Filmmaker Joel Gardner created a three-minute trailer for Nickel Mountain, a novel by his father, John Gardner, which was reissued last month by the independent publishing house New Directions. Basically, Gardner fils tells viewers over and over again in blurbspeak how great his dad's book is ("it is the place he found his voice") over a stream of photographs, interspersed with short dramatic readings by Cate Camp.

Honestly, the vagueness of the praise heaped on the novel—"there is light and dark in this book, with a full spectrum of shades in between" is about as profound as the desciptors get—is the trailer's undoing. Unless you already buy into the John Gardner legend, it's unclear (to me, at least) that this would be the tipping point that gets you to pick up this book. (Of course, some of you would say that hardly any book trailer has proven itself capable of that goal, and I wouldn't necessarily say you're wrong.)