Never Judge A Book By Its Cover?

'How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy' gets an updated cover.

'How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy'
The original concept sketch and the finished cover.

Everyone's heard of the phrase 'Never judge a book by its cover' and while I would agree with this advice when it comes to judging people, when it comes to an actual book I think the advice doesn't always hold true.  In terms of the quality of the book and how interesting and enjoyable readers will find it, then yes, you have to look beyond the cover and actually read the book to discover whether it's the book for you.

However, you can nevertheless usually still judge some things from the cover of a book.  For example, if the cover shows a dude and a lass looking lovingly into each other's eyes over a romantic candlelit dinner then you can guess that it's probably a romance novel.  Or if the cover shows a werewolf under a Full Moon then it's a fairly safe bet that werewolves will feature in the story somewhere.  So in most cases you can generally at least judge the genre of the book by its cover.

Weird Facebook Likes

A selection of inappropriate facebook likes...

Thumbs up for weird facebook likes.

I use facebook quite a bit but one of the things I find strange about facebook is the way that people will sometimes post a status update which is clearly bad news, and yet loads of their alleged friends will 'like' the post.  Sometimes I can't help thinking, 'Eh?  Why are you liking that?  That's obviously bad news.'

I'm talking about statuses along the lines of, 'Just got sacked from my job.' ...6 people like this.  That sort of thing.  That one was just a made-up example but there are plenty of real facebook statuses which are clearly bad news and yet people still seem to click the 'like' button for some reason.

So on that theme I thought I would round-up a few examples to highlight what I'm referring to and to start things off here's a very straight forward example which perfectly illustrates how the 'like' button often gets misused...

What I've Recently Been Reading (Part 3)

A few book reviews...

I haven't managed to read as many books as I'd have liked in recent months, as I've been working on proof-reading and formatting books 3A, 3B and 3C in the 'How To Save The World' trilogy, but here are a few reviews of some of the most recent books which I've read...

The Hoax by Clifford Irving

The Hoax by Clifford Irving - 4.5 / 5.0

The Hoax tells the true story of Clifford Irving, a writer who infamously faked the authorised biography of Howard Hughes, an eccentric and reclusive American billionaire.  The art of deception is a theme which features in my own book and it’s a concept which greatly appeals to me as the basis for a story, so as you’d expect I totally enjoyed The Hoax.  Admittedly, the book starts quite slowly as Clifford describes the research which he and his assistant, Richard Suskind, carried out in preparation for writing the biography, but once the story gets into its stride and unforeseen developments in their plan start to occur, The Hoax then really starts to come alive.

"I Don't Speak Japanese."

My daft and stupid hypothetical tattoo.

I'm not really a fan of tattoos as from a fashion point of view I tend to change my opinion of what I like every six months, so something as permanent as a tattoo would be a bad idea for someone like me who changes their mind so often.

However, if I was ever going to get a tattoo then I like Japanese kanji, and I also like daft stupid stuff, so I'd probably go for something which combined the two...

"I don't know.  I don't speak Japanese."
iPhone 5 version (640x1136)

Amusing Football Quotes (Part 2)

A collection of football quotes to round off the season...

Another football season comes to a close.

If there’s one thing you can rely on from footballers and managers, it’s that they often come out with daft quotes.  Back in August, to celebrate the start of the football season I illustrated this fact by posting a selection of amusing football quotes from a variety of managers, footballers and commentators.

Today sees the final day of the Premiership, so to round off the season I thought this would be an appropriate time to post another batch of amusing football quotes from various pundits, players and other football related celebrities.  A few of these had me chuckling as I was typing them up, so hopefully a few other people will likewise find them as amusing as I did.

1) "Well, Clive, it's all about the two Ms ... movement and positioning."
...Ron Atkinson

2) "No regrets.  None at all.  My only regret is that we went out on penalties.  That's my only regret but no, no regrets."
...Mick McCarthy

And The Award For The Most Stupid Question Ever Goes To...

Pub Related Stupidity

Beer, a drink commonly found in most pubs.

In part 2A of the 'How To Save The World' trilogy*, I make a reference to the top three most stupid questions that Kesta (one of the supporting characters) has ever been asked.  I won't reveal the questions here, but you can trust me that all three of the questions were very stupid questions indeed (and each was inspired by real life).

* Available for Kindle from Amazon.

However, I can safely say that all three of those questions were well and truly beaten for stupidity by a stupid question I heard the other day when I was out at the pub watching the football.

To set the scene, me and my mates were sat at the back of the dining room in the pub, and a couple were sitting at the table next to us with their young son who must have been no older than six years old.  At one point during the match the parents disappeared, presumably to go and order food, leaving their child sat at their table on his own for a few minutes. 

Strange Google Searches (Part 3)

Hitmen, Three Legged Dogs And Pregnant Men

Searching for a hitman.

A few months ago I published a post called Santa Claus, Camper Vans And Swedish Girls which discussed some of the weird searches made on Google every month.  I then followed this up over Christmas with a post devoted entirely to Santa related searches on Google.  As there are hundreds of weird Google searches made every month I thought it was time for another post along the same theme.

I’ll start off with a rather worrying search term.  This one is especially worrying when you consider that it gets 9,900 worldwide searches per month:

‘How do I hire a hitman?’

Even more worrying is the fact that this search term has a competition rating of 0.05* so whilst by no means the most competitive search term on Google, there nevertheless must be some businesses looking to advertise on this search term!  What sort of businesses they might be I dread to think.

* Google assign all of their search terms a competition rating to allow advertisers to assess which search terms are the most popular with other advertisers and therefore the most competitive to advertise against.