The Journey of a Thousand Pages

Well, OK, it's the techno-thriller Polar Shift by Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos, so it's really nowhere near a thousand pages. Nor would it be worth reading if it was and, yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. King.

But I picked this up used, in order to have something to read while I ride the exercise bike, and at least one former owner, like many folks, used whatever paper was at hand to mark his or her place. And like many other times, that paper was forgotten whenever the book passed along to the used book store or book drive or wherever. I think, in fact, that I've got reminders of two previous owners. One is a business card for a woman who worked for a biotechnology company in Maryland. The other is a couple of room charge receipts for a person with a completely different last name than the person on the business card. The receipts are for meals during a stay at a hotel in Maui, Hawaii in March of 2007. They're more interesting, although I think the biotech lady's business card is trying to hide the fact that it's slowly moving across my desk towards the white-out. It may be planning to disguise itself and make a break for it.

From the receipts we learn that, if you stay at this particular hotel in Maui, you can expect to pay nearly eleven dollars for a turkey sandwich. However, the sales tax is only 4.2 percent, which makes us folks in the OKC metro area prick up our 8 percent or so sales-taxed ears and take notice. But we also learn that a breakfast buffet at this hotel -- excuse me, "resort and spa," ran $25.95 apiece. A "bakery basket," which I'm hoping is not resort-speak for a couple slices of toast although I'm not going to put it past them, rings up another six bucks. And a bowl of cereal with fruit tacks on another eight bucks. For that amount, Snap, Crackle and Pop probably need to throw in a show as well.

Judging by the respective tip amounts, the breakfast waiter did a better job than the lunch waiter. And had neater handwriting.

The book? Not bad. It centers on some quirks of how the world's magnetic field works and how every now and again, the north and south magnetic poles can swap places. When that happens, compass needles point the other way, and a whole lot of potentially much worse things might accompany the change. Kurt Austin, a troubleshooter for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, has to stop a couple of baddies who want to make the poles swap places and wreck things so they can take over the world. And he has to work with a scientist related to the scientist who originally came up with the theorems that make this happen. She's a pretty girl, if you can imagine that. Cussler and Kemprecos probably had fun spinning this yarn, and I had fun reading it. I hope the previous owners did too, and they may rest assured that there is no personal information on the receipts and in any event, I'm feeding them into our office shredder before tossing them in the trash.