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Last week, Bryan Curtis of Slate asked if you should read The Ruins. He had an interesting perspective on what the book was about, but he never specifically answered the question.

The answer is no.

I will elaborate, but in the absence of Mr. Bile, this seems like the perfect opportunity for me to set the rules regarding spoilers. That’s what he gets for having technical difficulties.

I am less interested in writing reviews than (admittedly geeky) critical analysis. There is little satisfaction to be found in having a one-sided discussion on the season finale of Battlestar Galactica. (“The thing that I won’t tell you about until you’ve seen what happens could hardly be viewed as controversial given the way the writers have played with something you might not know about yet all season.”) I just can’t wait for the survivalists without cable and DVD players who end up here while searching for Y2K message boards to catch up on BSG.

So when discussing serialized entertainment, you have fair warning that I will generally be writing under the assumption that you’ve already seen or read what I'm writing about, don’t care to, or will skip that day’s update until you have. My best wishes go to browsers who end up here after this post is archived. Lucy Lawless is a Cylon.

On a less passive-aggressive note, while you will not see the words “spoiler warning” in any posts, the occasional “spoiler free” will end up in the heading of a straight-forward recommendation. I mean, I certainly don't want to ruin a Filipino horror movie for anyone. And in accordance with my agreement with Mr. Bile, I will not discuss Lost until the new season starts in October. He still has two weeks to catch up. After that, it’s on. For all y'all.

As for The Ruins, it’s just another overly-hyped, supposedly literary summer novel, like The Historian or Jonathan Strange or that book where Jesus wore flannel, but readable. A bunch of college kids go into a jungle they’re warned not to go into, they step into some vines, and then Mayans surround them with bows and will kill them if they leave. If they don’t leave, they’ll be eaten by evil vines.

How evil is this plant? It could have killed them all instantly, but it lets them suffer for 200 pages before the last one dies. Stephen King wrote that some people might mistake it for a bloated short story. I’d argue that people who should know better might mistake it for a novel. The book has some creepy death pieces, but it’s still about a bunch of dumb kids and a plant that chuckles.

The answers to the Battlestar Galactica quiz are “over the counter birth control” and “137 minutes earlier.”