Meet Anonymous Lawyer – corner office, granite desk, and a billable rate of $675 an hour. The summer is about to start, and he’s got a new crop of law school interns who will soon sign away their lives for a six-figure salary at the firm. But he’s also got a few problems that require his attention.

There’s The Jerk, his bitter rival at the firm, who is determined to do whatever it takes to beat him out for the chairman’s job. There’s Anonymous Wife, who is spending his money as fast as he can make it. And there’s that secret blog he’s writing, which is a perverse bit of fun until he gets an e-mail from someone inside the firm who knows he’s its author.

Written in the form of a blog, Anonymous Lawyer is a spectacularly entertaining debut that rips away the bland façade of corporate law and offers a telling glimpse inside a frightening world.

Hilarious and fiendishly clever, Jeremy Blachman’s tale of a lawyer who lives a lie and posts the truth is sure to be one of the year’s most talked-about novels.

"We start the summer assuming everyone will leave with an offer to return after graduation. It's yours to lose. It's hard to lose. But it's been done before. Don't make us regret having given you the opportunity to work here. Don't make us wish you were instead working for the firm down the street, where the lunch allowance is ten dollars lower per person, where the Dodgers tickets are four sections farther from home plate, and where they don't even have a gym membership subsidy, You're one of us now. Welcome."

I then proceeded to the multimedia portion of the presentation.Anytime we can incorporate multimedia into our work it's always appreciated by those who have to sit through these things. Well, except for the fiasco last year when I showed a clip from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of Will in order to inspire people to pledge their loyalty to the firm in the wake of a series of defections by several star associates.

This year, five film clips. I showed them Collateral so they could see the dangers that await them if they leave the office and start driving around downtown L.A. It's not safe, especially in the sports carsthey're all blowing their salaries to lease.

I showed them Rent to illustrate that while there are indeed 525,600 minutes in a year, the important thingis that every one of those minutes is potentially billable to a client.

I showed them a clip from Brokeback Mountain, which I think was done a tremendous disservice when they pitched it as a gay cowboy movie. I didn't see it, but it's fairly clear from the trailer that the point of the movie is that it's great to have a job that consumes most of your day. "Don't worry about how much time you spend at the office," I told them. "You might fall in love with someone you're working with." There are far too few movies out there that illustrate the fallacy of work-life balance quite so well.

I showed a clip from March of the Penguins for an example of mindless work performed without complaint. The penguins march back and forth to and from the ocean, a long and ardous march in the cold on which many perish, yet none ever bitch and moan. They just do it. No whining, no trying to sneak out of the pack to find a shortcut, no escaping, no giving up. The penguins walk simply because that's what they're supposed to do.

That's all we're asking our associates to do. They don't have to make it more complicated than that. Just march. March to the library. March to the document room. March to the printer. All together now, mindlessly following the herd. That's all we need. Bodies, not brains. The penguins don't expect to be challenged. The penguins don't expect any individual attention. The penguins don't expect any praise for their work. They just do what they have to do. they march.

Finally, I showed a clip from Independence Day to illustrate that sometimes emergencies happen and you have to work over the holiday weekend.

Monday May 15th - Anonymous

As I was in hunt for the 'Skin Gods' from what I recalled of the poster, as always there was an offer of 3 for 2 at Waterstones & I wasn't actually sure that the Skin Gods was the one I was after, the guy at the store thought it would be one of two books, the Skin Gods (which it turned out to be) or Shadow Man (which I shall start reading next). So I had two of three already, this one just sounded fun by its description (above). Being a blogger myself it had it's appeal on a geek level as well as personal one.

As it turns out, this book is awesome. I've now got to the stage where I'll be trailing through its original source reading all the archives over the next few weeks. I'd recommend reading the book first though, as it has its own self-contained story arc.

From the above extract (chosen carefully as it contains film references ;)) you'll get a vague flavour of what this guy is like. He's the very essence of all of us. The things we all think yet few of us say. In a twisted yet humorous kind of way, he's someone to look upto. Okay I should probably point out he is fictional, but hey, so is Hannibal Lecter & Jack Bauer & David Hasselhoff, okay maybe not the latter, but we all know how frickin' cool they are.

Now funnily enough it's a good thing that this guy is fictional as if he was infact a high flying lawyer he'd probably be pretty screwed. I mean of all places I read that Waterstones fired someone for having a blog where he vented. The irony that I happen to pick up this book by random chance at the same store huh??

Not so surprisingly, I can see a lot of parallels between the lawyer's world and my own, though I'm not in the industry of law, I'm still a part of the Capitalist society that only allows the fittest to survive, kinda like Spartans in suits -- things aren't so different. Their expectations of unconditional love for the firm, lack of any other commitments in life, in an ideal world (in the boss's perspective), this is exactly what they would wish for. There would be tolerated things, but many a thing an employee considered normal, the employer would see as pushing things too far.

It may seem to some of you that all the books that I am reading seem to be having top reviews, so I should clarify, if I get through a book, that in itself is an achievement, unlike films, it is quite normal for me to leave a book 10 chapters in if I get bored. With this one I can't imagine anyone able to do that.

Jeremy Blachman gives us an anonymous lawyer with frustrated rants intwined with high dosages of laugh out loud humour. I would recommend this book to anyone that has a job, or a boss, or a life (or not).