Still, Book TV can be informative in a spinachy sort of way, and even enjoyable, as long as you remember not to watch it.  I spent a whole Saturday cleaning my apartment with the set tuned to C-Span 2 and seldom needed to glance at the screen.  Even at its best, American TV regards reading as an elevating exercise we must be coaxed to with proffered snippets of Hollywood glamour, lurid teasers or appeals to our civic spirit.  To find the reader's life depicted as rich, fun, varied and even hip, you have to partake of BookTelevision, a 24-hour digital cable channel headed up by Daniel Richler (son of Mordecai) and available only in Canada. 