As one of the small percentage of Caucasians that is lactose intolerant, and the son of a woman herself obsessed with the evils of milk drinking, I was prepared for the idea that products of the dairy industry were part of vast conspiracy to control our minds.

I wasn’t ready for the idea that the conspiracy was controlled by aliens from the planet Vega.

This is the bizarre milieu of Andrew Thomas Breslin’s Mother’s Milk. The story follows a young, barely-employed lawyer, Cindy Kicklklug, working for a group of radical nutritionists known as the True Foods Project; one of their members – a mathematician who, like Cindy is no crusader, is only working for the group “for the maths” – finds a way to prove that milk is the cause of numerous diseases, general gassiness, and oh, yeah, mind control. Things get a little out of hand after that.

Breslin’s book is creamed with wit and it milks science, the law, and etymology to good effect. The only way the book goes off is its tendency to repeat things a wee bit (we are told many times that the product of one animal, the cow, is given an entire food group, which I agree, is suspicious, but I got the point after the first few times.) A minor curdling.

In addition to lashings of “milk thugs” and pails of black helicopters, the book also features, a kidnapped cow, a telepathic dolphin, and a cast of characters that spoof the lobbying industry with humor and great wit.

Recommended! And available directly from the publisher.

This is a contest in which you could win:

1. a chance to appear in a walk-on role in my next book
2. a chance to win one of three copies of Marvellous Hairy, a novel in five fractals
3. a “mystery” item from my desk.

Now, if you’ve entered, or think you will, this is an excellent time to start thinking about how you would like to appear in my next book. Actually, to say next book is to narrow it down too much. I’m currently at work on two books; both are satires (naturally). One is a speculative fiction, the broad theme of which is artificial intelligence, and the other is a historical fiction — or rather, a gentle send-up of the kinds of historical fictions that win Booker and Giller Prizes on a regular basis.

You can put yourself in either book. Almost anything goes. You can appear as yourself — with your name attached, or as a pseudonym. Or your cameo can be somewhat fictionalized. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to be a pirate. Or maybe a ninja. (I hope not, but there’s no accounting for tastes.) Maybe you’d like to be a character with an extra appendage. Almost anything goes, as long as we can work it into the story in a way that doesn’t completely destroy the structural integrity of the novel.

So, what do you imagine you’d like to do with this opportunity? Feel free to share here.

Still want to enter? Join my fan page or my newsletter (sign up for both to double your chances).

You have until midnight, September 9th!

Excellent pirate pic by practicalowl.

Shelf Monkey is an entertaining and iconoclastic look at the world of books.

It’s a little like Catch-22, but instead of bombers and Italian prostitutes there are big box book stores and people eating pizza. The role of Yossarian is played by a confirmed and inveterate book nerd (named Thomas).

Thomas has recently quit his career as a lawyer, and decided to work at a book store, because he loves book. At least, he THOUGHT he loved books. Turns out, he only likes good books. And working at a big-box-book store, Thomas discovers that not everyone has the same (good) taste. Especially when the execrable predilections of the wildly popular Munroe Purvis encourage the great unwashed to buy books of dubious value.

Unlike Yossarian, Redekop’s protagonist is actually able to accomplish something. Something weird, a bit dangerous, and even anarchic — burning books. Not all books, just the overhyped, the unredeemably bad, the dreck of the literary world.

Part Chuck Palahniuk, part readers guide to great literature, Shelf Monkey is a must for anyone with pretensions to being a bibliophile. You’ll love it. For those of you who are okay with not reading every great book in the history of literature, you may find the continual literary references a bit tiring, but there’s still lots to love.

Redekop’s book is witty, and dare I say, aflame with excellent satire. (Yes, I dare.)

Available at Amazon here.

Valley of Day-Glo is the story of Broadway Danny Rose, a member of a confused Iroquois nation who has forgone traditional names for names ripped off IMBD. Except, they’re not getting them off IMDB, because that doesn’t exist anymore, you know, with the bizarre ecological apocalypse that has destroyed Western civilization and all. (Purportedly a nuclear war, but I don’t know, the landscape seems unlikely.)

Apart from living in a wasteland, Broadway Danny Rose suffers from erectile dysfunction, an overbearing mother (appropriately named Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe) and that age old problem, doofus protagonitis.

You may have missed the lecture on doofus protagonitis in your survey of English literature. It is the syndrome suffered by protagonists in satires. Think Don Quixote, think Gulliver, think Yosarian. You see, they tend to be unable to control what is happening to them, though they may be able to demonstrate their humanity to the reader as the author messes with him. Danny is one of the latter kinds of doofusi, and this is one of the things that will keep you turning the page — you just want to see how this whole thing is going to turn out for Danny. You really hope it’s going to be okay.

Nick DiChario is a talented writer, and he deftly takes us through his apocalyptic tale, which is at times absurd (the jacket cover claims it is in the tradition of Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut, but I think more of the latter), bizarre and entertaining.

Recommended!

A warning: don’t waste valuable time trying to decipher the traditional Iroquois names. They’re not all puns. If they ever do a second edition, they should put the author’s note at the front, and save us all headaches, eyestrain, and the suspicion that we’re idiots for not being able to figure it out.

Review: The Shallows, or, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain, by Nicholas Carr

The irony is a spongy wad, so thick the fine edge of your keyboard or netbook would be enough to cut it.
I’m trying to write a review of Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows, and all the while, I can’t seem to stop myself from checking TweetDeck every few minutes (there just did it again); or a quick dip in to my email, or to check my blog comments…

This is the welter of distractions we face every day, for those of us who are wired, reading, and working. Even if you’re disciplined, the distraction is there — it takes an act of will to resist it, and what happens to your brain in that instant while you’re deciding if you should click on that link, open up that Facebook app, or make a comment on the article you’ve been reading between tasks?

A lot. In fact, your brain is being rewired while we you read this, assuming, of course, you’ve made it this far in the review and you’re still reading.

This is why I believe everyone who has any interest at all in the Internet, the web and reading should study this book. If you’re intrigued by the ultimate the fate of the human species, and where this information age is taking us, you’ll want to have a look. Hell, probably anyone who uses the net should consider at least scanning it. (Yes, more irony.)

Carr’s writing and research is excellent, and his thesis is straightforward: we’re giving up part of our humanity in the headlong rush to absorb as much information as we can, as quickly as we can. The book discusses the history of media, and how our brains have changed before — first with the advent of writing, and then with the development of Guttenburg’s press; he carries the argument from current studies of the brain and consciousness to the flawed model of our brains as computers and our minds as software; he delves into how philosophers and other thinkers have meditated on this subject throughout history.

And it is exactly the discipline of meditation, and “deep reading” as he calls it, that we are starting to lose with the web. It’s changing our writing, our thinking, and ultimately, it’s changing our culture.

If nothing else, this book will help you be more aware of what is happening to you on a daily basis. I’ve already been aware of some of the effects he discusses — for example, when I’m writing a piece of long fiction, I always make sure my computer is disconnected from the net, and I don’t have any other programs except for my word processor (and iTunes) open. Now, I see that I need to give my brain at more of a break from the constant info-dump of the net than that.

We’re all altering human evolution with this experiment, and who knows where it will end? Carr is not optimistic, and he worries that when it is all over, we will no longer be homo sapiens, we will be homo informavore.