Intelligent Life On Planet Rock
Read any bloody terrible books lately?
Read an article in the Sunday Times yesterday by Rod Liddle. Basically he asked a few of his literary pals which books, hitherto universally acclaimed, they thought were terrible or over-rated or just plain dull.
I thought it an entertaining waste of time so have half-inched the whole idea wholesale to put before you Wordies.
His choice of a book he can't bear is 'A Dance To The Music Of Time' by Anthony Powell. He it thought a load of endless pretentious twaddle.
My own choice of book that went straight from my hand to a recycling bin was Michael Chabon's 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union'. Praised to the stars by Word and other august organs I was very disappointed by it. I like Chabon very much and love his brilliant Kavalier and Clay but I found this one very forced and the premise much too knowingly smartarsed for me to warm to it.
Any more that raise the ire or just befuddle?
- More from Andy Barrons.
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How long have you got?
I've tried Anthony Powell repeatedly and never got anywhere.
I tried Harry Potter and was staggered by how pedestrian it was.
I have learned through experience that all books written under the influence of drugs are profoundly tedious. And that includes Hunter S. Thompson.
I recently read a Peter James thriller having heard it enthused about on Radio Four and was shocked how terrible it was.
I didn't expect the De Vinci Code to be good but I thought it might be diverting and not jaw-droppingly dull.
I thought Piers Morgan's diairies were invented.
Kingsley Amis's journalism makes me laugh but I only laughed once during "Lucky Jim" and that was the bit about the mouse and the hangover.
All contemporary political memoirs are rubbish apart from Matthew Parris's.
The average rock and roll memoir of today is put together from Google and tarted up with a few drugs references.
I need to lie down now.
Political memoirs - Parris and Brandreth
I agree about Matthew Parris, but I also enjoyed Gyles Brandreth's tale of his short time in Parliament. It has a similarly human, self-deprecating, outsider's viewpoint.
I used to hate Brandreth; now I completely admire his attitude to life (if not necessarily his politics).
The great Kingsley Amis mystery
The thing that baffles me about Kingsley Amis is how someone whose output consisted of a few pretty feeble “comic” novels (none of which are even about an eighth as funny or clever as, say, a single episode of The Likely Lads) achieved this status as an important literary figure; an “intellectual”. I just don’t get it. Rather like the way The Troggs will, in the long run, be remembered more for the Troggs tapes than any of their records, I think the only work the “great” KA will in the end be remembered for is his scurrilous correspondence with Philip Larkin. And don’t get me started on his pillock of a son.
Bloody Awful Books
I have tried 6 (count 'em) times to read Joseph Heller's "classic" Catch 22. Its cobblers. Am I missing something?
The Time Traveller's Wife
Acclaimed and popular. I get to the end of page one and gave up.
TTW
Try again. I thought it was one of the most diverting books I had read in a long time.
Stunning book
I don't mind admitting I shed a tear.
Hey ho - horses for courses and all that.
A charity shop special
Bought it on one of my many visits to the local Oxfam book department (what else is a guy to do when he's waiting for a bus?), and it's still on my "to read" pile - although a few others have been piled on top of it since it was bought, so I'm not sure that I'll EVER get round to actually reading it.
Judging from recent Doctor Who episodes
Steven Moffat must also be a fan of this book - the stuff with Professor River Song rang a few bells
Cut and Paste Novels: A Constructor's Guide
1. Take that underwhelming, story-thin 75-page novella out of your drawer. Copy every couple of paragraphs and paste it in again a couple of paras down. Then again. And again.
2. Place your cursor at the end of every sentence. Hit the carriage return twice to create a new paragraph. Look, ma! Before it was a page; now it's a chapter!
3. Every four or five pages, find a long sentence and gradually cut it down, as if you were chopping a carrot. Find a long sentence and gradually cut it down, as if you were chopping. Find a long sentence and gradually cut it down. Find a long sentence and gradually cut. Find a long sentence. Find.
4. Repeat the above steps throughout. Leave no phrase unrepeated - if possible, several times.
5. Cross your fingers and hope nobody notices you're riding on the back of your earlier, deserved, success with the Red Riding Quartet and The Damned United.
Scratch, scratch.
tokyo year zero
not doing it for you then? I've yet to start it. I loved RRQ, but thought the Damned United was merely ok.
Let me know how you get on
Let me know how.
Let me.
Tokyo Zero Zero Zero
I have just finished it and , although intrigued at first, the constant repetition of certain phrases throughout got to be terribly annoying.
Oldromancer
Spook Country - William Gibson - got about 50 pages into this garbage before I threw it out the window
Ian McEwan
Saturday - completely over-rated, I absolutely hated it and ended up casting it aside, what a load of pretentious rubbish. I'll be giving him a wide berth from now on.
Da Vinci Code made me laugh out loud, such was the absurdity of the plot and the execrable writing. My mum threw it across the room...
I don't get on too well with Dickens either, all those bloody stupid names just irritate me.
I have to agree
about Saturday. Unbelieveable tosh.
Saturday
My favourite of his by a long mile. I couldn't hack Atonement.
Are you me?
I could not agree more, I met someone on holiday who was raving about "Saturday" so much that I bought it at the airport on the way back. For a supposedly "fast paced" book I got so bored that nothing had happened by page 60 other than descriptions of the curtains that It got thrown across the room.
Ditto DaVinci Code.
Sebastian Faulks "Engleby" on the other hand I found so engrossing that I read it in one sitting.
Peaked too soon
I've always liked the idea of the Gormenghast books, but when I get to about page 50 of the first one I suddenly remember that I need to purge radiators. This has been happening a regular intervals for about 35 years. Should I keep trying, or is this the Grateful Dead of fiction: you either get it or you don't?
No
this is the Coheed And Cambria of fiction. You won't get it unless you are 19 years old and full of a gormless sense of wonder.
I borrowed all three
and have finished the first (Titus Groan). There are some very funny passages and several great characters, but it is fairly hard going at times.
Titus Groan put me off reading for 2 years...
... and even when I started again it took me another few years before I'd take a chance with fiction... I may be lacking the fantasy gene though, as Lord Of The Rings left me cold too (even as a lad) and I didn't even finish the back-cover blurb of Harry Potter. I've said it on these boards before, books are too big an investment in time to flog yourself reading something you're not enjoying, just ditch it and move on...
Page 50 is too soon
Give it about 100 pages. It's too rich and weirdly stylised at first, but then the atmosphere of the crumbling castle really kicks in and it's a fantastic read.
Jonathan Coe
I know he is well received in 'these quarters'. The Rotters Club seemed like a great idea - set in my city in the years I was in my late teens. The historical background ie. Red Robbo and the decline of British Leyland etc sounded like it would have been a good prop for an interesting novel. Quite the opposite - the quality of the writing was GCE level English at best and the characters were not memorable at all. I am sure Jonathan Coe has written a good book but this one wasnt it.
I have to disagree,
I loved it so much I bought the sequel. Now that was pants.
Rotters Club
Enjoyed it!! (end of review)
He has, Steve
and it's called 'What a Carve Up'. I bought the Rotters Club and i got through it, noting that there were things about it i liked, but just not enough of them.
A friend recommended WACU and it did the trick. I think it's a better read.
add to that.....
House Of Sleep, I read it a bit before WACU and loved it.
Odd chapters set somewhere in 1987 and even chapters somewhere in the 90's. Not quite as gimmicky as it sounds.... honest.
Definitely worth a try - I reckon if you read both of those before Rotters Club it makes you a bit more forgiving.
Was "forced" to read What A Carve Up in a book club...
... and really didn't enjoy it, but after spending 2 hours at the pub talking about it afterwards, it seemed a lot better for some reason. Don't ask me to re-read it though!
What A Carve Up
Would be one of my top 10 books. Rotters Club, excellent. House of Sleep, good. Closed Cirlce, hmmm. Was really looking forward to it and a good read but not up to the standard of his best stuff.
What A Carve Up
Would be one of my top 10 books. Rotters Club, excellent. House of Sleep, good. Closed Cirlce, hmmm. Was really looking forward to it and a good read but not up to the standard of his best stuff.
waste of trees
Da Vinci, 25 pages binned (sorry recycled)
Haven't read "Saturday" but just finished "Atonement" and "On Chesil Beach" which were both amazing.
How about "Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" new age wank before new age was actually around
Not read any of his thrillers but Peter James's "Dead Simple"
was a great Stephen King type of beach read. I like the Inspector Grace series.
Harry Potter was tedious but then again it is for kids (isn't it??). Give me Biggles and Algy anytime (yikes).
Zen
I really enjoyed, though it was hard going in places. I haven't tried to re-read it again in 20 years, so I'm not sure if I'd stay the course if I started it nowadays.
Re: "Zen and....
I think pretty much anything that they sell as "cult fiction" in HMV is best to avoid.
HMV sell books?
Where? On the cassette floor?
(Note to self: Been a while since you were in London. Check flights.)
Come off it,
what the hell do they know? If it's got any kind of resonance with the sixties or seventies they'll try to flog it as "cult" to gullible whipper-snappers who were only conceived in the 1980s or beyond.
Zen
Read it in the 70's and then re-read it about 10 years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it both times. The strange thing was that the book I remembered was nothing like the one I read second time around.
Zen
It's my favourite book and one that I never tire of although it seems to be in vogue to dismiss it as a hippy rant (hip-lit?)
If you've never read it, at least give it a go as it is extremely readable, moving and actually has some original ideas, which is all too rare these days.
Sticking to the topic though, I was very disappointed with 'On Chesil Beach' and feel it reads a bit like a piece of homework. Also, 'Vernon God Little' wasn't worth the effort; one of those books you persist with then wish you hadn't bothered. Having said that, I think you should have at least read a book completely to criticise it fairly.
But Lila
is rubbish though isn't it?
Atonement
Maybe it's tainted because I read it during summer holidays after spending a previous terms studying LP Hartley's "The Go-Between" but Atonement felt terribly familiar and I still don't quite understand the fuss. The only reason I added the film to my Lovefilm list was that Word article about the brilliance of one of those single-shot scenes.
My copy of Atonement is now in the pile for the next time I'm donating books to something for charidee.
Foucault's bloody Pendulum.
I never got more than a few pages in before I wanted to slap the author. Ye Gods, what a ruddy pseudo-intellectual show-off tosser. That's my best considered analysis, you understand, my gut reaction involves gratuitous violence.
That first chapter
is virtually unreadable, necessitating a thesauraus, dictionary and the entire Encyclopedia Britanica, but get through that first chapter and it's actually a rattling good read.
I don't know that I would bother to fight my way through it now though. His Baudolino sent me to sleep.
Have to agree with FraserM -
Have to agree with FraserM - once you're over the first few pages it turns into a great book.
Anybody who thinks The Da Vinci Code was an OK book should really read this and see how a tale really should be spun.
Actually bringing The Da Vinci Code into it doesn't really do it any favours as it's on a different level.
Saturday was humdrum. On Chesil Beach marginally better. Atonement was good, but Amsterdam was awful.
I once made the terrible error of...
...taking Gertrude Stein's interminable work of experimental prose - Three Lives on a long train journey from Ho Chi Minh city to Hanoi. After the first few pages I realised that there is a good reason why you never see this book on sale in airports, however I had no other means of entertainment and so was stuck with it.
As I see it, the main problem with Three Lives lies in Stein's insistence on reporting every last bit of mundane nonsense that comes into the heads of her characters and her willingness to repeat this nonsense. Ernest Hemingway appeared to attempt a similar style in Across The River and Through the Trees. I found that tedious as well. You would have to stud both of these books with precious stones before I would consider rescuing either one from a cleansing fire.
You could have written
insulting remarks about senior members of the Communist Party on each page, including your name and destination address, and then torn the pages out one by one, leaving them in strategic places on the train, or throwing them from the window as you passed through villages and towns.
That would have relieved the boredom.
No votes for Catcher in the Rye?
He needs a thick ear, that kid.
Oh no I loved it. But read
Oh no I loved it. But read it at 15 and wouldn't go back now. I am too old now.
Another teenage read
Can't disagree with Leedsboy, I'm too old now to go back to it.
Leedsboy/Carl
I read it when I was 15. I thought he was a twat then, and I know he was a twat now.
He'd have lasted five minutes round ours with his poor little rich boy schtick.
And you know I'm right, don't you? That's why you can't go back!
Not really
The reason for not going back is that I have a stack of books waiting to be read, and rereading Catcher seems unnecessary.
No, no...
You said "I'm too old now".
I think if you read it again you'd suss out Caulfield for the self-pitying little shit he is.
If he was time-travelled to 2008 he'd have long black hair, pasty white skin and a 'My Chemical Romance' fixation.
Oh, and a trust fund.
CITR
I still think its great...I am in my 40s oh dear i am obviously emotionally stunted
I can have more than one reason
I am both too old and have a stack of books.
To be honest I don't really care about CITR. More than 30 years have passed since I read it. I liked it at the time. I'm not going to try and defend it and say you're wrong and I'm right.
He is self-pitying,
but he didn't ask to be born where and when he was, he found himself there, as we all do. The book does a fascinating job of climbing inside his head. If you can't empathise with him or see his internal mental landscape, fair enough, but it doesn't stop others from finding it an intriguing read.
I am with youy there Vulpes
and without getting too arty farty about this, the book is NOT just about Holden Caulfield; it is addressing issues about alienation, loss of innocence, cultural anomie, and society's fear of change.
It might be me then.
Perhaps I'll give it another go and see how I feel about it now...
That's the trick...
CitR is a book I guess you have to read in the full rage of hromones. I had ht emisfortune of thinking, at the tender age of 30, "...hmmm, I've never read Catcher in the Rye, I suppose I ought to..." Yup, whining little rich kid in need of a reet good slapping.
Ditto Kerouac's "On the Road" which I read around the same time... oh for goodness sake, just grow up and get a job. The bit which really made me laugh was, in the middle, where he ran out of money and so went back to him mum's to live for a while and get all his washing done before setting off again. Oh yeah, radical beatnik rebel me!
It wasn't too good a literary run that few months because around that time I also recall reading Capote's novella,Breakfast at Tiffanys, around that time. Beautifully written and amazing prose but another character who needed a clip around the earhole and sent up to their room without their tea.
The Diceman
Should come with a dice.
1 - throw book away
2 - give book to jumble
3 - ebay book
4 - recycle into arse wipes
5 - compost (provides browns apparently)
6 - read first chapter and then shake dice
So very, very awful.
Loved it.
And its sequel, Search for the Diceman. (Sorry, I seem to be catching a trend here, sweeping up the detritus from other folks leavings and clasping it to my bosom. I like Hunter S Thompson too, finding Hells Angels the hardest, given written probably more sober than his later works. And Jack Kerouac, yet to be mentioned but often considered unreadable.)
I'm a funny boy.
I'm so glad
that other people feel this way. My flatmate was obsessive about it and I ended up feeling I must be a right thicky to be finding it so spectacularly banal.
Oh dear...
... Diceman's on my "to read" pile - someone please come to its defence or I'll never pick it up!
Give it a go.
When I read it I was interested to see how he'd write around the consequences in the storyline if he felt that the dice must fall the "wrong" way... You'll see what I mean pretty early on in the story. See if you think he cops out or carries it off; it's one you'll either toss into the corner quickly or find fascinating.
Diceman
I read it when I was about 16 or 17 I think. I'm not sure I could read it now. I don't remember it being very well written. If you have it, start it and see if it grabs you.
Hollis
Remember getting it at 13/14 after Mark Hollis raving about it, having written a track about it on their second album. OK, but spent more time re-reading the sex scenes than engaging with any deep thought in it.
Well, have now read it, and...
... it was actually OK, though took itself far too seriously (all the pseudo-religious guff didn't come off at all) and said all it had to say in the first third (and I could have done without the final third completely.) My teenage self would have loved it though! I'd cautiously recommend it to certain friends, but it's not for everyone...
PS To answer your question Vulpes, "cop out" :)
Sophie's World
It's about philosophy. It condenses western thought into a couple of hundred pages. It's unmitigated shite.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Tried to get into it twice couldn't stand the characters so stopped around page 30-50.
see also Catch 22 (war is bad who knew), Midnight's children (aids restful sleep)
Couldn't stand the characters
I had the same problem with "May Contain Nuts" by John O'Farrell. Have read all of his others, and loved them. But the characters in that one just made me want to STOP reading. Even the ones that WEREN'T meant to be arseholes were obnoxious and unlikeable.
Hemingway
Would agree with a comment made earlier on Ernie, the fastest milkman - sorry - the most tedious writer in the West. Specifically Farewell to Arms and Snows of Kilimanjaro. Never made it past the first 30 pages of each so technically I haven't read him at all, so I'm not being fair.
But I couldn't bear either so over the shoulder they went.
Hemingway
Could not agree more . I have never understood the cult of Hemingway . I did finish Farewell , Oldman , For Whom then decided he had had a fair crack and he was rubbish .
On a strange aside I met a woman who told me her aunt once had a fling with him , thankfully she also agreed he wrote tripe .
Merde
The worst book I've read recently (or should I say got 2/3 through before throwing it away) is A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke.
Supposedly a witty, fictionalised account of the author's time in France, it's actually a badly written, unfunny, cliche laden load of old tosh, full of every stereotype you can imagine.
Merde sums it up.
Either Word lied to me...
..or he knows where the bodies are buried. Kill Your Friends is bloody awful. If you are looking for an insider's thinly fictionalised account of the music industry, go for Kevin Sampson's Powder or Robert Calvert's account of the career of one Tom Mahler, both of which are far superior to this dreadful faux-nihilist bucket of pants. This time last year I was relaxing on a sun lounger with the latest works of Will Self and Philip Bryer, both of which shat on this terrible ego fest in spades, which is a shame as I was really looking forward to it, based principally on the thoroughly entertaining podcast he was on. Giles Smith, or even Wilbur Smith it ain't. Bobbins, unpleasant, tedious.
Kill Your Friends
Started well and then went south. Ending was preposterous. Had forgotten about Powder but did at least enjoy it.
Kill your friends was bloody expensive for a paperback as well.
SECONDED
It started as, "This is so dangerously likely to be real it's scary" and it ended in Tom Sharpe territory. It's like the guy had two different books in mind and gave us half of each.
Hmmmm.....
Not got round to reading it yet (it's another one that's on the "to read" pile) but at least it wasn't too pricey, cos it was in the "3 for 2" deal with my friendly local bookseller.
Powell, Anthony
I made it through all 12 volumes of A Dance To The Music Of Time and I do think Powell could turn out some great prose. However, it's a work of the most appalling snobbishness, where the real crime of the 'villain' Widmerpool seems to be that he's not 'one of us' (ie the upper classes).
Thumbs down also to Captain Corelli's Mandolin - I managed to tolerate most of it only to endure one of the most silly, pointless endings I've ever read. And to Harry Potter: only read the first one, but was put off by the sheer dullness of the style. The fact it's a children's book is no excuse - The Narnia books are brilliantly written (even though I'm very uneasy about some of C S Lewis's ideas in them).
Charity shop wisdom
I had heard great things about Ken Kesey, enjoyed "One Flew Over..." (the fillum, natch) so invested a few pence in "Sometimes a great notion" second hand, read about 20 pages of the first chapter and reckoned that as it was a thick book with tiny print and so far had singularly failed to ignite any interest, it was a fools errand to persist. Closing the book I noted that the previous owner had amended the title on the cover so that it read "Sometimes a great notion (sometimes not)"
I could only agree...
You are right about Ken Kesey
Sometimes a great notion is really very very dull. The book of Cuckoos Nest is, however, fabulous. Much as I love the film, the book is an altogether much more poignant ride, all thru' the eyes of Chief Broom.
On the subject of Ken Kesey, the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test/Tom Wolfe is an entertaining if irritating ride thru' the real life of the Merry Pranksters and the dawning of the Grateful Dead etc.
Agreed...
...Cuckoo's Nest is indeed fabulous, a more poignant ride, and a richer one.
this only confirms
the hypothesis put up in another strand and much mentioned elsewhere that film versions of good books never reach the heights of the literary source, while film versions of pulp fiction are often classics.
Chuck Bloody Palahniuk
I read one of his books, not the Fight Club, the one with the interconnected horror stories and found it to be complete and utter rubbish.Badly written , poorly structured and downright ugly.
I have an elderly neighbour who loves the whole Harry Potter nonsense but he´s quite mad.
I tried to reread the Lord of the Rings a few years back and found it to be complete tosh. It was great when I was a teenager but now it´s just mind-numbing piffle.
Oh, and that Brett Easton Ellis American Psycho is utter crap, too.
Right, here´s me bus
Oh no.......
I quite liked American Psycho and could easily empathise with how his appalling taste in music may have driven him over the edge. If you accept it as an exercise of style over content, it works quite well. Film was tosh.
Surprise, surprise: LOTR tosh, and Harry Potter likewise.... Good thing they didn't write books of Starwars as that too would have been equivalent piffle, and I suspect, troll-like, that Disc World will be similar claptrap. Science fantasy, do they call it? My dogs can write better books with their arses.
Science fantasy
Truly a pairing of words to strike fear into the heart.
I quite liked American Psycho
Having said that, when I read it I was a student, and therefore I was either pissed or stoned (or both).
The fact that I haven't bothered to read it again in the 11 years since I graduated either says a lot about me, or a lot about the book.
My guess is the latter.
you'll be horrified to find...
that they have written Star Wars books. Lots and lots of them. Which I admit I haven't read. The trolling is a good start, but I think you can do better. How about Richard Thompson is a folkie and so must be rubbish?
As always don't knock something untiil you have tried it (apart from buggery and Morris dancing - as someone said).
Can't be buggered......
...but was a Morrisman for 10 years.
It was Oscar Wilde and incest (and morris dancing), I thought, but will no doubt be quickly corrected.
Lord of the Rings
I've tried many times to read LOTR and after watching the films again, I decided to give it another go. I spent a very reasonable 99p on eBay for a box set of 7 books (each book divided into 2, plus the appendixes) and started book 1, 'The Ring Sets Out'. I'm on about page 200 and have given up again.
Somebody help me out here. Why did it win that best books ever thing on the BBC a few years ago? It's dull. Nothing happens.
it's not that nothing happens..
it's just what whenever it does, you wish that it wouldn't. I mean, in the main, dwarves bursting into song at the drop of a hat...
too often
I got the feeling that Tolkein had set out to write a long book rather than a good book.
Undeniably some great moments - genuinely scary, but way too much elven hippy tosh for me.
Chuck Palahniuk is great though - I loved Survivor and Invisible Monsters!
Hippy? Really?
I know LOTR was embraced by the hippies, but Tolkein was anything but, wasn't he? I've not read it, but wasn't he more of a reactionary type in similar mode to C S Lewis in which Hobbit-land (or whatever it's called) represents an idealised old-fashioned, bucolic England in much the same way as Narnia?
Narnia, yes
Tolkein, no. Tried reading "The Hobbit", and barely made it to page 2. As for LOTR, I never bothered with the books after the Hobbit debacle, but even the films just bored me. Kevin Smith was right - "just a bunch of people walking - even the trees walked in those movies!"
The Alchemist
by Paolo Coehlo makes a satisfying fluttering-flappy noise when you throw it off a ferry into the Adriatic.
The one good thing about Paolo Coelho. . .
is that his name translates as Paul Rabbit.
"The Alchemist"
I read "The Alchemist" after one or two people I know said it had changed their lives, and felt like I was listening to a really dull, obvious primary school assembly story.
Christ, I'd forgotten about "Eleven Minutes"...
I ran out of books on holiday a few years ago and this was the only English-language book I could lay my hands on at short notice - easily the worst book written for grown-ups I've ever read...
Harry Potter, some balance
Over the last 4 years or so I read every one of the Potter books to my son at bedtime and my conclusions were:
1. So bloody longwinded
2. She really lacks a sense of wit - great opportunities for humour not taken and anything 'funny' wasn't
3. So hard to read (especially out loud) - use of unneccessarily long words, tedious sub-plots, overly complex plotlines many of which are red herrings
4. When I hear parents proclaim that their 6 year old is reading one of them, my reaction is 'Yes Yes, aren't they bright, but if they are getting real reading pleasure and understand what's really happening then I'm Stephen Fry'
5. The film screenplay writers must have run of of red ink with so much crossing out - gawd help them with the penulitimate book/film
6. I am not sure they'd have been half as popular without the film series
7. My son loved them and it was a great father-son thing to have done, but boy am I glad it's over.
8. Didn't Joanna do well?
Hear hear
I stumbled through 10 pages of book 1 and gave up. It was just terribly badly written.
The fact that otherwise intelligent friends sing the series' praises never fails to amaze me.
Some more balance
I'll start by saying that my main criticism of J.K. and her snotty-nosed hero is just how chuffing middle-bleeding-class the whole set up is, but anyone with a brain will know that anyway...
I do love the books though, regardless of the occasionally boring writing. I want to know where James and Lily Potter got their cash from; I'd been holding out for some juicy tales of bank robberies or embezzlement at the end of the saga (I still enjoy dreaming up preposterous outlaw tales for them both).
As for the books, they are written in a pedestrian style but the plots are great, the whole story arc is well thought out and they use just about every kids-at-magic-boarding-school idea going so we won't have to deal with anything similar for a long, long time. The writing is nothing like as bad as DaVinci or (the horror) Ben Elton, just not 'lit-ur-ature' standard.
So there: Don't go there unless you hate Star Wars for rubbish writing.
Now, Ben Elton. How bad is his stuff? I re-read the first 30 pages of Stark a few years ago and could not believe how bad it was. Illiterate nonsense.
Iain Banks
I've read a few of his and while I liked The Wasp Factory, Walking On Glass and The Bridge (although I was very young when I read those), increasingly (eg, in The Crow Road and Dead Air) he seems desperate to 'be' the cool young dude he presumably felt he wasn't in real life.
Raw Spirit
Let me recommend Iain Bank's hymn to malt whisky, given its place in many an Irregulars list of luxuries. Better than his fiction by a long dram.
Desperate to 'be' the cool young dude
Isn't that what we'd all do if we wrote a novel though? Write an autobiography as we wish it had been? (didn't Clive James say something about that?)
I know I would.
It probably is what I'd do
Which is why any novel I tried to write would be shite.
I did try once
And yes, it the biggest load of pants the literary world has (fortunately) never seen. When you can't even force yourself to read to the end of a chapter that you wrote yourself, it's time to call it a day.
the trick with LoTR
is to skip over the bits you find unbearably twee (Tom Bombadil) or dull (or both). Of course this might mean you skip right to the end, in which case do the same with the un-ending appendices.
Though my favourite bit is in death of Aragorn which is in the appendices not the book proper.
And never mind the bleeding Silmarillion.
On Harry Potter, I think the problem is that people confuse popularity with quality. Good luck to JK, and if she had sold say 100 000 books in total people would not slam her for not being Shakespeare. They are kids books.... (as is LOTR if we are honest).
I prefer Iain M Banks to just plain Iain Banks these days. At least you know what you are going to get with Space opera.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
By Mark Haddon
Gave up by about page 40. Boring. Very boring.
Watching a bad film is easy. Disengage the brain and passively sit there for two hours (and read a magazine if it's that bad). Reading a book is too much work to waste the effort on something bad. You can't read passively and it's going to take you at least six hours to get the thing finished. I realised that it just wasn't worth it and I have become hard-core about not reading bad books.
You need compassion to get this book!
That's what my wife says anyway!
I got bored with it very quickly. My wife read it before I'd finished it and she thought it was absolutley brilliant!
She said you have to imagine the trouble the boy has just getting through the day. Whilst normal life is going on round about him, he's stuck with his logic and numbers and not being able to eat yellow food, or not being able to eat different foods if they are touching each other on a plate etc etc.
As a novel it's a great insight into Aspergers Syndrome and the problems these poor people have. I finished it in a different light.
Certainly will never be in my all time top 10 of books read, but I'd never describe it as terrible.
"Night Time" is the right time
I think "The Curious Incident..." actually put off many readers because it was so effective in evoking what someone with Aspergers Syndrome can often be like - eg. obsessive, repetitive, pedantic, over-literal. As in real life, this can be irritating and off-putting for so-called neurotypical people such as ourselves.
I thought it was a great book, and very important.
Mrs Fox
read it and declared it "a great read", but she's a primary school teacher and actually likes children, so I'm not sure if I'll give it a go.
HAVE YOU TRIED HIS NEXT BOOK
"A Spot of Bother?" Much better. I like "Incident" but you're always aware it's a clever piece of writing. "Bother" is much less serious, got panned by a few critics and is very, very funny.
I wouldn't waste my time, life is too short for bad books
No. I've made my mind up and I think he's a bad writer. He has nothing of interest to offer me and my opinion will not be swayed.
Zadie Smith
I must have got caught up in all the hype – particularly from The Guardian (were they on a retainer?) – and bought Zadie Smith’s ‘The Autograph Man’ when it was first published. I saw it through to the end, but realised about four or five pages in that it was complete rubbish.
I clearly hadn’t learnt anything for the experience because I then bought ‘On Beauty’ which was equally poor.
White Teeth
what a warmed over pile of rejected Salman Rushdie scripts. Never mind the magic realism-lite, it is largely set in the seventies and eighties and there are LOADS of anachronisms - come on Zadie do a BIT of research.
White teeth was great, written ahead of Autograph Man...
...which was truly dire, even if a nice idea. Written too soon and too quickly.
DAMNED UNITED & BEING IN THE FILM!
Well I quite enjoyed the book whilst on holiday in the states (dodging tornados in Indiana and all that) - ALTHOUGH I am biased as I was taking part in the filming of it last week at Elland Road - got all star struck working with Colm Meany (Don Revie) and Michael Sheen (as Cloughy). Look out for me when its out in 2009, I'm the one with the authentic 1974 Gilbert O'Sullivan grey flat cap (with button on top) - lovely!
Great book; looking forward to the film
Any info on the rest of the cast? It must be a heart-sinking moment if you’re an actor and your agent phones up to say you’re being considered for the role of David Harvey. A smashing bloke, I’m sure, but boy did he get a pummeling from the ugliness stick.
I thought...
...that filming was at Saltergate, home of Chesterfield? After all, Elland Road today doesn't look a lot like it did in 74.
Correct, sir
They've filmed at Saltergate. They've even painted the outside of the ground (about time, too) for it. But I did read that there was some filming done at Elland Road as well - although I can't remember which bits were filmed where!
Today programme
Last week there was a brief story about the filming of Damned Utd and I'm sure the reporter was at Elland Road where he spoke to the actor who is playing Clough. Can't remember the name although I know it's been posted above.
Vile Bodies
by Evelyn Waugh. Decline and Fall and Scoop, both wonderful novels, didn't prepare me for this which I found cold and generally unappealing. Wouldn't strictly say it was terrible but I just could not enjoy it after reading the other two above.
Again this is an unfair, unfounded prejudice but I normally steer clear of any novel with a cover photo in soft focus of a guy on a bike or a girl in silouhette chasing a ball or a kite or something. Especially if the cover blurb mentions the words 'elegiac','uplifting', 'loss' or 'redemption'.
I am a silly old Hector.
Does this mean. . .
your shelves aren't heaving under the weight of Merchant-Ivory boxsets? Shame on you, sir.
Nope
Though a bit of suppressed emotion does the trick now and again.
If I do have to close a book I'm not enjoying for whatever reason I reach to my heaving shelves of Oor Wullie and The Broons for a bit of real story-telling. Jings! The cat has pinched Paw Broon's fish supper! Oh michty me! A bit like Sin City but with flat hats and coal fires.
What the f*ck am I talking about?
Jings, crivvens
and Help m'boab? God bless Dudley D Watkins - now there was a genius.
Da Vinci Code
Can I just say that I really liked it? Yes, the writing is execrable. Yes, the plot is ludicrous. Yes, it's historically fanciful. But otherwise it's a fantastically well-constructed page-turner, with cliff-hangers ahoy, an exercise in literary manipulation.
So I finished it feeling slightly grubby, but having loved every page.
I agree entirely.
Presumably people read the blurb on the back before they picked it up? It doesn't exactly try and deceive you into thinking you're getting a work of important literature.
'I hate the Da Vinci Code for being an airport thriller' seems little different to saying 'I hate Girls Aloud because they're pop music' to me.
Don't let RL hear you type that!
Hi, Richard ;-)
No, it really is rubbish...
I have read it, but for the same reason it's worth watching Casualty or Emmerdale every now and then - you can't criticise something you haven't read/watched/whatever. I enjoyed the time I spent with it though, because it was so bad I began shouting back at it and venting some spleen.
The epitomy of the dreadfullness was a line which went something like 'as he walked in the park between the palaces of Westminster, St James and Buckingham...' which shows that a) he can't write and b) he doesn't know what he is writing about. It is so preposterously bad a line it still makes me laugh out loud now.
Bad, bad, badabadabadabad BAD. I hope I've made the point.
Me too.
I started it at Heathrow and finished it before Logan. Perfect airplane fodder; no need to remember any back story, no need to worry about missing anything if your attention slips while juggling reheated cardboard and Chateau battery acid, ludicrous characters and more plot holes than a 1930's thriller. Just what the doctor ordered to keep your mind off stoving in the skull of the bastard in the seat in front who repeatedly reclines their seat while you have coffee on your tray.
Anyone expecting more from it needs their shopping habits examined.
It wasn't just me then
Fraser's experience mirrored mine. And The DaVinci Code did raise some points about the origins of Christianity which wouldn't normally have reached such a wide readership. No wonder the church was so annoyed by it. The film was pants, mind.
Staying with religious matters a moment, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is rendered unreadable by the good prof's prose style & his rampant egotism - I've never read anything quite so lovingly self-referential.
Really?
I find Dawkins very readable; I'm reading his Climbing Mount Improbable at the moment, as it happens.
He's often accused of being egotistical, but normally it's by someone who is upset at having their beliefs challenged - he's said a few times that no one would consider a political book of identical tone noteworthy, but when it comes to religion, people think there should be special dispensations made.
I wouldn't say TGD is always balanced, but it was a real page turner and deeply funny in places.
You want to read Derren Brown's Tricks of the Mind for rampant egotism and loving self-referentialism.
Mind you, I thought that was a top read and very funny too.
Of course, it may be rubbish. He probably hypnotised me...
Dan Brown
I just finished reading Deception Point by Dan Brown. And like DVC, it is utterly ridiculous and dreadfully written and enjoyable as hell. I have always had a soft spot in my heart (or perhaps, head) for pulp. If DVC, or especially Deception Point, had been serialized in Astounding Tales of Science Fiction back in, oh, say 1938, they would be remembered fondly as "Golden Age" pulp classics.
No No No
Foucault's Pendulum is very excitingh, Davinci Codfe 20 years earlier with added wit, plot, mysticism and terror. Thye Name of the Rose very good too. His last two, VERY bad.
Name of the Rose
Excellent film. Bought the book but had to give up about 50 or so pages in. I wanted to like it but the way it was written, plus the stiff translation, made it into a chore.
Eco, Eco, Eco
Foucault´s Pendulum is hard going at the beginning but once you get into it ´tis a thing of wonder. Ditto The Name of the Rose, it´s probably his most accesible work. I love the the ornate and archaic bits in it.It does help if you know the history and Eco doen´t make any concessions. His other works are very hard going , Baudolino, The Island of The Day After Tomorrow are only for the die-hard fans or Ecomaniacs.
The Name Of The Rose
I thought it was great, but it made great demands on my memory of 'O' level Latin (failed).
Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow
A huge critical success about 10 years back, and absolutely dreadful on every level. It was either badly written or translated from Peter Hoeg's original Danish by a computer (significantly, a translator isn't named). But you can't blame the translator for the jerky plotting and utterly implausible action - at one point the 'ordinary' heroine is hanging off the outside of a supertanker by her fingernails in the midst of an Arctic blizzard!
Conversely, I'm a huge fan of Anthony Powell and won't hear a word said against him...
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
I tried really, really hard with "The Possibility of an Island" and, on reaching about page 80, realised it was a load of old tosh! No, make that pretentious old tosh.
Atomised
Never made it to the end of "Possibility of an Island" either. Try "Atomised" instead - definitely worth a look.
Good Lord
This is a long one, Missus.
I might have kicked this off but the original idea ain't mine, as already said.
Seems fair to point you to Mr Liddle's original article and the various similar comments of Times readers at:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/...
Word to The Word
Noticed there have been several lengthy book-related threads recently - perhaps The Word will take note and increase their excellent but fairly brief coverage of literature in the magazine?
Now there's
a novel idea....
(I'll get me coat..........)
I struggle with Dickens...
His books are all a thousand pages long and involve someone called Miss Innocent being led astray by a Mr Bastard with the unwitting help of a Mrs Bumblepants. Oliver Twist when read as a child made me despise everything from the 19th Century for years.
Stephen King is another, every damn book is about a writer in peril. Come on man! Have a new idea!
Virginia Wolf, God I tried. Mrs Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, Orlando, her unbearable snobbishness kills every word.
Salman Rushdie. Apart from Midnights Children and The Satanic Verses. They were good enough to make me attempt Fury, The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Utter shite the lot of them.
And Martin bloody Amis. Sorry folks, Money was crap. So John Self signs a dodgy contract about seventy pages in (which is easy to miss and don't think I can't spot when a writer is trying to slip one past me) and tricks poor writer Martin Amis (only twats appear in their own books apart from Kurt Vonnegut) into writing a crappy film, WHO CARES?????
God that's got a lot off my chest!
Spot on, nearly
Spot on with Dickens, Amis, King and Wolf. But all of Rushdie's books are a pile of pretentious crap dressed up as cultural comment. I've given him more chances than Blunkett and Mandelson got between them.
And as for that Atomement - a poor attempt at a cover version of Little Women.
Oh and anything by Dom DeLillo - he uses long complicated grammatical structures to cover up the fact that he's got nothing to say.
Umberto Eco does have something to say but all this post-structuralism is (like smoking) so last century.
No mention of Pratchett?
Britains biggest selling living author?
Someone lent me the first two
Ringworld scribbles.
Gordon Bennett, is there no beginning to the man's talent?
The beginning of talent...
The first few Pratchetts are pretty poor - the later ones are wonderful. Brilliant characterisation and superb dialogue - (fairly similar plotting though).
The three witches bickering; long suffering copper, Commander Vimes of the City Watch; the young Tiffany Aching trying to find her place in the (disc)world; the skeletal cat-loving DEATH - all great characters worth discovering.
Pratchett is interested in the origin of institutions - so you'll often find plots threaded through subjects like the establishment of the Post Office (Going Postal) or the Royal Mint (Making Money), the politics of running a mercantile city (Guards Guards), running a newspaper (The Truth) and more.
The Corrections
was it just me or was this "state of the Nation" masterwork just another American style soap opera not that far removed from Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susan
I liked the pretentious soap opera
I was surprised that no critics compared it to Tom Wolfe in their reviews, which I think is an obvious comparison. When I bought it I walked into the bookshop and picked it up with barely a glance inside it's pages. I went straight to the counter where the shop assistant, who must have been watching me, asked what made me pick it up? I said, "I like Tom Wolfe when he does fiction." He seemed surprised by the comparison, but eventually nodded his head in agreement. I've always assumed he picked a copy up for himself later after I left due to my observation.
Sure bits are boring, but it is worth wading through 20 pages of plodding stuff for the next 40 pages of greatness. It helps if you're in the mood for a 600 page, everything plus the kitchen sink, monster about an American family. And if you can't be bothered reading it, then instead watch "The Royal Tennenbaums".
A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory
The world's slowest whodunnit and by the time you got near the end there was only one person left alive who it could have been. Then we never found out why he did it. That's about 6 hours of my life I'll never get back.
Severed by Simon Kernick - all action and precious little content.
Not Dead Enough by Peter James - I simply don't believe triplets not even brought up together are so identical as to be able to fool partners after 40 years.
I quickly returned to masterly works of James Lee Burke, only to find that his last book was a collection of short stories levered out from other books I'd already read.
Now reading Fury by G.M.Ford; "great ticking-bomb suspense" - Harlan Coben is says on the cover. 2 for £5 in Tesco.
You're right about Ellory
I've read one of his - about the Mafia - not good. I wonder if that's his real name - or he's chosen it coz it's a bit like Ellroy and he can have his books next to the master. Yeah, you can't go wrong with JLB - also got a soft spot for Harry Bosch (Michael Connelly) although regarded by some american crime aficianados as a bit of a lightweight.
Harry Bosch
My problem with Connolly is the inconsistency. The first few Bosch books were great, but then he felt the need to turn them out without any decent plots. But he had returned to form, from Lost Light on, although from a couple of reviews I've read, the latest The Overlook is another stinker.
The Overlook
The Overlook was written as a series for the N Y Times and then expanded into book form. Whilst not a stinker, it isn't up to his usual standard. I hadn't noticed any lack of decent plots previously.
Evidence for the prosecution # 1
Angel's Flight.
Engleby
Sebastian Faulks. I think there was praise of this up there somewhere. I've enjoyed his other stuff but this was one I only barely managed to finish. Tedious story told by an unlikeable unreliable narrator.
Iain Banks, on the other hand - Wasp Factory, ok, The Bridge, beautifully done, Walking on Glass, pretty good. Haven't been able to stomach the rest - and as for Raw Spirit, take out the petrol-head stuff and the self-righteous political bollocks and the rest of it's not bad. Shame that only leaves a couple of pages.
Mmm, I feel better now.
Faulks......
Omigod, trashy trite tripe: actually always good stories ruined by ghastly and pretentious posy narrative style. He writes as well as his hairstyle.
The Unconsoled ...
... by Kazuo Ishiguro. Does the title refer to the poor bastar*s who struggle through to the end. I mean ... what is going on? Has anyone out there made it to page 535?
Disappointing
Underworld by Don Di Lillo (or something similar) - dull. Also not fiction but so dry I gave up on it was Naomi Klein's No Logo, I have a brain, I can read, I don't need someone to tell me that Nike are good at marketing. More fool me I 'spose as I knew it was about this but god it's boring.
Tom Robbins
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins. The first book in my life – and I had reached my mid-30’s by that point -- that I hurled across the room. I think I made it about fifty pages in before I realized that it was the very epitome of literary masturbation. What’s worse, I'm convinced Robbins thought it was an act of masturbation as well. And that he thought that was a Good thing, and that he was awfully clever, wasn't he? I’m quite sure I would hate anyone who said this was their favorite book. And, in fact, I came to loathe the person who recommended it to me, though for completely unrelated reasons.
Interesting news
According to the Word podcast this thread has been 'burning the wires'.
Hurrah!
I was only joking. I quite like 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union' really...
Saturday
was very painful to read it was so bad. The reviews lied.
Martin Amis has only written one book I've enjoyed - his memoirs which felt like he was simply communicating and not trying too hard.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - tried a couple of times to get past page 12 and failed. Awful, awful book.
Kill Your Friends was like a novelty hit - the gimmick being lists - lists of bands...lists of people working for record companies - none of these were integrated into the story and it began to grate.
I've never got Rushdie either. Never tried Dickens but I do love a bit of Jean Paul Satre!
Now, I think it's about time I reread Espedair Street having loved it a decade ago and thinking it was the best 'rock novel' I'd read.
Most of my least favourites
Most of my least favourites have been mentioned already, but bear repeating.
I like crime books and Brighton was the town of my youth, so put the two together and you get...Peter James, staggeringly pedestrian cops 'n' robbers that thinks street names qualify as local colour. Just begging to be made into Sunday night TV.
Gormenghast: bought for me by my Dad as revenge for the JG Ballard i bought him. The book that broke the back of my 'I've started so i'll finish' policy.
Kinky Friedman: you shouldn't be able to go wrong with a Jewish cowboy country & western singer-comedian private detective so i bought two trilogies on recommendation. Still haven't got past the first part of the first one. Reads like it was written by someone playing a character.
Saturday
I thought Saturday was fine until the closing scenes.
McEwan is just no good at villains (so also Enduring Love).
Thanks for that Dannyboy3000
"Kill Your Friends was like a novelty hit - the gimmick being lists - lists of bands...lists of people working for record companies - none of these were integrated into the story and it began to grate."
Thanks for that Dannyboy3000 - I was on the verge of buying this but you've confirmed my sucpicions.
Hurrah for The Corrections hater
Having only just subscribed to The Word newsletter and been alerted to this thread, I was worried when I'd got so far down into it that nobody before Jim Thomas had given The Corrections a shoeing. Misanthropic load of old toss - see also Vernon God Little.
I'm sort-of with Dannyboy on Corelli; just as I was about to give up, it suddenly gets infinitely better around page 70 and the rest is "There's something in my eye" reading. A few friends feel the same in judging it as a slow start/great otherwise.
The Line Of Beauty was ferried very quickly to my local Barnado's.
Book Club Blues
It's alright for you lot, at least you can choose what you read and pack it in when you get fed up. The Book Club i'm in regularly picks the most awful overwritten floral rubbish and the worst of the lot is 'Love Is Strange' by Joseph Connoly. If the jacket cover pictures of his whiskers doesn't put you off, you'll be trying to claw your eyes out by page 10. Try this for size:
"But wait: hold. The cord of my memory is tugging me elsewhere. There is an obstacle now that I am very aware of........all my face is throbbing to the bone, and now I am conscious (as conscious as I can be, now and for the last time as I continue to lie here quite uselessly)of a man hovering above me who I have seen here before......etc bloody etc. Ponderous or what.
Hang your head in shame man.
Anything by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith's work is like a lot of that by writers favoured by the trendy media set: a couple of good scenes, a few nice turns of phrase, but a lot of pretentious references to issues favoured by the academic crowd and plots that fizzle out into an unfeasible mish mash of the coincidental and irrelevant.
It goes like this. Someone takes a shine to a new writer because they've got the right personal background for marketing, have latched onto the right social set, or because they want to get into his/her underwear. They then make a big fuss about what a great new talent they have found and many of the broadsheet/Radio Four/consumer press crowd are eager to jump on the bandwagon. When the books appear they turn a blind eye to failures such as clunky plotting, weakly drawn characters, and long passages of turgid prose. This can also apply to writers who have produced one or two good books but have dropped the quality control from their work.
The result is lots of media coverage, lots of promotional support in the bookshops, and good sales to people who think they ought to be reading it because it's meant to be quality work. You can get away with this over half a dozen books before people realise you can't write.
Who could find anything in 'On Beauty' apart from the self-satisfied academic/literary types it was about?
Nowhere near as good as a supposedly more down market writer like Ruth Rendell.
BUKOWSKI
Some one has commented on drugs & alcohol not adding to literary skills. But I tried Bukowski and may be he thought his books read great because he was wrecked at the time, but they are dull and self centred.
Z Smith and Child 44
White Teeth would have been so much better if half the book had been cut out. Same goes for anything by Dave Eggars. Good editors seem to be in short supply these days. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith is abysmal. History lesson bolted on to a plot that James Patterson would have rejected as far fetched.
Catch 22
I have tried and tried and tried to read this clasic but I have never got past Page 10!!!! Too much detail about characters and it makes me put it down and do something less boring instead! By the way I make a point of revisiting Holden Caulfield every 2 or 3 years and, yes he is annoying, but it is one brilliant piece of writing!
Bad Books
I read a Michel Houellebecq novel, and it was so bad I can't even remember the title. I seem to recall it was set in Lanzarote, the rest I've blotted out.
Also, a book called 'Horribly Awkward', about modern British comedians and the comedy of discomfort ( Sacha Baron Cohen, Little Britain, Ricky Gervais etc. ). Nice idea for a book, but it over-explained some things and insulted the intelligence of the reader as a result. There were some bad mistakes, too, that stuck out like a sore thumb.
To be honest, though, if I'm reading a book and not enjoying it, I won't waste my time hoping it'll get better - I simply drop it ( not literally, that would be wrong ) and move on. Life's too short to read books you don't enjoy, and won't learn anything from.
Chabon
I've started Yiddish Policeman's Union twice and not got on with it (loved Kavalier and Clay + Wonder Boys, not got round to Summerland or Wolves of Pittsburgh yet). So I'm confused, Andy, should I give it a third try because it gets better or is it the irritating, smart arse, hard to follow tome that the first thirty pages suggest?
Not read 'Kill Your Friends' which a lot of people seem to hate but the same author's (John Niven?) novella about 'Music From The Big Pink' in the 33 1/3 series is terrific.
The most overrated novel that I can recall reading recently was the last but one Salman Rushdie. A friend tells me there's a good bit buried in it but I didn't get that far. I like crime and have recently given up on books by Graham Hurley and Peter James, both of which came highly recommended. I'm coming to the conclusion that any best selling British crime novel is bound to be rubbish (I'd except Rankin, but he sold sweet FA for the first seven or eight Rebus books).
I'd say try it again
Hi Canfan,
A reasonable question. My answer would always be to try again. Ultimately we all form our own opinion and tend to find things others seem to miss or not enjoy as much.
Having said that, I stick by my own original comment. I read it right to the end and became progressivley disappointed and frustrated as it went along and won't be trying it again myself.
Hope that helps.
Good luck!
Rushdie - where to start? where to finish?
I keep having my well-intentioned in-laws throwing Rushdie books at me every Christmas, determined to make me love it. "Oh, this one's so good on the Kasmir question..."
Just can't get into them, and I'm starting to get allergic reactions. Read his children's book Haroun and like that, read The Moor's Last Sigh and had forgotten it by the time I closed the book, other than getting pissed off nothing seemed to be happening.
I've got Shalimar the Clown on the shelves - worth trying or not?
Robert Harris
The Ghost - I should've have known better - I haven't enjoyed any of his previous efforts - he's the new Jeffrey Archer.
At the top of my *to read* bedside pile.....
.....is "Ghost" by Robert Harris. I've read Fatherland, Pompeii, Archangel and the one about the Enigma machine(which I can't remember the name of right now). I loved every one and I'm quite looking forward to Ghost. The research into his novels is second to none and to compare him equally to J Archer is a bit harsh I think.
Archers books are hardly thought provoking, but they're easy to read. All of my family are readers and the books all get passed round....I've never bought an Archer novel but I've probably read them all.
Enigma
The one about the Enigma machine which you can't remember the name of? That wouldn't be "Enigma" would it? You must have really loved it!
Yes....you're correct!!
It was called "Enigma".
Long, long time since I read it. Great book as I remember.
I finished "The Ghost" a few days ago. I thought this was fine too. Nice couple of twists at the end.