If you haven’t heard of Rick Mercer, I have only three guesses:

• You’ve been living under a rock.
• You have no sense of humour.
• You’re not Canadian.

The first two I can’t help you with, but if you’re not Canadian then you should know that Rick Mercer is a comedian, a satirist, and all around delightfully twisted soul (which isn’t really all that uncommon up here in Canada, but Rick Mercer happens to make a living at it). If you’re American, think of Rick Mercer as our Jon Stewart — only more twisted and with better access to our politicians, er, I mean targets.

This book is a follow up to Streeters which was also a collection of Rick Mercer’s trademark rants. This time the book includes not only rants featured on The Mercer Report (previously known as The Monday Report until CBC moved it) but also rants that have appeared on Mercer’s blog.

The rants are typical Mercer (that’s good). The only complaint I had about the book had to do with the way rants are grouped by topic and sometimes the chronology of the rants is mixed up in order to make a better read. That gets a bit annoying when you are constantly going back and forth through time within a single topic.

If you watch the show regularly and read his blog, you’ve likely seen all the content before, but it is nice to have it in book form. I don’t read the blog so there were rants that I hadn’t seen before as well as ones that I remember from the show. It is a good book to pick up, read a few pages, and put down without losing any of the impact of the rants (or read it all the way through if you’re so inclined).

Most of the rants are political satire, so a knowledge of Canadian politics and current events is needed. Think of trying to watch Jon Stewart with no knowledge of American culture or politics and you’ll realize why.

First Daughter by Eric van Lustbader is a political thriller that may hit too close to home for some. Jack McClure is one of the Bureau’s top ATF agents, despite finding reading a continual nemesis due to his dyslexia. When the president-elect’s daughter, Alli, is kidnapped mere weeks before the swearing in ceremony, McClure is hand-picked to get her back. What follows is a journey that takes McClure into his past and the country’s future as he tries to save Alli from her kidnapper and the country from itself.

I enjoyed First Daughter (in fact, I read the whole book in 24 hours). It is intricate enough to keep you guessing with enough action and intrigue to keep you from thinking too much. The effects of dyslexia, positive and negative, on Jack McClure’s life and daily functioning are not only interesting but integral to the plot. Also interesting is the interplay between religion and atheism, though this is where, unfortunately, some of First Daughter‘s potential audience may be lost.

The struggle of separating church from state, which has increasingly been lost in the United States in the last decade (maybe it has been longer, but I live outside the United States and am going by what enters my consciousness through the international news), is central to First Daughter. There is a battle between secular and religious views fought throughout the book both in the main plot and in the private lives of all the characters.

The characterization of religion and the religious is unflattering (and, arguably, so is that of the secularists), which may offend or at the very least put off some readers. The positions on both sides are extreme. I was not offended, but I was starting to tire of it by the end of the book. For another perspective, see Christine’s review at She Reads Books. First Daughter is worth reading, whichever side of the argument you inhabit, as a glimpse of a possible future, but don’t expect nuanced philosophical positions (it is, after all, a thriller first).

After reading First Daughter I realize that I may have been too hasty in avoiding van Lustbader’s books, which I had been doing primarily because he took over writing Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series. I’m a fan of the original Robert Ludlum trilogy so I wasn’t thrilled to see the character passed on to another writer. I’m not ready to pick up a Bourne book, but I am going to look for van Lustbader’s other books on the strength of First Daughter.