(no subject)

I just finished reading the best-seller Red Star Rogue, a splashy, pseudo-history about the loss of a Russian submarine not far from Hawaii. It's interesting that the best reviews that the publisher could find to quote in the blurbs were from Flint, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio, not exactly the most influential newspapers in the world. The book is an inflammatory mix of a few solid facts, some not-totally absurd reasoning, some fibbing about the inconvenient facts and outright literary fabrications. Looking through the notes, the main author, actually more the researcher, used a lot of Internet info. That instantly says to me *not all that reliable.* The person who actually did the writing (you'd call him a ghost writer, except he's named on the cover) followed the story of the researcher and skillfully arranged the book so that the inconsistencies in facts and logic don't seem so obvious. But they are there.
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