#5 Platform - Thank You For Smoking

Not the movie, really, but still, a cynical good time.

Book #27: Thank You For Smoking
Author: Christopher Buckley
Provenance: Bookmooch

All right, I admit that the reason why I picked this up a while back was because I really did like the movie. The nice thing here is that it wasn't really like the book much, so it gave a different experience.

The main character, of course, was the same. Nick Naylor, the chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby, spins away to help keep cigarettes moving. The book does a really good job of showing him doing this: lying, telling only part of the truth, changing images, and taking advantage of whatever situations come his way.

And some of the same situations do come; his main trial is, just as in the movie, a kidnapping in which he is covered in nicotine patches, in an attempt to kill him, for example. The meetings with the Mod Squad, the romance with the reporter, etc., are all still in there.

Thing is, the thrust of the book, and many of the details, turn out to be different. The book plays much more as Naylor trying to survive in a very cut-throat game of office politics, maneuvering within the Academy of Tobacco Studies to try to keep his job under new management, and in opposition to the person his new boss badly wants to replace him with. He makes good use of outside events to help make himself as indispensible as he can; much of that is what makes the book really interesting.

And it is interesting; funny, cynical, and quite imaginative, with a sharp writing style and a good political sense. Buckley has a lot of good ideas, and a good ear for dialogue, even though he can be silly at points. This made for a very fast read (I finished it days ago, but haven't really had computer access), and it's one I recommend for anyone in the mood for some good political satire.

Next up: The Homeward Bounders. Actually, I already finished this one, but I still have to write it up.

#5 Platform - The Homeward Bounders

They wouldn't want you to read this book, but I do.

Book #28: The Homeward Bounders
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Provenance: Bookmooch

Diana Wynne Jones is someone I often admire for having a seemingly endless quiver of pretty original ideas. At first glance, this isn't really one of them; the story is driven by the initial idea of there being a race of Them, pairs or groups of whom play games with different worlds, controlling events and manipulating them in vast war games. These worlds, of course, include Earth, but many others as well.

I still have to hand it to her for the creativity, though. The main character's a boy who finds out about Them playing on Earth, circa about 1879 or so. They then kick him out of the game, to roam the boundaries of the world, thus having to travel from one to another, and there Jones gets to describe a wide range of societies that are interesting in different ways. Warring societies, party societies, nomadic, religious, scientific... they're all here.

Jamie, the main character, provides a sympathetic view of what it is to be dragged from place to place, and how lonely it is. In the end, he does meet up with various others who travel with him, and in the end, attempt to take down the whole system. The secondary characters, beyond the first one introduced, aren't particularly well fleshed out, but they do provide a better focus, and Jones does do fairly well with broad strokes.

The book suffers from somewhat poor pacing, and the aforementioned lack of character development, but I still did quite like it. It's ultimately about hope and the lack of it, and personal sacrifice, and Jones does a good job of getting a nuanced view of each into a early young adult book. And, as she often does, she integrates mythological characters (Prometheus, the Wandering Jew, the Flying Dutchman) into the narrative in a way that works. I don't think it's her finest work, but if you're a fan, you're not going to be disappointed, really.

Oh, and the climactic day of the book? July 12, 1980. Some interesting synchronicity there, I have to say.

Next up: Boomsday. Already started, already very political.