I'm of on holiday next week, so this week and next week's issues are going to be super-sized editions, including no less than ten (count em! ten!) recommendations from me, plus some reader recommendations. That should be enough to keep you going until the start of June when what passes for normal service will be resumed.

No links this week, I'm afraid, but there are new reader recommendations if you click on the link above. But for now, here's this week's recommendation(s):

The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart

(Before you start getting worried, it has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged 'comedian' Andrew Dice Clay, so you can calm down.)

It's written as an autobiography (of sorts) of New York psychiatrist Luke Rhinehart who, bored with the predictabilities of his own life, decides to put his faith in random chance and let a roll of the dice determine his actions, drawing up lists of things he could do then letting the dice choose what path he should take. To begin with, it's just small things, but eventually he gives over more and more of his life to the dice, making every decision with their 'guidance' and slowly gathering an almost cult around him who want to follow his way of 'dicelife' and live at random. Of course, diceliving doesn't exactly gel with the rest of society and chaos ensues as the dicers get more and more numerous.

That's a simple description of the book, but as any regular readers of this site will know, I never go for books that can be described as simply as that.

The Dice Man is one of those books that sprung quite clearly from its time - the 1970s when the dreams of the counterculture shattered, died and got lost in ennui, car key parties and all the things anyone who's seen The Ice Storm will know about. Faced with the boredom of his regular life, Rhinehart chooses instead to not just change the life he has, but take on a whole new set of lives changing himself entirely by the minute, hour or day as the dice command. Identity becomes just a facade we can put on and take off at will and at a time when there seems to be no escape from the humdrum banality of life, that is a very attractive option.

What the book makes clear, though, is that although the dice may decide what you do, it is up to the user to choose the options they give to the dice and you can only do that which you want to know, even if it is a long-repressed desire. In the book, Rhinehart is the extreme example of the dicelife, able to give himself varied options and then to act on them and the reaction of others to the 'way of the die' reflects their own inner selves - some willing to go as far as he does, others only willing to give a small part of themselves to random chance.

The Dice Man has become a cult novel over the years, with many people choosing to try and follow the life of Rhinehart and live by the die, with a variety of results (there was an extremely good series of articles by a writer trying it in loaded magazine a few years ago, if you can find them). As the book's cover says 'this book can change your life' with 'can' being the operative word. It doesn't necessarily purport to be a way of life for everyone, some kind of self-help guide, but is a call for us to accept more chance into our lives and to stop trying to control everything around us. Sometimes, it takes the random for us to see who we really are and what we are capable of.

Now for the special bonus part. There are six other mini-recommendations linked to this review, so go and find a simple die (everyone must have one around the house somewhere) and roll it then click on the number below to find your special dice-chosen recommendation. All of them have some kind of connection to The Dice Man, to a greater or lesser extent.

Of course, you can just read all six in turn or by some random order if you want (and I suspect most of you will) but the options there if you want to take it.

OK, so I was lying slightly when I promised ten recommendations in two weeks, but there will be three books recommended fully next week. What three? Well, they're a trilogy, they're fantasy, they've won awards...

And they're not The Lord Of The Rings...

Nick