Stupid title for what is really a handy book. Collections of routines are arguably of more use than collections of finished programs - most of us are capable of writing the bulk of a program's code but those tricky little problems defeat the whole exercise. General and specific routines provide many of the answers.

In this collection you'll find a lot of useful ideas and one or two gems. There are tips on program protection, including auto-run routines, several graphics utilities, and more general purpose programs covering printers, disk drives, keyboard and joysticks.

The only criticism of the book is on value for money. While 200 pages may look reasonable, nearly 80 are devoted to memory maps and Kernal routines that are well documented in Commodore's Programmer's Reference Guide and others.

However, if you're a beginner or intermediate Commodore 64 programmer, you'll find a lot of useful material between the covers. It's definitely worth checking out.

Peter Worlock