A book in the hand is worth two via interlibrary loan

I picked up two books on Friday, and I've already read one of them, but it wasn't an academic book, so I'm counting the time I spent reading it (only a few hours, which tells you how easy the material was) as entertainment/background reading rather than as serious work.  (An aside:  Zemanta is feeding me a bunch of pictures of Reading, England!  Not too relevant, guys.)  The book is The Action Hero's Handbook, by David and Joe Borgenicht, the team responsible for those Worst Case Scenario books.  The book's subtitle is How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills.  Surprisingly, after only a few pages I realized that it was doing something that Dr. Toffee is always going on about:  it sets up a model that I can use in discussing Sherlock Holmes as an action hero.  I know I need to get that stuff from academic sources, but I think I may quote a few lines from this book, just because it's funny.   As far as the RD/GR Holmes goes, the character is definitely an action hero under the terms the Borgenichts lay out in the book.  He has many of the basic "Good Guy Skills" they mention, and if the film were to be set in our era, he'd probably have a good idea how to safely land the space shuttle, too.

Maybe the most interesting thing about this book is that it was written based on information garnered from experts in each area, including all of the skills listed in the subtitle (the info on the Vulcan Neck Pinch comes from a martial artist, for example), and the Borgenichts give a brief bio and credentials statement for each expert.
I'll get to the other book next time.  It's a much tougher read. 

Here's a funny article about movies:

Related articles by Zemanta

• So movies shouldn't break the laws of physics? Don't tell Captain Kirk (guardian.co.uk)