When direct marketing goes awry

Over the years I've been, at various times, a member of the Book of the Month Club, the Quality Paperback Book Club, the History Book Club, and currently I'm in the Science Fiction Book Club. A consequence of joining all these clubs -- or even one such club, really -- is that one soon begins receiving all kinds of mailings from Camp Hill, PA, where all such clubs are headquartered. (I'm assuming they're all part of one umbrella outfit.) I get lots of offers to join various other clubs, very few of which pique my interest. Today brought an amusing one to my attention: the American Compass club, which is where you go for cheap book-club editions of your favorite conservative books. Great! Now I can get the new Ann Coulter volume, SPIT SPIT LIBERAL SPIT HISS BOOGA BOOGA!!, simply by not returning the handy reply card! Yippee!

Browsing through their search engine a bit, I see that, as with all of these clubs, there's quite a bit of overlap on titles. Some of these books are doubtless offered by more than one club (which makes sense). I did a search under "evolution", and found a book by Daniel Dennett listed alongside some Creationist tract. (Also, the search engine seems pretty dumb, trapping as it did books that have nothing to do with "evolution" but which mention revolution.)

Anyway, I'll stick with the SFBC. I like my books about made-up fantasy lands to be written by people who know they're writing books about made-up fantasy lands.