I saw this book by Will Self (a British writer I hadn't previously heard of) while wandering through McKay's last week. I looked it over this weekend; the three stories I read from the book were enjoyable enough, but there were three other stories in the book that I wasn't really inclined to finish reading at all.

"The North London Book of the Dead" posits the question: what if, when you die, you just move to another part of London? Fun concept, good execution. I don't have much more to say about it than that. I sure hope the producers of Showtime's Dead Like Me paid him for the concept, though.

"Understanding the Ur-Borono" is a parody of anthropological study, in which an anthropologist heads to the Amazon River basin to study the mysterious, isolated Ur-Borono tribe, and they turn out to be the most boring people anywhere on the face of the Earth.

The title story, "The Quantity Theory of Insanity," is basically a shaggy dog sendup of psychology, psychoanalysis, and academia, which suffers a little from the flaw of having a punchline that isn't as clever as the author wishes. But it's an enjoyable read getting there, and a fun concept: What if there were only so much sanity to go around? You can work out the sociological ramifications for yourself.

Some amusing what-ifs in this collection, but I'm afraid it didn't live up to the title's promise. Some of the stories are definitely worth taking a look at, though.