Readings

For those who dream of exacting revenge against those evil e-mail spammers but can't find the time, you can live vicariously through Jonathan Land in his book The Spam Letters (No Starch Press). Apparently a man with a lot of time on his hands, Land has been writing back to spammers for years, disguising himself in all sorts of roles and trying to goad them, trick them or otherwise make them look stupid, and the book is a compilation of that correspondence. Land's missives display wit and style, and there are a few belly-laugh moments. But the book lags because, more often than not, the spammers don't engage in an ongoing dialogue. Maybe they're not so dumb after all.

-- J.K.