Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

First seven minutes of "Speed Racer" are officially online
Save yourself ten bucks and get your "Speed Racer" fix this way instead.

Aint It Cool News: "New Indiana Jones movie is terrible, SO terrible"
The first official review on the planet of the new Indiana Jones movie is now online, courtesy of Harry Knowles' AintItCoolNews.com; and guess what? It sucks! Will it make back the $400 million Paramount is spending on budget and ads? Hmm...

Yet another Congressman busted for drunk driving and extramarital affairs
Vito Fossella, New York's only conservative Representative, is busted this week for drunk driving; and it turns out he was on his way over to his mistress's place! So how many corrupt Congress members does this make since Bush first took office in 2000?

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Valencia Science Museum," and is by Roland Ellison. Roland is based out of London, although this particular image was taken in Valencia, Spain; he also has a nice personal site, for those who would like to learn more.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

(CCLaP publishes mini-reviews of both books and movies on a regular basis, none lasting more than a few hundred words. A full list of CCLaP's book-based mini-reviews can be found on its main book page, and movies on the main movie page.)

Heart-Shaped Box (book; 2007)
By Joe Hill
William Morrow / ISBN: 978-0-06-114793-7

Regular readers know that one of the subjects I'm often talking about here at CCLaP is that of so-called "genre fiction" versus "mainstream literature," and especially of the natural danger of the former; that many genre novels are as popular as they are simply because they deliver that genre's fetishistic details in spades, not necessarily because they're good at the building blocks behind all good literature (or in other words, character and plot and style, the same criteria off which CCLaP's reviews are based). So why bother reading genre pieces when you're not a natural fan of that genre? Well, because every so often, a genre novel will come out that is good at the literary ABCs, that does appeal to audience members besides those who naturally love that genre to begin with, and as a result become much more exciting and worthwhile projects than simple mainstream literature; to cite a good recent example, think of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning The Road, how on the surface it seems like any other post-apocalyptic science-fiction thriller but in reality actually tells a much deeper and more profound message than most other books of that genre.

That's what led me, frankly, to reading 2007's Heart-Shaped Box this week, the surprisingly popular debut novel by Joe Hill; because it's a genre novel itself, to tell you the truth, a genre I don't usually care for that much (horror, to be specific), but one that's been getting a lot of attention in the last year from places other than the horror community, a small-press novel that has nonetheless landed in the top 10 of the New York Times bestseller list and with a big-budget Hollywood adaptation by Neil Jordan coming out later this year. Ah, but then I actually read it, and am now even more confused than I was before; because to be perfectly frank, Heart-Shaped Box is an okay novel but certainly nothing better than most other horror books, or at least from the viewpoint of this non-fan who tends to lump all their storylines together. Because really, if you want to think of genre novels in a standardized, almost scientific way, you can really think of them like this -- that all genre novels basically start with a semi-hacky plotline full of easily-guessed cliches (which is why they're known as genre novels in the first place), and how good or bad that novel turns out to be hinges on where that author goes with that semi-hacky plotline, either upwards into unexpected territory or downwards to wallow in its hacky, cliched mess.

And that's the biggest problem with Heart-Shaped Box; unlike the best genre work out there, the stuff that legitimately breaks through to a general mainstream audience, here Hill chooses to wallow in the most predictable cliches available whenever given the choice, whenever given the chance to otherwise elevate his material into something truly unique. Because I mean, seriously, just how many more horror projects do we need that feature as its main villain a creepy horse-faced old man in an antique black suit and fedora hat who talks with a threatening southern drawl? Or dogs that can somehow preternaturally sense the looming evil around them long before the humans do? Or sassy grandmas who accidentally provide the key to the story's entire resolution, through their folksy sayin's spouted around their homey kitchen during a down moment in the plot? These are all bad cliches of the horror genre, the things that make me as a non-fan flee from most hackneyed books within that genre; the entire reason I picked up Heart-Shaped Box was because I thought it was going to be better than that, given the fanatical grassroots popularity the book has inspired since first coming out.

Unfortunately the book is not that; it's a decent horror story, don't get me wrong, but ultimately nothing better or even different than a typical Stephen King novel circa 1982 or so, all haunted cars and cheesy inner dialogue and badly dated rock lyrics and the whole bit. (And speaking of which, by the way, can I just get this off my chest, please? What self-respecting death-metal veteran would ever possibly consider Counting Crows and Coldplay among his favorite bands? Cheese And Rice, Joe Hill, pick a music style and stick with it already, or don't bother making your main character a grizzled death-metal veteran to begin with.) If you're already a fan of horror novels, by all means go ahead and pick it up if you haven't already; if you're like me, though, and tend to only tackle a handful of such projects per year, Heart-Shaped Box unfortunately should not be one of them.

Out of 10: 6.8, or 7.8 for horror fans

Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

"Grand Theft Auto IV" makes $500 million in its first freaking week
Holy f-cking God.

Here we go again: Negotiations with Screen Actors Guild suspended
Ready for another Hollywood shutdown? I guess the people in that industry think so; salary negotiations between producers and the Screen Actors Guild have officially broken down, with a strike a very real possibility.

Barbara Walters: "Rosie O'Donnell was angry and full of rage"
Man, Barbara Walters must be retiring soon or something, because she's dishing out the dirt this week: an affair with a senator in the '70s, the fact that Star Jones had weight-loss surgery then lied about it, and now the revelation that troubled "View" host Rosie O'Donnell was constantly angry and "full of rage."

Today's photo of the day is entitled "X," and is by a Flickr member known as twO®. twO® is a graffiti artist based out of Sourdun/Creteil, France; you can check out their main photo page for a lot more very cool graffiti-heavy images.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

(CCLaP is dedicated to reviewing as many contemporary books as possible, including self-published volumes; click here to learn how to submit your own book for possible review, although be warned that it needs to have been published within the last 18 months to be considered. For the complete list of all books reviewed here, as well as the next books scheduled to be read, click here.)

Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance -- And Why They Fail
By Amy Chua
Doubleday / ISBN: 978-0-385-51284-8

Almost everyone agrees by now that the United States currently wields an enormous amount of power and influence over the rest of the world; but does that give us the right to call the US an "empire," at least as how we traditionally define the word? After all, the US isn't trying to actively annex or colonize any foreign lands, has no interest in adding more states to the 50 we already own; we do have a vested interest, however, in seeing American-owned businesses do well in these foreign lands, a commonality among many empires throughout the ages, and we're not afraid to use military force to achieve those aims, yet another commonality. We spread the idea of free-election democracies and free-market capitalism, but then insist that the countries we deal with adopt such measures themselves, or suffer the wrath of an imposed democracy through the barrel of a gun.

Perhaps it's better, then, says bestselling essayist and futurist Amy Chua in her new book Day of Empire, to think of the United States instead as a "hyperpower" -- not necessarily an empire or republic or kingdom dealing with all their warring neighbors, but literally a society that has gained unquestioned dominance over the entire planet at once, or at least whatever part of the planet was known to those people at that point in history. If you define it this way, Chua says, then you can actually see a clear line of hyperpowers stretching back chronologically to Cyrus' Persian Empire of 500 BC, with other such infamous societies as the Roman Empire, Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire, and even the Dutch Republic of the 1600s falling on this line as well; and what's more, you can actually see very obvious similarities between such groups when you align them in this fashion, lessons that can be applied to the US as well at this particular moment in history (the moment we're about to lose our hyperpower status, that is). And indeed, that's something else Chua convincingly does throughout the book as well, is show example after example of powerful empires that never did make it to hyperpower status -- the Ottoman Empires of history, the Spanish Inquisitions, the 20th-century fascist states -- and proves that none of them heeded the lessons about hyperpowers that she points out in this manuscript, thus reinforcing her theories about such societies' rises and falls even more.

So what exactly are the grand secrets about such hyperpowers that Chua discovers? Well, nothing too terribly surprising, if you really stop and think about; basically, that time after time after time, all hyperpowers in history saw their ascendency during a time when they embraced tolerance, when the society itself welcomed different religions and points of view and skill sets and culinary palettes, that the powerful combination of work power and brain power is what vaulted these societies into hyperpower status in the first place. And consequently, in example after example after example, where these hyperpowers started to fall is when they suddenly stopped being tolerant, when success and laziness and a drop in societal education turned the populace into xenophobic, superstitious zealots; time after time, Chua shows how such an attitude has driven away the very people and resources that made that society so powerful, usually right into the arms of another society on the rise that is happy to accept the resources. That's why this line of so-called hyperpowers seems sometimes to be an unbroken stretch from one society to the next for the last 2,500 years; because mainly it's a history of huge groups of people fleeing from one region of the world to the next, all the Jews with their money and scientists with their heretical ideas, and let's not even start with those dirty, dirty bohemians. Every time such groups are forced to flee one hyperpower because of rising intolerance, Chua convincingly argues here, these are always the moments those hyperpowers begin their downfalls; and whatever society ends up embracing these refugees tends to become the next hyperpower in history, which makes a lot of sense when it's explained that way.

And indeed, Chua's book is full of such "ah hah, yes, you're so right" moments, conclusions that make so much logical sense when you read them but that you had never really thought of yourself before this book; this manuscript is very much a reflection of the law professor Chua is during the day, moving very logically from one step to the next to the next. In fact, this might be the most interesting thing of all about Day of Empire, is that Chua does such a great job of pointing out the surprising amount of similarities from one hyperpower to the next; from Greek emperors bowing before Egyptian gods to Queen Victoria declaring herself the Empress of India, Chua creates an unshakable argument through facts and historical records of how important such religious tolerance and surface-level gestures have been to every single hyperpower in existence, no matter how those gestures are actually expressed from one decade to the next. In fact, as painful as it is, Chua also convincingly argues here how close such "evil" societies throughout history came to becoming long-term and secure ones, if they had only embraced such tolerance a little more themselves; to use one chilling example, how the Nazis would've probably gotten World War II called off as a stalemate, and survived well into our times, if they had only been able to embrace Russians, Poles and Czechs as equals and work out some kind of mutually beneficial truce. If not for the Holocaust, if not for their official policy of considering all their neighbors vermin, the Nazis could've very well "won" WWII precisely by not losing it; and this is the case with almost all the not-quite-hyperpowers in history, Chua argues, from the Spanish Empire embracing the Inquisition during the Dark Ages to China's Ming Empire embracing isolationism after the devastation of the Mongol Hoard.

It's an intriguing and thought-provoking book, one that will really have you looking at America's position in the world in a different way, wondering how we too might be able to "softly transition" out of hyperpower status like Great Britain did a century ago (a point in history Chua clearly admires), or if we are doomed to crash and burn like the old hyperpowers who never learned these lessons. Combined with the last section of this manuscript, a look at the rising regions and coming powers of the world (mostly the EU, China and India), it's a great primer as to how powerful societies get things right, where things go wrong, and what we can likely expect in global politics over the next 25 years. Day of Empire is a fast-moving, plainly-written book, one of those great nonfiction accounts geared towards a general populace that I love so much; not only policy wonks but simply those wanting to know a little more on the subject will find the book a real asset, and it gets a big recommendation from me today.

Out of 10: 9.3

Read even more about Day of Empire: Official site | Amazon | GoodReads | LibraryThing | Shelfari | Wikipedia

Today's photo of the day is untitled, and is by a Flickr member known only as "Peter." Peter doesn't mention much about himself over there either, other than that he's based out of Germany; then again, sometimes photos can easily speak for themselves, like is the case here.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

(CCLaP is dedicated to reviewing as many contemporary books as possible, including self-published volumes; click here to learn how to submit your own book for possible review, although be warned that it needs to have been published within the last 18 months to be considered. For the complete list of all books reviewed here, as well as the next books scheduled to be read, click here.)

The Somnambulist
By Jonathan Barnes
William Morrow / ISBN: 978-0-06-137538-5

Regular readers know that I am a big fan of the unique subgenre known as "steampunk," but might not know what exactly steampunk is; and similarly, regular readers also know that one of the issues often tackled here at CCLaP is the difference between so-called "genre" projects and so-called "mainstream" ones, but might not know what those differences are or why they matter. And since today's book under review brings up these topics yet again, I thought I would use it as an excuse to talk about them in greater detail, along with telling you about the book itself; because the book under question, see, is the inventive steampunk tale The Somnambulist, the high-profile debut novel of Times Literary Supplement critic Jonathan Barnes, a book destined to make you either squeal with Victorian fanboy delight or shudder with non-fan disgust. It's a great example of why genre novels are loved by fans of that genre and hated by everyone else, and why it can sometimes be so difficult as an "objective" critic to review such projects in the first place.

So what exactly is steampunk, to not put too fine a point on it? Well, it was originally an outgrowth of the "cyberpunk" movement in science-fiction in the 1980s, which is how it got its name; novels and stories and comics that were being written by these same cyberpunk authors and dealing with the same complex modern issues, but couched in the visual sumptuousness and rigid morality of the Victorian Age, which for practical purposes you can think of as roughly 1840 to 1900. And indeed, it is not too much of a stretch at all to reimagine current tech and ethical issues through the filter of that era; it was the height of the Industrial Age as well, after all, the era that saw the profession of science first come into its own, a half-century of human history that arguably saw as much rapid technological progress as we're seeing in our own times. In a world where dozens of things formerly thought of as magic were actually getting invented, standardized and ready for retail sales, of course it would make sense to set a semi-fantastical, semi-magical tale within such an environment; now imagine the exquisite detail and luxurious materials that went into such Victorian-Age contraptions, all that brass and wood and ivory and the like, and you can easily see why a contemporary author might want to set a modern-style tale in those years instead of our own.

And in fact Barnes' book teeters right on the edge of fantastical the entire time, a novel which could be argued is actually more magical realism than science-fiction; London at the turn of the 20th century, yes, but a London with secret magical archives in the basement of the British Library, a London with secret police departments guarding millennia-old mysteries from becoming public knowledge. It's within such a place that we meet the book's two main characters: a past-his-prime stage magician named Edward Moon who doubles as a notorious Holmes-style private investigator (in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle exists in The Somnambulist's London too, and is considered an untalented hack by our book's hero); and the eponymous "Somnambulist" in question, a hideous eight-foot-tall mute with no body hair, Moon's on-stage assistant and the focus of his most famous trick, able to be stabbed repeatedly with swords without ever being hurt, who refuses to drink anything else in his life but milk and of that 15 to 20 pints a day.

And of course it's this that gets us into one of the first big differences between genre work and so-called mainstream literature (or movies, or whatever); a genre project is full of whimsical little details that cater to that specific genre only, that will be loved by fans of that genre but despised by most others. Because let's face it, unless you naturally enjoy dainty little complicated half-magical whimsical elements in your adventure fiction, you are bound to go a little crazy trying to read The Somnambulist, and very quickly into the manuscript too; this is a book, after all, that features a whorehouse catering to circus-freak fetishes, a gentlemen's lounge for hideously disfigured war veterans, cadavers brought back to life Frankenstein-style, and a subterranean spy agency hidden in the back of an East End opium den, among lots of other details that have you either laughing or groaning even before you've finished this sentence. All genres have their little details that cater just to those who love the genre, which is why they're called genres in the first place -- crime fans have their brilliant serial killers, western fans have their stoic cowboys, and steampunk fans have their disfigured mad-scientist supervillains in tophats and overcoats. You either accept these details or you don't, which means you simply either accept such books as entertaining or you simply don't; that's a big sign of a project being a mainstream versus genre one, if its enjoyment does or doesn't rest solely on the details of a specific type of literature.

Because that's the other thing about The Somnambulist, that the storyline itself is very much a fast-paced, plot-heavy one, which brings me to about the biggest complaint I have; that many parts of the novel feel like Barnes imagining how the eventual big-budget Hollywood adaptation of that scene will look, instead of the scene directly servicing the storyline itself. And this again is a big difference between so-called genre projects and mainstream ones, that genre projects almost always concentrate more on painting striking mental images in their readers' heads, almost always favor plot more heavily than character since it's the details of a plot that most defines what type of genre it is. Because make no mistake, if you're a fan of steampunk, The Somnambulist is going to give you a boner; it's 350 pages of hansom-cab chases and obscure clues found on ancient gravestones, a giant conspiracy tale that of course features a famous poet from the 1700s, of course features a pagan society leaving little signs of itself all over the city, of course features grandiose evil lairs buried within the labyrinthine tunnels of London's tube system! Whew, oh, excuse me, I think I need to visit the bathroom for a few minutes!

Now, I'm quite aware that the above paragraph has a certain amount of you shaking your heads and rolling your eyes even as we speak, which of course is another sign of something being a genre project; it's the same reaction I have, for example, when someone says to me, "See, he solves crimes, but he's a phobia-obsessed recluse! Hah? Hah? Isn't that interesting?" Well, no, not to me, because I'm not a particularly big fan of crime fiction, just as others don't care for steampunk, romance, historical thrillers, or all those other shelf labels at your favorite corporate superstore. It doesn't mean they're necessarily bad books, which is where the difficulty lies for me as a critic; because how exactly do you describe a book that's great, but only great to that small segment of the population who naturally loves that genre in the first place? It's always the balance I'm trying to strike here, given that CCLaP concentrates on a higher percentage of genre novels than many other lit-oriented publications.

I guess, then, I'll say what I always say about such books; that steampunk fans are sure to love it, others not so much, that it's definitely worth taking a chance on if you're feeling adventurous, but ultimately you're not missing all that much if you're not. That's the ultimate beauty and curse of genre fiction, after all, is that when all is said and done, the projects tend to bleed into each other a lot in our collective memories; it's why genre books receive so much scorn from the general populace and so few awards, despite such books comprising the vast majority of ones published, bought and read in this country. The Somnambulist is very much like that, a book that's definitely enjoyable but that you will likely get mixed up with other steampunk books years later when recalling; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly something you deserve to know before going into it.

Out of 10:
Story: 9.0
Characters: 7.2
Style: 8.4
Overall: 8.0, or 9.0 for steampunk fans

Read even more about The Somnambulist: Amazon | GoodReads | LibraryThing | Shelfari

Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

Nelson Mandela is on the US terrorist watchlist
Unbelievable.

Robin Williams does two surprise sets at Chicago's Lakeshore Theatre
A friend of CCLaP's, Lakeshore Theatre owner Chris Ritter (at Belmont and Broadway), had a bit of a surprise last weekend, when Robin Williams asked to do two unannounced sets there while in town last week for "Ellen in Chicago." Nice!

Marvel uses "Iron Man" success to sign three horrible development deals
Reps at Marvel Comics this weekend used the surprisingly huge success of "Iron Man" to push through development deals for three more B-level characters -- Thor, Captain America and Ant-Man. Suckers!

Seriously, NBC? You dropped iTunes just to sign with Zune?
NBC announces this week that they've struck a new deal with Microsoft's Zune online store, which most experts agree won't even be open in another couple of years; worse yet, their episodes are still selling for $2 apiece, the issue that made them break with Apple in the first place.

FBI spends a year hunting Seattle "terrorists;" turns out they were just tourists
After a Seattle ferry captain identified a pair of "suspicious" dark-skinned passengers in 2007, the FBI spends an entire year hunting down their identities; now it turns out they were just EU tourists, taking photos of the ferry's car capacity because they had never seen a car-ferry before.

Today's photo of the day is entitled "carly," and is by Drew Valenti. Drew doesn't mention much about himself, other than that he's from Winston-Salem, North Carolina; he does, however, invite people to drop him a line at his main Flickr account if they'd like to talk more about photography.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

(CCLaP is dedicated to reviewing as many contemporary books as possible, including self-published volumes; click here to learn how to submit your own book for possible review, although be warned that it needs to have been published within the last 18 months to be considered. For the complete list of all books reviewed here, as well as the next books scheduled to be read, click here.)

Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World's Most Coveted Handbag
By Michael Tonello
HarperCollins / ISBN: 978-0-06-147333-3

So are you familiar already with what's known as the Birkin bag? It's the product of Hermés, one of those European "designer boutiques" that exists for no other reason than to severely overcharge rich people with self-esteem issues; you know, one of those places that sells hundred-dollar handkerchiefs, $500 t-shirts and the like, eagerly bought up by the wealthy and idle so that they can prove to strangers that they too can afford to waste $500 on a t-shirt. (Yeah, I don't get it either.) But of all the ridiculously overpriced merchandise that Hermés sells, perhaps none is more infamous than their Birkin handbags; named after a famous French singer and habitual Hermés customer, these bags cost a minimum of $10,000 new from the store, and depending on the type can run you upwards of $75,000 or more. And human nature being what it is, of course, it's nearly impossible to get one's hands on an actual Birkin, with there being an infamous two-year waiting list at most stores to even be given the opportunity to blow that kind of money; needless to say, the self-imposed scarcity drives all these upper-class women with self-esteem issues crazy, with some of them willing to go to almost any lengths and pay any price to get ahold of one of them themselves.

And thus enters witty gay entrepreneur and Huffington Post columnist Michael Tonello, whose new memoir Bringing Home the Birkin is a doozy of a book; it's the purportedly true story of how Tonello managed to get his hands on literally hundreds of Birkins himself over just a few years' time, always done legally and with Hermés employees fully aware of his existence, making himself a fortune in the process by reselling them on eBay for insane markups. And I'm telling you, this is exactly what you want a personal memoir to be -- funny, thrilling, chock-full of great cocktail-party stories told with the flair of a natural raconteur, following an overall storyline as tight as any fictional project, one whose ending is not necessarily something you can guess beforehand. It's one of those books I just absolutely love coming across as part of maintaining CCLaP -- one of those books I would never naturally pick up myself, but that turned out to be a real delight, one that makes me happy and glad to be in a position to recommend to others.

So how did Tonello do it? Well, for starters, it helps if you don't buy into the hype of brand-obsession yourself; although a longtime collector of fine clothing (usually in the service of his former day job, providing hair and makeup services to various east-coast media shoots), Tonello admits that he doesn't share the religious devotion to certain designers like his clients do, and finds it emotionally easy to give up ownership of high-ticket items. In fact, that's what brought Birkins to his attention in the first place; after impulsively moving to Barcelona in the early 2000s, then having his prearranged job fall apart once arriving, Tonello found himself selling off big portions of his back wardrobe to the various designer consignment stores around the city, amazed that certain decade-old scarves of his would still be snatched up at nearly the original price by certain crazed collectors. This led him to eBay (of course), where he found that he could actually make a profit off of certain items depending on what they were; this then led to certain customers emailing him with "wish lists," certain old and new boutique items that Tonello would keep a specific eye out for while traipsing across Europe in his travels. And this, of course, is what led him to Birkins for the first time, and for developing the same kind of obsession over their fake scarcity as so many of us do when first hearing about them.

Because that's the smart thing about Tonello, and why he became so good at being a Birkin broker; he realized quite early on that this so-called exclusivity is simply a shell game on the part of Hermés, and that if you could just break their code it shouldn't be hard to buy a Birkin anytime you want, simply by walking into a store and asking for one. This led Tonello to trying out different things at the various Hermés stores he visited across Europe, trial-and-error style until he was able to notice certain things working over and over; and then this realization inspired the expansion of Tonello's globetrotting shopping sprees, to the point of finding himself traveling to places like South America and Russia on a regular basis, just to hit up the stores that rich old white women usually don't make it to. And when all is said and done, really, the winning equation to getting a Birkin turns out to not be that complicated at all...

1) Dress the part -- never walk in a store wearing less than a quarter-million dollars in clothes and jewelry.

2) Identify which of the half-dozen "Hermés employee types" you're dealing with when you walk in, then cater to their weaknesses. (So if it's a "Grandmother" type, act like the pleasant courteous son they never had; if it's an "Incurable Romantic," act like they have a chance of having sex with you later that night.)

3) Blow a thousand dollars first, buying other stupid crap. Or if you're in New York, blow five thousand dollars. Mention items by their specific names, to prove you're a long-time educated collector.

4) When they're ringing you up, off-handedly ask, "Oh, and would you happen to have any Birkins in the back as well?"

5) Ka-ching!

But of course, I'm simplifying the situation for humorous effect; as Tonello actually demonstrates here quite well, the real secret to becoming a Birkin regular is more complicated and ephemeral than that, a strange mishmash of sucking up, buying into the hype, and sincere friendships, a legitimate community of high-end haute-couture lovers that you must somehow ingratiate yourself into, if you want any chance of making an actual career out of something like this. And indeed, this is one of the big strengths of Bringing Home the Birkin, and what separates it from the endless similar chick-lit crap that HarperCollins desperately, desperately wants you to think of when thinking of this book (and seriously, HarperCollins marketing department, if you mention Sex in the City one more time in your promotional material I might just vomit all over myself); because Tonello shines a light here through the foggy haze of all that, and shows how the entire haute-couture culture is an endless house of cards that ultimately relies on peer pressure and catering to people's fears in order to work. It makes it a weightier book than the ones it will undoubtedly get compared to by others, a stronger tale that doesn't have to rely so much on you being an obsessive fashion-lover yourself in order to enjoy.

Now, that said, oh man does Tonello tell some great stories on the way to this disillusionment -- of flying into Rio just to visit a Hermés store, of attending star-studded European fashion events, of racking up half a million on a credit card in a single weekend. In fact, that might be the most enjoyable thing of all about Bringing Home the Birkin, is that Tonello is simply a natural storyteller and gifted raconteur; take for example what is easily the best story of the entire book, his uneasy relationship with a skeevy chickenhawk gay hustler he accidentally meets one night, who has various Hermés employees "eating out of the palm of his hand" and so can therefore get his hands on certain items that Tonello can't. Needless to say, things quickly devolve between the two, with Tonello eventually having to hatch a wacky noiresque scheme to steal back a $25,000 Birkin the hustler stole from him in the first place; there's not much funnier of a mental image in this whole manuscript, to tell you the truth, than that of Tonello sneaking around the streets of Paris with a group of headphoned goons in sunglasses, wondering if his hotel room is "safe" and asking himself just what he's gotten himself into, when first thinking it would be fun to sell a bunch of overpriced purses to a group of rich housewives.

This is what I mean by how wonderful this book is; it at once gives us all the great anecdotal stories that come with the highest end of the fashion industry, while still pointing out all the depressing realities that such an industry produces, all the various hangers-on in a community like that who swirl around the small amount of rich, beautiful and famous in the center. That after all has become the biggest problem with America's entertainment industry as well, that there is simply so much money being generated from it in so many different ways that it's become an almost unstoppable monster; it's no longer just about the actors and directors and producers in the middle of it, but all their yoga instructors and dog psychiatrists and personal shoppers, all the gossip columnists and publicists and people who get paid to convince celebrities to use certain products in public. That's what makes Bringing Home the Birkin so fascinating, because ultimately that's what Tonello's story is about as well -- not the fashion designers themselves, but those who game the fashion system in order to skim a profit off its top, the endless retail employees and eBay resellers and party crashers and blog owners and the rest, all of them taking their own little cuts from the massive amounts of money being exchanged in the middle of it all.

It's a fascinating book that tells a fascinating story, not the best-written thing I've read this year but certainly far from the worst, one of those fabled books about fashion that even non-fashion-lovers can enjoy. It gets a big recommendation from me, and I imagine will also be one of the winners of CCLaP's annual "Guilty Pleasure Award" at the end of the year.

Out of 10: 9.2

Read even more about Bringing Home the Birkin: Official site | Amazon | GoodReads | LibraryThing | Shelfari | Wikipedia

Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

Innovation, destruction, and why Detroit's in bigger trouble than they realize
Futurist Jon Taplin uses recent auto-industry news -- that more and more Americans are buying small efficient cars, despite the industry still focusing on SUVs -- as a starting point for a fascinating essay about innovation and creative destruction.

"Latteconimizing" -- lousy term, great concept
Chicago Trib columnist Eric Zorn coins a new term today -- "latteconimizing," or the trend of Americans these days to cut back severely on small luxuries. (For example, profits at Starbucks are down 30 percent this quarter, which is what inspired the term.)

McCain: "Not a 100-year war in Iraq, merely a 100-year troop commitment"
In response to a recent attack ad, John McCain claims he isn't arguing for a 100-year war in Iraq, merely a 100-year commitment of troops, like how it's been in Europe now for 63 years and counting. Which begs the question -- is that clarification necessarily any better?

Despite winning format war, no one is buying Blu-rays
Turns out that customers weren't waiting for the high-def DVD format wars to be over; they're just sick of constantly upgrading their movies, after spending the last decade and a fortune getting rid of all their videotapes in the first place.

GTA IV Liberty City Google Map
Dooooooodddde.

Today's photo of the day is entitled "velvet," and is by Trane DeVore. Trane is based out of Osaka, Japan, and in fact this image was taken in Japan; he has an English-language blog as well, for those who would like to know more about this Westerner currently teaching in the East.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

Just a small programming note -- wanted to let people know that this weekend I moved the main lists of mini-reviews to their respective book and movie review pages, and have now enfolded them into the larger lists of long reviews. (Mini-reviews now have an 'M' next to them in the main lists.) For those who enjoy statistics, by the way, in the eleven months CCLaP has now been open, I've written and published just a little under 200 reviews here at the site, broken down into the following categories:

Book reviews (long): 60
Book reviews (short): 45
Movie reviews (long): 39
Movie reviews (short): 37
The CCLaP 100: 16

When you add the 17 personal essays I've also written, then, it adds up to just around 160,000 words of original content published at the CCLaP website in the last year, or in other words around the same amount as one of Stephen King's larger books. Man, that's a lot of snotty opinionated jokes! Anyway, hope this recent consolidation will make it easier to find the back review you're looking for, and as always I appreciate you coming by for the latest.

(Because I make my way through so many books and movies for CCLaP, I regularly come across projects that are interesting enough unto themselves but that I simply don't have much to say about, or at least not enough to warrant an entire entry. I thought, then, that on occasional weekends I would gather up such "micro-reviews" and post them all in one large entry; they can also be found alphabetically in CCLaP's main list of mini-reviews.)

The Last Opium Den (book; 2000)
By Nick Tosches
Bloombury / ISBN: 1-58234-227-X

This is one of four newish books I recently read mostly so I could finally get them off my queue list, all of which were actually pretty good but are mere wisps of manuscripts, none of them over 150 pages or so in length. And indeed, Nick Tosches' The Last Opium Den was first published as a simple magazine article in Vanity Fair -- it was the edgy and controversial author's attempt at the turn of the millennium to see if there were any honest-to-God opium dens left on this planet, done up right with the seedy beds and the dressed-up Asian women holding giant long pipes and the whole bit, maybe out in the middle of the jungle in Cambodia or wherever. Of course, this being Tosches, the slim story is actually about a lot more than that as well; it's about the cannibalization of global culture, the proliferation of squeaky-clean Euro/Americans into every corner of the world, and incidentally why heroin was created in the first place, as basically a portable form of self-administered opium that precisely didn't need an entire seedy den full of soiled mattresses and dressed-up Asian girls holding giant long pipes. It's only an hour or two of reading, but it's a dense and enjoyable read, something to borrow from a friend or pick up at the library.

Out of 10: 8.5

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read (book; 2007)
By Pierre Bayard
Bloombury / ISBN: 978-1-59691-469-8

And then here's the second book, the surprisingly thoughtful How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by a hip French literature professor named Pierre Bayard; because make no mistake, this is not exactly a practical how-to guide to faking your way through cocktail parties, but more a sneaky examination of what it means to "read" a book anyway, if by "read" you mean "understand, relate to, can recall details of, and can discuss with others." After all, if we read a book as a child and then completely forget its story as an adult, do we still get to count that as a "read" book? Bayard gets into all kinds of interesting questions like this, ultimately arguing that the most important thing we can do as readers is understand the entire time period that book is a result of; in the goal of accomplishing that, then, he argues that it's perfectly okay to just read the Cliff Notes of famous huge books you know you're never going to get around to actually reading, perfectly okay to discuss a book at a cocktail party you're familiar with but haven't actually sat down and scanned each and every page. This is how we learn, he argues, how we grow as both humans and patrons of the arts; every Wikipedia entry we read, every conversation we fake our way through, every BBC adaptation we check out, ultimately helps us understand the full-length books we do sit and closely read from the beginning to the end, which is why we shouldn't be ashamed of any of these activities but rather proud of them. Funny, smart, and very French; a very fun afternoon of reading.

Out of 10: 9.2

This Year You Write Your Novel (book; 2007)
By Walter Mosley
Little, Brown and Company / ISBN: 978-0-316-06541-2

And then this is the third short book I got through this week, the similarly nonfiction This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley, an author I don't necessarily like that much personally but certainly respect a whole lot, among other things for being one of the only black authors in history to break through the lily-white publishing barrier of the science-fiction industry. That said, this extremely thin how-to book feels more like a weekend toss-off on Mosley's part than a finished and polished manuscript; a book that purports to show you how to finally get off your ass and in twelve months actually write that novel you've been telling yourself for years that you're going to someday write, but in fact is an odd mishmash of different kinds of literary advice, some more practical and some more craft-oriented, organized a bit sloppily and with not much concrete "real" advice in there at all. It's worth checking out if you get a chance to do so for free, but I'm not sure I'd recommend shelling out $20 to read this not exactly helpful fluff article turned full-length book.

Out of 10: 7.0

The Final Solution (book; 2004)
By Michael Chabon
HarperCollins / ISBN: 0-06-076340-X

And then here finally is the fourth short book I read this week, 2004 Sherlock Holmes tale The Final Solution by literary wunderkind Michael Chabon, again published originally as a magazine story (in The Paris Review; in fact, it won the in-house "Aga Khan Prize" in 2004 for being the best story to appear that year in that publication, according to the editors). This is an entire cottage industry, as a matter of fact, for those who don't know, the writing of new Sherlock Holmes tales now that the copyright on the character has expired; and I'm an obsessive Sherlock Holmes fan, so have now read dozens of these stories by contemporary authors other than Arthur Conan Doyle. And that's why I say that Chabon's take on the subject is bound to disappoint a certain amount of "Baker Street Irregulars" out there; because here Chabon is writing a story more for a general populace, using Holmes in an old-age setting (World War II, when he's supposedly in his nineties and living in the countryside) as an excuse to comment in more general terms on the subjects of dying, aging with dignity, and the onset of dementia. It's an interesting-enough story, I suppose, but ultimately a let-down for me after expecting another exquisitely reimagined Holmesian tale like so many that now exist; and then there's that unfortunate title (the name of the Nazi plan in the 1940s to kill all the Jews before the war ended), which somehow manages to be both offensive and not relevant to Chabon's actual story in any way whatsoever. Again, worth checking out if you don't have to spend any money to do so.

Out of 10: 7.2

Cloverfield (movie; 2008)
Written by Drew Goddard
Directed by Matt Reeves

Hey hey, and guess what, it was JJ Abrams week as well here at CCLaP headquarters! Or if by "JJ Abrams week" you mean "I watched the two Hollywood films he's had anything to do with," then yes, it was JJ Abrams week here at CCLaP. First up: the 2008 September-11th-style monster movie Cloverfield, which Abrams technically only "produced" but that has his hands all over, in just about every way possible. And man, am I glad I decided to see this on DVD, instead of making it one of the only films of the year I pay full-price to see at an actual movie theatre (which I had been contemplating doing); because there actually is a really great 45-minute movie here in the middle of Cloverfield, and I'm glad now that I got to sit at home and fast-forward through the rest of the filler crap to actually get to it. But of course, this is a problem almost without a solution, which is why you can't get on the case of Abrams and company too badly; after all, the main point of a monster movie is to show off the monster, especially here where the entire thing unwinds in real-time pacing through the lens of a civilian with a home camera, but you can't just shoot 90 minutes of the monster because that will simply exhaust your audience. Writer Drew Goddard tries to handle the matter by interspersing random ten-minute character-building sequences throughout, not only via the usual down-time but also an ingenious series of "flashbacks" (snippets of old videos on this guy's memory stick); but unfortunately the characters are little more than rich, good-looking, privileged, entitled frat boys and sorority girls, making you actually root for their coming grisly ends quite early on, turning the requisite "you're learning to love these people" scenes into an eye-rolling chore. Do yourself a favor and just fast-forward through any scene not involving a shaky camera and some guy screaming, "Dude! Sh-t! Dude! Sh-t!" You'll be glad you did.

Out of 10: 8.6

Mission: Impossible III (movie; 2006)
Written by JJ Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci
Directed by JJ Abrams

And then this is the other movie I watched as part of JJ Abrams Week, the 2006 franchise grower Mission: Impossible III, which I have to admit I thoroughly and guiltily enjoyed from pretty much the first second to the last. And the reason for that is simple -- it's a 100-million-dollar episode of Alias, basically, Abrams' old secret-agent television show which got him this gig in the first place, and I happen to have been an obsessive fan of Alias when it was originally on the air, so of course I'm going to love a hundred-million-dollar "BLAM! BANG! WHIZZ! KAPOW!" version of it. As usual, Abrams takes a tired genre here and reinvigorates it, precisely by breaking the story down deconstructionist style and building it back up with real characters in the center and realistic motivations driving their actions; he then backs up this attention to story detail with the hiring of some truly intriguing actors (including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Simon Pegg and a lot more), as well as his magical ability to keep his calm around all those mega-maniacal Tom Cruise Hollywood diva types (something often overlooked about Abrams' success, and why he's making hundred-million-dollar movies and you're not). One of the handful of action movies I actually see and enjoy each year; it gets a big recommendation from me, especially to those who usually don't like action movies very much.

Out of 10: 9.0

Bram Stoker's Dracula (movie; 1992)
Written by James Hart, from the original novel by Bram Stoker
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Regular readers know that a couple of weeks ago, I finally read Bram Stoker's classic vampire story Dracula for the first time; and that had me in the mood to see a couple of vampire movies I had never seen before, specifically a pair of them that are both supposedly tightly based on the original book in question. But I don't know, maybe it was because of consuming both projects so closely to each other, but I personally think that Francis Ford Coppola should be f-cking ashamed of himself for putting Stoker's name in the title of his 1992 film adaptation; because seriously, there are dozens and dozens of aberrations from the original story on display in this muddled, pretentious mess, and in all cases with the changes ultimately being for the worse. For example, nowhere in the book does Dracula mention some wife who got unfairly slaughtered 400 years ago, nor that Mina Harker looks exactly like her, nor that this is the reason he's secretly fleeing to England in the first place; and given that these events dominate the entire first half of the movie, you can see exactly what kind of joke it is to call this "Bram Stoker's Freaking Anything." A real disappointment; no wonder Coppola's reputation as a filmmaker is in the crapper so badly these days.

Out of 10: 3.1

Van Helsing (movie; 2004)
Written and directed by Stephen Sommers

And then this is the other vampire movie I wanted to see because of reading Stoker's original book, the 2004 supernatural actioner Van Helsing starring that dreamy Hugh Jackman, which is actually more famous anymore for what it was supposed to be rather than what it is; because it was supposed to be an extremely high-profile kickoff to an entire Van Helsing corporate franchise, with a series of sequels that had already been planned before the original was even released, a new amusement-park ride at Six Flags, an entire line of toys, a Saturday morning cartoon, a videogame, a live-action spinoff show, and a lot more. Ah, but then it tanked at the box office, making all these other elaborate corporate synergetic plans fall apart; bitter irony, I know, given that the movie actually generated $120 million in revenue, a huge success in anyone else's eyes but a dismal failure to the people who spent a whopping $300 million on Van Helsing's budget and advertising.

So what happened? Well, after watching it myself now, I can honestly say I don't know; because this isn't a bad movie at all, to tell you the truth, certainly not a great movie but definitely no worse than any of the other CGI-heavy summer "blockbusters" that Hollywood has been so desperately churning out this decade. (In a nutshell: the famous monster-killer takes on Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man all Mountain-Dew extreeeeeme style over a two-hour period. There, that was literally the entire storyline of this movie.) Maybe just overinflated expectations? If the producers, for example, had simply been able to reign in the amount of money being wasted, the film would now be considered a financial success instead of such a miserable disaster; maybe if they had spent more time worrying about how much all those dog-groomers and yoga instructors cost them, and less time writing imaginary sequels, this movie could've been saved. (And after all, this is the secret to JJ Abrams' success too; for example, the aforementioned Cloverfield ultimately only made $80 million itself, but that's from a total budget and ad campaign of $40 million, making it a huge success in the eyes of Hollywood suits.) A cautionary tale about budgets spiraling out of control, and I imagine a film a lot of people will point to in the future when explaining what went wrong with Hollywood in the 2000s.

Out of 10: 7.4