The Bookworm Critique
"LIFE'S STILL THE PITS" Forward by Maureen Rees; Published by Chameleon	by Mark Glendenning, Australia

Q. What is the similarity between Mika Hakkinen and a sperm? A. They both stand a one in four million chance of becoming a human. OK. Now, if that made you laugh so hard that the orange juice that you're drinking started to come out of your nose, then simply click on the little icon in the top left corner, and order a copy of this book. No need to read any further - you'll love it. Trust me. If you're staring blankly at the screen, read on. 'Life's Still the Pits' is by far the most difficult book to review that I have ever encountered. The basic nature of the book is such that it is a really poor candidate for any sort of meaningful analysis. The genre itself has been around forever - lots of photos, preferably featuring either an F1 star pulling a funny face, or a shunt. Add a wisecrack caption to each image, intersperse the whole thing with little snippets of trivia or a quote, and that's all there is to it. The content of most motor racing books - even bad ones - have at least some material of substance nestled in between the information on the surface and the bedrock. In other words, you really can learn something by reading between the lines. With this one, though, what you see is very much what you get. No matter how deeply you dig into it, you will never find anything that you didn't already pick up when your eyes first skimmed across the page. In fairness though, that is not really the point of a book like this. So what is the point? Simply, it's entertainment. The basic premise, according to the Foreword (written by a BBC personality named Maureen Rees, whom I'm not familiar with. I guess that British readers will know who she is, though), is that; 'hey, these guys may be the best paid, most talented drivers in the world, but they still do dumb stuff!' All the reader is expected to do is look at the picture, chuckle at the caption, say 'oooh gosh' as they read the large print, brightly coloured text that tells them all about motor racing's most bizarre fatalities, and then quickly move on to the next page. And whatever you do, don't stop and think about it too much - if you do that, you might notice that photos of some incidents, such as Alexander Wurz's multiple barrel-roll through the gravel in Montreal, 1998, appear twice ("Hey! I came up with TWO hysterically funny captions for this! Let's put them both in!"). Or that some of the tidbits of information (such as the description of Pierre Levegh's crash at Le Mans in 1955) also appear twice, but with an emphasis on different aspects of the story. Or that Ralf Schumacher's name is spelt 'Ralph' all the way through the book. 'Life's Still the Pits', then, has three main components: the photos, the captions, and the trivia. Probably the fairest way to evaluate the book is to examine each of these parts on their own merits. The photos take up most of the space, and are intended to make an immediate impact on the reader. They also need to lend themselves easily to some sort of punchline. This means that almost all of them are either funny (such as David Coulthard pulling a face), or dramatic (such as a crash). The shots themselves are not particularly bad, and those that are were chosen deliberately. Most of the jokes are based on very old cliches and stereotypes. Hakkinen has no personality. Schumacher is arrogant. And, because he is German, he says 'ze' instead of 'the'. Crazy Jacques Villeneuve and his rainbow-coloured hair-dye supply. I'm sure that lots of people probably love the particular brand of humour that lives between the covers of 'Life's Still the Pits'; personally, I found it all to be kind of cheesy and predictable. And finally, the trivia. For me, this was probably the best part of the book. OK, so 80 percent of the time I either knew the 'facts' which the authors were sharing with me, or I was familiar with the quotes. But that means that around a fifth of the stuff in the book was new to me (did you know that rally driver Colin McRae's repair bill topped one million pounds in 1996? I didn't). While that kind of ratio does not exactly represent great value for money, at least I managed to get something out of the book. Most of the trivia is just that - trivial - so it's unlikely that any of the new information that I came across will ever come in useful; but it's always nice to find something different. I was a little disappointed with the lack of care with which it seemed to be written, though. One section, for example, was so poorly phrased that it appeared to imply that ex-Ferrari World Champion Niki Lauda was no longer amongst the living: "As a child Niki Lauda had a fear of horses, and he was allergic to cats throughout his life" (p.86). The whole book had a feeling of having been slapped together in an afternoon. For all I know, it might have been. So, now to the million dollar question: is 'Life's Still the Pits' worth buying? Probably to a greater extent than for any other book that has been reviewed in this column, this is really a matter of personal taste. I didn't find it particularly funny, but all that indicates is that my sense of humour is different to that of the author (or authors - no names are given, other than that of Ms. Rees). You, on the other hand, might think it's hilarious. Similarly, while some of the trivia is interesting, a lot of it seemed fairly useless. Also worth pointing out is the fact that this book is a very quick read - most people should be able to polish it off in half an hour. You might be able to stretch it out a little if you keep the book on hand while you're watching a race on TV and just flick through it during the ad breaks. Otherwise, chances are that you'll read the whole thing in one sitting - something worth keeping in mind when you're deciding whether or not this title represents good value for money.

Mark Glendenning	© 1999 Atlas Formula One Journal.
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