Sharkey's Book Review of...

Roger's much-awaited, often-touted, long sought-after new journal of the craft is finally back from the printer's and it is LOOKING GOOD! It's a big relief to see this book finally finished.

The process of getting all of the details perfected has been daunting to say the least. Once Roger had done all of the layout and paste-up, the book was turned over to a printer's agent, who found that the format of the computer files was wrong and that the hundreds of photos that Roger had scanned would have to be re-scanned in a higher resolution. Even once the book had been resubmitted in the correct file format, the initial proof pages showed that a lot of correction was going to be necessary to make the photos appear properly. An additional (and expensive) enhancement process was applied to all of the images, and the proof pages returned for Roger's evaluation. Still not satisfied with the color and brightness/contrast of many of the photos in printed form, Roger ordered several more rounds of adjustments before the finished product was deemed "ready-to-print". What all of this means to purchasers of the book is that the quality of the images, the paper and even the binding are all top-notch.

Now that the mechanics of making the book are out of the way, here's a peek into what's inside:

I've known Roger Beck for years. It was way back in, oh, let me think, 1999, when we first met. Honestly, how two housetruckers with similar interests and shared acquaintances could live in and around the same small city for 25 years and never cross paths..... but that's another story. The point is, when we did meet, Roger had album after album after album of photos of house trucks and buses, many of them the very same rigs you see on this site. Roger had always wanted to assemble his photos into a book, but never quite found the time to do it. When I told him how much a tattered copy of Rolling Homes fetches these days, he was outraged, energized, and inspired, all at once. Roger bought a computer, learned to use it (very well) and scanned many  of his photos, doing the layout and researching additional information to feather out his book-to-be into the compleat house truck and bus journal. I often times tell him he didn't write a book about house trucks and buses, he wrote a dag-blamed encyclopedia.

Anyway, on to the enecyclo...uh, book. This is not a thin collection of widely-spaced images held together with clipart. At 192 pages and nearly 400 photographs, the reader is sure to get a very solid taste of what the housetruck culture was and is about. Both exterior and interior views are presented for the majority of the vehicles depicted, and whenever possible, the identity of the owner is tastefully presented to assist the reader in identifying the truck or bus further into the pages.