{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.04827586206896552, 'fraction_numerical': 0.034482758620689655, 'mean_word_length': 4.0964912280701755, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
A window into the smoker’s world

X20: a novel of (not) smoking. Richard Beard. New York: Avon Books, 1996, ISBN 0-380-73194-0.

As a recent arrival to the United States from Australia, a visit to one of its famous bookstores seemed in order. I had only stepped through the door when I spied Beard’s novel, which, although published in 1996, hadn’t come across my desk before. I was glad I bought it. For all you non-smokers out there (including me), this book gives a very convincing impression of what we might imagine the superlative pleasures of smoking to be, and the agony …