PAGING RICH SIEGEL. A BOOK REVIEW.

CAmazon Books is up and running and authors are starting to send me advertising books to read and review.

Rich Siegel, a talented cohort from my Los Angeles ad days, is one of them.

Rich was nice enough to send me a copy of his second book, Round Seventeen & 1/2, the only one loosely about advertising making it a prime target for my reading list.

It's also the only one of Rich's books that shows how the sausage is made, both literally and figuratively, thanks in part to its excellent cover by art director Robert Prins, and its excellent text from no less than Mr. Siegel himself.

WHO IS RICH SIEGEL, YOU ASK? THINK YELLOW AND HILARIOUS.

For those of you who may not recognize the name, Rich Siegel had a big hand in the "ABC TV" poster and outdoor campaign out of TBWA Chiat/Day several years back with John Shirley serving as the AD. If you're familiar with the work, you already know how awesome Rich's work is.

If you don't, you should make yourself familiar with it as it's right up there with The Economist and the CitiBank among great all-type outdoor campaigns.

Killer stuff.

Rich's Round Seventeen & 1/2 is no less compelling, and should not be confused with his excellent advertising blog, Round Seventeen.

Seventeen & 1/2 contains a series of short stories and the names have been changed to protect the ineffective, to use Rich's words. I found the book laugh-out-loud funny and we all owe Rich's next-door neighbor and his annoying dog a debt of gratitude for inspiring this book.

His neighbor isn't the only Angeleno who gets slow-roasted Siegel-style.

Other stories feature an infamous A-list director (three guesses what the A stands for), a copywriter having to visit Southland spank banks to keep up his end of a fertility deal, and a talented creative team who plots to poison an unruly client who subsequently dies of a massive coronary.

This book will not only have you laughing but will also prepare you for the type of malcontents you'll inevitably rub egos with if you go into advertising for a living.

Rich's other two books, Tuesdays with Mantu, a correspondence with a Nigerian scam artist, and Mr. Siegel Writes To Washington, a series of letters and responses to and from elected officials, his first and third books respectively, are both are available wherever finer fiction is sold.

Round Seventeen & 1/2, his only book that delves into the slippery side of advertising, can be purchased from the CAmazon book store on Kindle, or pretty much anywhere that funny authors who pride themselves on making beer blow out your nose work are found.

You can't make up stuff this Siegel.

Cameron Day is an Austin, TX-based freelance writer/CD and the seasoned half of Two-headed Cam which you can read about on his website, where you'll also find an Amazon book store featuring a selection of the best advertising reads on the planet. He stealthily plans to add his own book, an Advertising Survival Guide, to the mix one of these days. Oops. So much for being stealthy.