The IBIC Guide to Books About TV

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Remarks from the IBIC Editor's Journal

January 17, 1995

ALL MY CHILDREN: THE COMPLETE FAMILY SCRAPBOOK by Gary Warner (General Publishing) is a handsome and serviceable reference book. Everything you'd ever want to look up is in here--full storylines for 25 years; family histories; key weddings; favorite moments; a complete cast list; and a trivia quiz. But there's something missing--reading the book, you don't get the same sense of deep, thrillingly zany empathy that you do when you throw yourself into watching the show. The treatment here suffers from the same flaw as the recent ABC tribute show: it's too careful and corporate. It comes as a distinct letdown to someone who's used to the hilarious, highly pointed, and microscopically in-depth updates, improbability alerts, trivia quizzes and value judgments regularly posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc.

Sure, you want to take the middle ground so you can satisfy the widest range of customers, and I commend Gary Warner's competent execution of the concept of this book. But I suspect that authors and publishers are ultimately going to learn that in a Webbed world where hundreds of colorful points of view are available at the stroke of a key, it's not enough anymore to play it safe.


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Editor's Recommendations, Summer 1996

In this inaugural edition of IBIC's Featured Books, I'd like to draw your attention to several titles which have helped to shape my life and thinking.

  • When I was around fifteen, I came across Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's science fiction novel, INFERNO. This '70s remake of Dante's classic describes science fiction writer Allen Carpentier's descent into Hell. It's still a very fresh, accessible take on the classic. What a great movie it would make!
  • The Niven/Pournelle INFERNO immediately inspired me to read the original Divine Comedy. I've read a number of translations over the years, but my favorite is the one by Dorothy Sayers (INFERNO; PURGATORY; PARADISE). The notes are excellent, and Sayers had such a knowledgeable and witty mind that reading her prose is a pleasure in itself. (For those interested in a more contemporary translation, I should mention that Robert Pinsky received excellent notices for his 1995 THE INFERNO OF DANTE : A NEW VERSE TRANSLATION; it's a very handsome book.)
  • I also want to tell you about the late Henry Fairlie's THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS TODAY, which probably did more than any other single book to galvanize me into a lifetime interest in Christianity that led me, eventually, to faith. Ironic, because Fairlie was a self-proclaimed agnostic socialist! But reading between the lines of this insightful and deeply feeling book, one realizes that the love of God cannot have been far from Fairlie's heart.
  • Finally, I should draw to your attention a more recent acquisition, the very handsome NIV STUDY BIBLE (10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) from Zondervan, indexed and bonded in leather in IBIC's theme color, burgundy (black and brown are also available). The notes to this Bible are amazing. They appear to provide you with a very substantial portion of what you need to know to have an intelligent layman's appreciation of the linguistic and historical issues involved in understanding Scripture.

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