Amazon #36: Playing the Love Market: Dating, Romance and the Real World Playing the Love Market: Dating, Romance and the Real World by Samuel Cameron

5 stars - link

I would like to describe this book as invaluable, but only time (and reviews) could really tell if it is or not. I used the predictive tool outlined in chapter 17 ("What will become of your lonely soul: Avoiding a decrepit future for you and your purchased children"), which aims to point out what your future love life will be if you continue life along the same path that you're currently doing. The generated results were mildly curious:

27% probability: You will never find anyone who loves you, as you are a deeply unlikeable person.
19% probability: You will find a partner in the next 5 years - you will stay together for 10 years and then break up, as you are a deeply unlikeable person.
16% probability: There is a good chance that you will find a partner for life, but you will have to move to an area that could be more tolerable of your deeply unlikeable nature, such as Tredegar, Dudley or Minsk.
13% probability: You have already made a love connection, and the fact that you need statistics to find out the possibility of finding a better partner means you are a deeply unlikeable person.
12% probability: You are genuinely despicable and I would appreciate you returning this book for a refund.
11% probability: You are too much in love with yourself to care about loving anyone else, and you are a deeply unlikeable person.
2% probability: You are a nice person if you dig very deep down indeed, but your cause is generally not helped by speaking.

I have to award this book 5 stars for the remarkable prescience. It gives me no pleasure to do so, but it must be done.

Amazon #35: Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America by Chuck Norris

4 stars - link

Charles Xavier Norris sets out his dystopian vision of a nightmare future in the U of S of A, in this frankly flimsy excuse for a pamphlet. His tendency to refer to himself in the third person is offputting and needless, and his seemingly endless wittering about how he developed his political views through the storylines of 'Walker, Texas Ranger' is beyond interminable. Even worse, the aforementioned political views actually seem to be copied from the wikipedia entry of 'USA in the 50s', but with a higher ratio of misspelt words.

I've never seen desperate flailing come across in written form before, and combined with his limited vocabulary, confused rhetoric and inability to grasp even the basics of primary school physics renders reading this book akin to watching Fearne Cotton attempt a gold run.

4 stars.