The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Read: 26 July, 2008

Overall, I loved this book. Dawkins is a wonderful writer and I think I would have enjoyed his style regardless of the subject matter. The only major flaw that irked me was his habit of veering off into tangents, but even this was made bare-able by not only his writing style, but also by the fact that most of his tangents were just plain interesting. Dawkins makes his case even stronger, in my opinion, by fulling admitting to and even going out of his way to point out the limits of his own personal knowledge. At several times during the book, he will say that he suspects one thing but does not know for certain, showing an inquisitive and flexible mind, both humble and confident. It's a refreshing break from the average writer who seems all too sure of her/his omniscience.

With all that out of the way, I'd like to address a couple of issues with the book. The first is with Chapter Four or "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God." I found the whole chapter to be a disappointment. Dawkins takes the question of "if there isn't a god, how did everything fall into place so perfectly to produce us?" and tries to answer it with science. This points him in an awkward and unnecessarily defensive position because the question itself is not a legitimate one (something he never once says outright). It's like asking "how did my parents know to have sex at just the perfect time to conceive me?" It assumes that we are an end result, a goal that the universe has been working towards - rather than the more accurate assumption that the universe is merely ambling along in one of billions (to pick an unrealistically small number) of possible ways and we just happen to be a bi-product (one of many possibilities) that happened to emerge. There is nothing special about the production of us, whether as individuals or as a species.

Another quibble I had with the book is that Dawkins repeats multiple times that natural selection gets rid of negatives and keeps positives, which is just sloppy. What about the vast majority of mutations, which are just neutral? Or mutations that have both positive and negative expressions?I understand the need for brevity and keeping things simple, but this is a major point and something that a lot of Dawkins's opposition can't seem to grasp.

And the final detail that I took issue with is his statement that "[monogamy] is what we expect, and it is what we set out to achieve." Is it? Maybe he's right, I don't know. Maybe monogamy really is the default. But that's not what even the quickest glance around the diversity of human societies in the world today will tell me. Many societies involve one man and several women, some even involve one woman and several men. If monogamy truly is the natural default, why isn't this expression universal? Like I said, maybe he's right - but because his statement was counter-intuitive, the existence of polygamous societies should have been addressed.

With all that said, this was a fabulous book and I am very glad that I've read it. It ought to have stayed on topic a little better, but that's okay. There were no parts of the book that I felt weren't worth reading and that's more than I can say for most books.

100 Books Meme

Stolen from Lost Fort, just cause I love these sorts of things...

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling (Just The Prisoner of Azkaban)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (the New Testament, but only bits and pieces of the Old)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles– Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (not *all* of them, but a fairly sizeable number)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary – Helen Fielding (no, but I've read the sequel!)
69 Midnight's Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From a Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce (I started and then gave up. Dubliners ruled, but this was just kinda boring)
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – A.S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web – E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Vampire Chronicles #2: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

Read: 14 July, 2008

Overall, I'd say that this was a good book. It wasn't fabulous, but it passed the time in an entertaining way. It didn't provide all that much food for thought. Despite the near-constant philosophical ramblings, I found that most of them contradicted with my own observations far too much to be thought-provoking (for example, one character explains that mortals will believe just about anything other than a supernatural explanation, preferring even the most ridiculous natural explanation - never mind all the talk about finding a good parking space being a "gift from god" or all the "real haunting" TV shows one sees on television). I do think that I liked it better than Interview With a Vampire, but that might just be because Interview was a bit of a disappointment after having seen and loved its movie.

The writing itself was fairly strong - not great, but better than average. There were some parts where present tense was used, despite the bulk of the novel being in the past tense. This wasn't done for any discernible purpose and it made those passages seem awkward.

I did take some issue with the narrative voice. For one thing, the start of the novel had a completely different tone to the rest. There's some half-hearted attempt to explain this, that Lestat is so old and has lived through so many linguistic eras that he switches between them from time to time. All well and good except that the voice of the first couple pages is never used again. All that explanation stuffed into the story when Rice could have just as easily re-written the first few pages to match the tone of the rest. Not to mention the fact that the voice of the first few pages was incredibly annoying, to the point that I considered not reading on.

My other major issue with the narrative voice is that it is very similar to the one used in Interview With a Vampire. There was no distinct personality showing through as I have seen in so many other novels. The Vampire Lestat was a novel best written in first person, and that was a good choice, but in terms of skill, Rice ought to have stuck to third person instead. This became even clearer during Armand and Marius' narratives. If I put the book down and picked it up again later, I could easily forget who was telling that part of the story. It's forgiveable in this case because of the plot - that Lestat is re-telling the stories he'd been told in the past. So it's conceivable that he is re-telling them in his own way. But this doesn't excuse the likeness of Louis's and Lestat's stories.

There was also a bit of sexism present, as in Interview With a Vampire. Female characters are given very little page time. In this book, there is the added discussion about how female vampires are unpredictable or mad. That being said, however, the narrators of Interview With a Vampire and The Vampire Lestat are both male and it is a character who makes the statement about female vampires. I am willing to accept that the sexism of these novels is from the characters and not the novel itself, especially since Claudia and Gabrielle both seem to be strong and independent (in mind, though Claudia, of course, is completely dependent in other ways) woman with clear and consistent goals. In many ways, I've found those two (with the possible addition of Eleni) to be more interesting than Louis, Lestat, Armand, or Marius. It's a shame they don't get their own stories (or maybe they do? If anyone reading this review knows of a Rice book where any of these three gets their own story, I'd love to know which one).

And my final complaint is with the names. I've never heard a French name like "Lestat." Just saying it, it doesn't sound French at all, even if the final T is pronounced (which would be a no-no in modern French). I don't know where Rice got it from, but I personally think it was a very poor choice. It killed my suspension of disbelief every time it came up because I would try to say it in French, as I do with Louis's name, and it just wouldn't work.

I loved the inconsistencies between Interview With a Vampire and the Vampire Lestat. I also liked that the explanations in the Vampire Lestat for questions that had been left unanswered fit well into a separate narrative of their own. This was something that had bothered be in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The subsequent novels attempted to explain away a lot of what had happened in the first, and this killed the jokes and made the subsequent novels feel like they were mostly there as additional material rather than stand-alone books. This was something Rice successfully avoided.

P.S.: What's the deal with Typhon? Why is the name Set never mentioned? If anyone knows, I'd love to hear it!

Cairo by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker

Read: 10 July, 2008

This is the first actual full-length graphic novel I've ever read, so I don't have all that much to compare it to. That being said, I enjoyed it immensely. It's a short read. I went through it in about five hours while at work, so I had a whole lot of distractions.

I loved the way mythology was used in the story. The result was an urban fantasy injected with just enough realism to make it all seem possible. The use of Arabic in the story was also well done - just enough to give the story an exotic flavour while not enough to confuse a non-Arabic speaking reader.

The illustrations are beautiful, both realistic and stylized with just enough shadow to give it a gritty feel. There were a few chronological errors (in one part, for example, a character is wearing glasses, and then taking his glasses out of his pocket and putting them on), but these are few and truly unimportant in the face of the work as a whole.

The characters themselves were fairly two-dimensional (the wide-eyed blonde American who wants to change the world, the censored journalist, the Israeli special ops soldier, the American teen who wants to do a suicide bombing in the hopes that it would teach all the kids who teased him in High School a lesson, etc.), but I do understand that it's probably unavoidable in this sort of medium where the space available in which to tell the story is so limited. Even so, strong writing made these stock characters pop and made me hold my breath hoping that they would all come out all right.

In conclusion, I think this is a great book, perfect for anyone interested in world mythology or the middle east.

Vampire Chronicles #1: Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

Read: 26 June, 2008

Overall, I did enjoy the book. I just found it disappointing in several ways. My first complaint is that the timeline was rather fuzzy. We are told at the beginning that the story starts in the 1790s. He then says that two hundred years pass before going to Paris, which really doesn't make all that much sense. I know that part of the whole point is that Louis survives by being so self-absorbed that he doesn't really notice the time flying by, but it would have been nice to have some indication of how much time has been passing. I would have liked a better sense of the change in eras rather than the "and everything was the same because my life sucks, boohoo" that we ended up getting.

The book was definitely a page-turner, but I felt vaguely disappointed whenever I did turn the page - especially in the first fifty or so pages. I think it's mostly because I enjoyed the movie so much and people have been telling me for years about how wonderful the book is. So I came to it with such high expectations that it couldn't possibly have lived up to them.

Louis's whining got on my nerves a bit. Most of the time, it was overshadowed by my interest in the plot so I didn't notice it. But there were passages that just went on and on about how terrible it is to be a vampire and how damned he is and how he doesn't know if God exists and so forth and it made me just want to smack him and tell him to get over it. I think that Lestat says it best at the end of the movie where he tells the interiewer that Louis always did whine a lot.

Speaking of the interviewer, I was very disappointed by that part of the book. Having an interviewer was a great opportunity for a dialogue between the reader (using the boy as a surrogate) and Louis - an opportunity that Rice misses. Instead, the boy is just an annoying disruption in the first portion of the story, completely non-existent for the second portion, and only came back at the very end for the punchline. It's as if the entire set up of an interview was just so that the boy could deliver the "final lesson" to the reader or something. Don't get me wrong, the punchline was good and I'm glad it was there, but it shouldn't have been the only reason for the boy's presence. There was wasted opportunity there and I can't help but feel let down.

Other than that, though, I did enjoy it. I liked the abusive boyfriend kind of angle to it. Claudia was a great character. All in all, I'd say that it's a great page-turner for a lazy afternoon, but not much more than that.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Read: 17 June, 2008

The edition I have has The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, and So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish all bundled up into one book, so I just read that straight through and I'll be reviewing all four together.

Firstly, I loved Hitchhiker's. It was by far the best of the four. It was the most solid in the sense that I could just relax and go with the story without ever having to put the book down and think "okay, now how does that make sense?" I know it seems strange when reading Douglas Adams, but Hitchhiker's had good internal logic or verisimilitude, something the other three novels didn't quite achieve to the same degree. I also found this first novel to be the most densely packed with humour.

I found The Restaurant at the End of the Universe to be a little dull, honestly. There were good moments, but the whole bit that followed Zaphod as the main character just didn't work for me. I love Zaphod, he's a great character, but most of his appeal comes from how he appears to others. Taken alone, he lost much of his individuality because we saw him having to do non-Zaphody things out of necessity. This was made all the worse because I had an image of who Zaphod was that the real Zaphod, with the story seen from his perspective, couldn't live up to. I found him dull and tiresome.

Life, the Universe and Everything and So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish were better, but didn't have that "embarass myself by laughing out loud in public" quality that Hitchhiker's had. Taken separately from the first novel, I liked them quite a bit (loved the ending, by the way). I just didn't feel that they measured up to the first novel.

I think that most of what put me off the three novels after Hitchhiker's is that they spent a lot of their time trying to explain or expand upon the jokes made in the first novel. These were jokes that had worked beautifully on their own. It felt like, when at a party, you tell a joke and some guy comes along while everyone else is laughing and tries to explain the punchline. He might do it in a funny way, but it's still a little annoying. Don't get me wrong, I did like all four novels. My complaints are more about saying how wonderful Hitchhiker's was, rather than saying that the other three weren't.

Arthur Dent was by far my favourite character. He was just fabulous. I found Trillian well handled - she's not a major part of the story and she isn't described in any great detail, but what is said aboput her hints at a character with a lot of depth. Zaphod was great, but, as I said earlier, works best when seen through others as an extravagant character rather than as an actual human with his own mundane life. I felt that Ford Prefect was rather unmemorable. All the details the narrator tells us about him were interesting and funny, I just didn't find that he jumped off the pages when he spoke or acted in the same way that the other characters did. And why does everyone call him Ford when that's just the name he used while on earth? That bugged be a bit! Marvin was good. He was funny and, thankfully, wasn't around enough to get annoying.

All in all, a good read that I would highly recommend.

Quality Paperback Book Club

WARNING: Really long post ahead! It's essentially about why DoubleDay sucks and you should never EVER shop with them. Must-read if you love books and have ever considered ordering from a company that claims to offer cheaper books in exchange for a membership!

I'm a sucker for good deals on books. Dangle a marked down book in front of my face and you can get me to sign almost anything. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the Quality Paperback Book Club (QPB) counted on.

They have this deal going that if you agree to purchase at least 4 books at full price over the next two years, you get five books for $5. Sounds awesome, right? Well, that's what I thought. So I ordered those five books and I paid $5 (plus shipping and handling). They got here, everything was awesome, so I looked at some of the other book clubs owned by the same company. There's a Crafter's Choice Book Club that I signed up for. I ordered my five books from them as well (it counts as a separate account, in case you were wondering, so the sign up deal still applies).

Instead of the five books I ordered, however, Crafter's Choice sent me only two books and charged me full price for both. I wrote back to them explaining the situation and, while I waited, QPB sent me four books that I never ordered (apparently, I am supposed to call every month and tell them that I don't want to buy the "books of the month" - an awful feature that, to my understanding, has been cancelled). Since their boxes aren't marked and, since I was expecting some other packages, I opened the box. At the time, I didn't know how to return them (since I didn't want to pay for postage) with the box already opened. So I wrote them a letter explaining that situation as well and asking them what I should do.

Now, it all gets a little complicated from this point on, so I will deal with the Crafter's Choice issue first and then with QPB. They sent me a letter back saying that I could order my first five books using a card that they sent me. In the same letter, they sent me another copy of my bill that still charged me full price for the two books I had already ordered. It had taken them several months to reply, by the way. I wrote back that same day explaining that the issue is that I am being asked to pay full price for two books that I never agreed to pay full price on - they were overcharging me by about $30.

Again, it took them several months to respond. This time, they said that I could order just three books for $3 instead. In the same envelope was another copy of the bill that still charged me full price for the two books I received and had added a late fee onto it! That's right, I got charged with a $5 late fee because they failed to answer me in a timely manner. By this time, I had found out that if I just package something and mail it, I don't have to pay postage. They will just have to pay it on their end. So I found an old Chapters box, put the two books in with a letter explaining that, since they aren't willing to fix my issue, I am returning all books I've ordered and asking that they close the account. I also explained that I have a late fee only because the issue involved my billing (I was being overcharged) and it had taken them so long to address the issue (which they, in fact, never really did) that I was charged a late fee.

The next letter I got wasn't from them, but rather from their lawyers. It explained that if I didn't pay the $5 late fee, they would ruin my credit and pursue "serious legal action." I wrote them another letter explaining why I hadn't paid and never received a response. Instead, I just got a series of letters from the lawyer threatening me. Finally, I decided that $5 wasn't worth all the stress it was causing me, so I just paid (along with a very nasty letter, I readily admit).

Back to QPB - So I had written them a letter asking them how I should return the books since the box had already been opened. It took about three months for me to receive a response and it was one of those copy/paste jobs that essentially told me that I can return any books I am not satisfied and they hope this addresses my issue. Thanks. I decided that their snail-mail customer service department was obviously on vacation, so I found their e-mail address (which, by the way, is NOT easy to find) and wrote them an e-mail explaining the whole situation. I sent it on September 7, 2007 (yes, actual dates! All my e-mails are saved on Gmail, so I can actually look up precise dates for this part).

On Septemer 11, 2007, I received a response from a woman telling me, again, that I could return any books I wasn't satisfied with. This time, however, she also explained to me that those books had been sent to me as part of a "special membership feature" and told me that she had cancelled any future mailings of that sort for me. So I wrote back that same day and explained (again) the issue.

She did not respond to that e-mail until January 28, 2008. That's right, about four and a half months later. All she said was that she has no record of me every trying to contact by mail, and didn't even bother to answer the part about the issue I was having. So I sent back another e-mail (again, on the same day - hey, maybe I should go into customer service!) and asked (again) how to solve my issue. She never answered. So I sent another e-mail on February 27 explaining my issue again and asking why my e-mail had gone unanswered. Again, she never answered. That ought to put a little perspective on the quality of the company's customer service. Finally, I called and got through to a woman who told me that I could just repackage the books and mail them and I wouldn't have to pay shipping. PERFECT!

Unfortunately, all this had taken so long that I now owed them a $5 late fee as well (that would be for not paying for books that I hadn't ordered in the first place, I might add). I sent the books back the same day that she told me how and included a letter explaining that the only reason I hadn't paid for the books in a timely manner is that I was trying to deal with their customer service representative and that's just how long it took.

A few weeks later, I received a letter from QPB's lawyer (the same company that did the attack-dog work for Crafter's Choice) telling me that I had to pay the late fee immediately or serious legal action would be taken. Great. Bear in mind that I received NO RESPONSE regarding the letter I had sent explaining the situation. So I finally decided to call them. It took me a while to find the phone number (the company certainly doesn't advertise how to get in touch with them). I explained the whole situation to the phone representative and she seemed very sympathetic. She told me that she was very sorry that my experience had been so poor and that she would take care of my account immediately. She assured me that it would all be settled and that I wouldn't have to pay the late fee.

A few weeks later, I got another letter from their lawyer asking why I didn't pay and threatening legal action. So I called again. Granted, I was rather angry by this point, but I tried very hard to maintain my composure. I calmly explained that I had mailed them and received no response and that I had called and a phone representative had told me that my account was cleared. This representative told me that she had no records of any previous phone calls, letters, or e-mails from me (this was, by the way, something the e-mail lady had told me as well - that there was no records of any letters from me despite my frequent attempts to contact the company). When I asked her if the previous representative had lied to me when she told me that the late fee had been taken off, the representative hung up on me.

So I called again. I explained everything once more (omitting my question about lying) and, again, was told that there were no records of my every contacting the company. They didn't even have a record of the call I had made not five minutes previously! This representative was nice enough, apologized "if you have had poor experiences previously" (even if it was in one of those tones that just screamed "yeah, whatever, if you say so... liar"). She agreed with me that it was unfair that I should be charged a late fee and told me that she had cleared my account of that obligation.

Then I got another letter from the lawyer. Yes, that's right. I was lied to TWICE, right into my ear. I attempted to e-mail the same address I had used previously several more times, but they either went unanswered or I only got copy/paste responses back.

It was at about this point that a friend recommended that I report QPB to the Better Business Bureau (BBB). I did this. My compensation request was simply that my account be closed (without the obligation of fulfilling my contract) and that my late fee be waved. Time went on and I received several more threatening letters from QPB's lawyers. Finally, I gave in. I have perfect credit and it just wasn't worth jeopardizing that on the off chance that the BBB would actually be able to resolve anything. So I sent them a $5 cheque, informed them that I had contacted the BBB, and requested that my account be terminated immediately.

A few weeks later, I received a bill indicating that I needed to pay $43 to be able to cancel my account (since I hadn't ordered four books at full price). Well, I'll be damned if I'm to simply part with $43 without getting anything for it, so I went on the website and ordered the four cheapest books that I would like to own.

A few days after that, I finally received an e-mail from the customer service representative dealing with the BBB report. The letter goes on about how "contrary to the BBB report," QPB had received a membership request in my name (something that I never mentioned in the BBB statement I wrote since I know perfectly well that I'm the one who signed up) and that they still haven't received the introductory package that I had been advised to return. There's two major things wrong with that statement: 1) The introductory package was fine. My complaint had to do with the membership "books of the month" package. 2) The customer service representatives I had spoken to on the phone had claimed that they had no record of any attempts on my part to contact QPB, while this guy is just admitting that my e-mails are on file.

So anyways, he goes on about how QPB has made several attempts to assist me in resolving my problems but that I haven't followed instructions. He then finishes up his implications with the statement that "In fact, our records further show a 2nd account in your name that was also closed under similar circumstances" (referring to the Crafter's Choice account, obviously). So maybe I am too emotionally invested in this to think objectively, but that sounds a whole lot like he just accused me of trying to scam the company. Now, I realize that he probably has to put up a lot of this bravado to paint me as the bad guy since BBB is involved, but this is just incredible!

But let's look at the actual statement, shall we? What qualifies as "similar circumstances"? In the one case, I returned the initial package and asked that my account be completely closed as though I had never signed up in the first place. In the second case, I received the initial package, paid for it, and then ordered the books needed to complete the contract (which he mentioned in his e-mail). How are those similar? The only similarity I can find is that, in both cases, I was forced to pay a late fee because something had gone wrong and I couldn't get hold of them for so long. In both cases, I cancelled my accounts due to gross incompetence on the part of their customer service department. Is that the "similar circumstances" he's referring to? Should I interpret all of this as a coded admission of guilt? Or is it more likely that the "similar circumstances" refers to his stance that I tried to scam the company and was thwarted?

And finally, the end of his letter said that my account will be closed as soon as I pay the remaining balance of $49.56 (the final price of the four books I ordered. Well, I did get the books, but the bill charged me $54.55 instead. I would assume that this was because he credited the wrongfully-charged late fee to my account (after the books were sent? which wouldn't make sense because they were sent several days after I received his e-mail), but he certainly made no mention of it. It's like he knew he was wrong, but he couldn't admit any part of it - even just to tell me that I've received a refund! Either way, I paid the amount on the bill lest I get another letter in three month's time telling me that I didn't pay the full amount and will be charged another $5 late fee!

Just to close up this (lengthy) complaint, I would like to say that I have no idea whether DoubleDay (QPB and Crafter's Choice's parent company) is a deliberate scam or if they are just completely incompetent. The fact that they have made mistakes with almost every order I placed with them and that NONE of them have been resolved to my satisfaction in a timely manner despite repeated attempts on my part to contact that (not to mention a costly phone bill as they are located in Toronto) tells me that it could be either. Then again, I've looked them up on wikipedia and they seem to be an old and established company, so it could just be that they have a really terrible customer service department.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. Whether a scam or just a hopelessly incompetent company, the end result is a lot of headache and a lot of money for the consumer (it does add up - $10 in late fees, another $10 in phone calls, at least $20 in postage, not to mention the extra $5 added to my final bill). If you ever see an advertisement for any of the DoubleDay book clubs, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you just forget about it and go to amazon, chapters, or whatever book provider you prefer instead. The deals may seem good, but they just aren't worth it in the long run.

EDIT: Right after writing this, I checked out the status of my BBB report. Apparently, they sent the first notice to DoubleDay on 15 May and received no response, so they had to send a second notice on 2 June before a reply was made. At least it's not just me they don't respond to!

EDIT 2: Well, I certainly wish that I'd checked this or this out before signing anything!

EDIT 3: So I got another letter from this guy. He's now claiming that he has communicated with me in a "timely manner" and gives me dates that directly contradict not only my own e-mail records, but also the Better Business Bureau's records. However, he did finally apologize. Here's the apology: "Nevertheless, though our versions of events differ substantially, we apologize for the problems you have had with your memberships."

Translation: "We don't believe a word you've said, but if we have to apologize - fine." Well, I e-mailed him copies of all the e-mails I received back in 2007 and early 2006 (which directly contradict his "version of events," I might add) and pointed out to him how insincere his apology was. I then informed him that it was an apology, such as it was, and that since this had been my terms when I contacted the BBB, I would close my complaint with them. I then informed him that I made this post and that I also posted on ripoffreport.com, and closed with the hope that my treatment has been a fluke and that they haven't put anyone else through this. So there you have it. I'm hopefully done with these cretins.