA

Generally we're not big fans of greatest hits collections. Some of the best artists best cuts never make it into the sales strata that define 'hits'. B.B. King, blues' best ambassador and passionate practitioner, make us look twice just by dint of using the word 'definitive' in his title. Here are 34 tracks ranging as far back as the '50s and including the original version of classics such as Paying the Cost to be Boss, and latter-day duets with the likes of U2 and Robert Cray. There's the difficult to find Into the Night and My Lucille. Two of the tracks come from the seminal 1964 Chicago concert at The Regal where King and his Lucille laid down one of the greatest live blues performances ever recorded. While we appreciate the benefits of CDs, we miss the artwork and liner notes that used to accompany the vinyl sets. The small booklet with this set offers a small echo of those features, including a quote from King. "We don't play rock and roll. Our music is blues, straight from the Delta. I believe we'll make it on that." We believe he will.