I’m going to celebrate my nascent tradition of marking my birthday by indulging in a few happily negative thoughts, in this case some arbitrary rulemaking inspired by several days of listening to sales presentations and facing up to the astonishingly bleak desert that is the American imagination, as it is embodied in commercial publishing:

1. I hereby insist that there be an absolute and final moratorium on book or movie titles of the following formula: [Gerund]+[Name]. Educating Rita;Killing Pablo; Finding Forrester; Kissing Jessica Stein; Drowning Ruth…no more, I say, no more.

2. While we’re at it, let’s try to remember that [constant portentous phrase]+[variable portentous word] as your suspense-series formula is bound to lead you into trouble. Suspicion of Malice leads to Suspicion of Vengeance begets Suspicion of Madness which draws one on to Suspicion of Monotony and Suspicion of Suspiciosness. This property is commutative – J.D. Robb’s "in Death" series being an example -- Reunion in Death works fine, but Ceremony in Death and Conspiracy in Death are the kind of nonsense that actually causes the brain to unlearn English.

3. The formula [anything] by [Harold Bloom] is also to be eschewed, on pain of my very great pain.