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Books you want to/have 'hate read'.

Started by Sebastian Cobb, January 25, 2019, 01:42:00 PM

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marquis_de_sad

Quote from: Dannyhood91 on February 07, 2019, 06:45:27 PM
Moby Dick.

Obviously there is some genuine beauty in there but a very sizeable chunk is dedicated to Herman pissing on about Wale Biology, clearly something that he was very very interested in and this made it a pain to get through. Still the bits that aren't wale biology are good.


Dannyhood91


Icehaven

Quote from: Bobtoo on February 02, 2019, 07:18:23 AM


They could at least have put the 2nd and 3rd stickers over his eyes and then burnt every copy in existence.

mojo filters

Stewart Lee's set designer gets ideas...

Petey Pate

Quote from: fatguyranting on January 25, 2019, 02:09:45 PM
Jim Davidson's first autobiography- there have been more since sadly. In it he tells of the time he dropped some LSD and turned into the devil when he looked into the mirror. The only point he in his life where he ever reached a level of self realisation I'd suggest. It's chock full of tales of boozing and dolly birds but doesn't get anywhere near the levels of sexy bragging as Shane Richie's 'From Rags to Richie' which has lurid descriptions of knobbing on almost every page. Both were disturbingly enjoyable as they didn't appear ghost written, letting the two light entertainers internal voices infect the pages like blue veins on stilton.

I bought one of his autobiographies (his second I think, Close to the Edge, presumably a reference to Yes) from a charity shop and got a disapproving look from the woman at the counter. I don't think she believed me when I blurted out 'I'm not a fan, just curious about how horrible this will be'.

I never finished it. To give credit where it's due, the tone is well established on the first page, describing a fight between Davidson and his wife where they threw plates at each other.

Quick post to say that Steve Brookstein's autobiography 'Getting Over The X' is everything that I thought it was going to be.  Bitter as fuck and completely self-unaware.  Hardly anybody comes out of this well.  The postage cost £1.15 more than book itself.

EOLAN

So is Hilary Clinton's 'What Happened worth a hate read as she goes on a diatribe but everyone she feels had a hand in costing her self perceived rightful place as POTUS. Everyone to blame bar HRC herself.

mojo filters

Quote from: EOLAN on February 11, 2019, 09:56:49 PM
So is Hilary Clinton's 'What Happened worth a hate read as she goes on a diatribe but everyone she feels had a hand in costing her self perceived rightful place as POTUS. Everyone to blame bar HRC herself.

I felt sorry for Hillary to some degree, when she failed to achieve her (mostly accurately) predicted win in 2016.

Her campaign was an arrogant and expensive mess, but hardly the shitshow Trump put on - even after gaining much needed funding and support post RNC convention, via the Mercer father and daughter combo injecting cash, Kellyanne and Bannon!

Perhaps pity is the better descriptor for Hillary? She mix-messaged the email storm-in-a-teacup fiasco badly, with significant unnecessary assistance from Jim Comey (the latter an otherwise honorable DOJ lifer, but with a flawed tendency towards unnecessary attention and drama).

In her last 10+ hours of gruelling, non-stop, yet incredibly impressive House Select Cmte on Benghazi testimony - Hillary demonstrated a mettle absent from virtually every aspect of her overwrought and over-complicated campaign.

Mike Pompeo might play the pitch perfect, Trump enabler, top of his West Point class statesman now, after his brief stint as CIA chief allowed him to succeed the misplaced Rex Tillerson at State - but when Trey Gowdy's flagging hearing progressed into absurdity, staunch conservative John Podhoretz (editor of right wing Commentary Magazine) observed via Twitter "Why doesn't Pompeo just go over and swear her in for president now?"

Unfortunately for Hillary, she could not replicate the same compelling resilience on short campaign trail stops where her message mattered. Plus she was disadvantaged by self-inflicting wounds, namely losing otherwise-valuable campaign staff early in an overzealous manner - as she attempted to fix 2008 faults, at the expense of her 2016 message.

I agree that Hillary's book is less than satisfactory, from the perspective of even a sympathetic quasi-objective assessment of what actually happened.

A better approach (albeit beyond idealised in Clinton country) would have been for Hillary to collaborate with someone providing sufficient distance - yet without lacking sympathy, for a more rounded whilst still flagrantly partisan take.

For example a partnership with an experienced observer-insider such as Donna Brazile, or a battle-hardened yet war weary 2016 Clinton road-warrior like Jennifer Palmieri - could have provided a more balanced account.

Rather than a collaborative effort, it could have been structured like a Hillary q answered by a sympathetic-yet-realistic a. Or simply Hillary's perspective, countered with copious contrary footnotes (in the style of a two-handed Stewart Lee's "How I Escaped My Certain Fate).

The perfect counterweight to Hillary's take comes via Amie Parnes and Jon Allen's second Clinton book (after their dispassionate collaboration on the the excellent 2014 "HRC" biography) - "Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign" - which combines firsthand gumshoe reporting, plus comprehensive, properly sourced and corroborated off-the-record briefings.

The latter book is an excellent, rigorous and thoroughly insightful account of Hillary's campaign. The overtly blunt title does not do it justice. However in context they were forced to decide on "Shattered", before the actual election results came in.

Unlike all the faux-glass ceiling staging in the Javits Center on 8th December, Parnes and Allen had prepared something workable for either outcome...

For those unfamiliar with the authors - Amie Parnes is a respected and seasoned senior reporter for The Hill, as well as a CNN Political Analyst. Jon Allen is currently an NBC News Political Reporter, previously Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg and White House bureau chief for Politico, in addition to reporting respectably for other publications such as Vox and The Hill.

Their combined reporting provides an unvarnished insider's look at the progress, pitfalls and pratfalls of Hillary Clinton's fatally flawed 2016 Presidential campaign.

Hillary by contrast, continues to re-litigate her failed presidential bid. Every time she opens her mouth, reporting is picked up and picked apart by Fox - to satiate their bigoted, aging viewers, who salivate at each and every Clinton mistake .

Hillary could still contribute mightily to the 2020 Democratic campaign. That would involve saying absolutely nothing, whilst raising a much-needed fuckton of money for whichever candidate emerges as party nominee immediately after the convention. That's exactly when the prospective Democratic candidate will need funding the most, as they'll have likely blown most of their money in a hard-fought primary win!

Dannyhood91

I've just remembered reading Outsider by Colin Wilson last year. It's meant to be amazing but I found it pompous and long winded. I watched an interview with him from when he's fairly old and he seemed like a pretentious tool.

Hey, Punk!

Quote from: the midnight watch baboon on January 26, 2019, 04:58:55 PM
Sounds fun. Who's it by?

You bastard, this comment broke me! Laughed for a good 5 minutes.

buttgammon

The Apes of God by Wyndham Lewis. It has some very funny turns of phrase and a few good pieces of writing, but they are scattered throughout a nasty, rambling, fascist mess of hateful stereotypes. I gave up just over halfway through (it's also over 600 pages long), but nevertheless, I've found it useful as something to argue against. In fact, I'm now writing something which is very critical of the book and Lewis in general.

madhair60


BritishHobo

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on January 25, 2019, 01:42:00 PM
I'm half-tempted to read Richard Littlejohn's To Hell in a Handcart just to see how fucking awful it'll be.

Go for it. It's appallingly fascinating. It tells you nothing about Britain and everything about Richard Littlejohn, because it's such a cartoonishly grotesque world that he creates. Despite purportedly pushing a message of wanting the country to be a kind, caring, understanding place again, there's not a shred of humanity in the book. Every page, every description, every bit of dialogue, is layered with ugly, simplistic hatred. It also doesn't hold together at all. His desire to force every one of his tired pet issues means the basic plot of 'a good, ordinary man is pilloried by the justice system for protecting his family from a robber' becomes so convoluted and enormous that it no longer resembles the simple Daily Mail miscarriage of justice story it's supposed to be. The best thing you can say about it is it's quick and easy to read. The writing is so simple and basic that you can zip through it easily.

I wrote a review on here a while back but I can't find it now, sadly.

BritishHobo

I'm about to start a thread on this but Ben Elton has a new book out about outrage on Twitter, where a brilliant, traditional, common-sense police detective is forced to engage with the LUNACY of today's POLITICALLY CORRECT generation while investigating a murder spree somehow relating to celebrities having to apologise on Twitter for moral indiscretions. That's whose voice we need on this chaotic and fraught issue. The Wright Way-era Ben Elton.

I've just bought a copy. I can't wait to read it.

Sebastian Cobb

The last Elton Book I read was when I was about 16 on holiday and it was left at the apartment. Something about an MP wanting to legalise drugs. It was shit.

Not as shit as one of the other books I read but forgot the title of, basically about a working class couple in the Thatcher era, all I can remember is I think the bloke owned a toy shop and didn't realise bic disposable razors weren't once-use, they tried to do a christmas turkey in a microwave and the bloke's son got caught shagging his aunt or something.

mippy

Was it by Tim Lott? They moved to Milton Keynes part way through?

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: mippy on April 16, 2019, 10:30:52 PM
Was it by Tim Lott? They moved to Milton Keynes part way through?

Based on this review I reckon it might have been Rumours of a Hurricane. I vaguely remember the unlicensed boxing match where there's black and white fighters and all the lads disgust their one black colleague (Snowball? I think) with them being all racist.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on January 25, 2019, 01:42:00 PM
I'm half-tempted to read Richard Littlejohn's To Hell in a Handcart just to see how fucking awful it'll be.

His face smells.

Jockice

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 17, 2019, 03:27:43 PM
Based on this review I reckon it might have been Rumours of a Hurricane. I vaguely remember the unlicensed boxing match where there's black and white fighters and all the lads disgust their one black colleague (Snowball? I think) with them being all racist.

I've read it too. All I can remember is one of the characters becomes a policeman and ends up facing up to his former friends who are on a protest. But it's incredibly obvious that something like that is going to happen from the very start of the book. I'm not really a big novel reader so I lent it to a mate who is and he agreed that this particular plotline was totally telegraphed.

I prefer real-life stories which is why I read the novel in the first place because I'd got hold of and been very impressed with Tim Lott's autobiographical book, The Scent Of Dried Roses, which has a lot of stuff about how screwed up his seemingly-average family was. As indeed every seemingly-average family is. Well, all the ones I've met anyway.

But if we're talking about novels set in the not too distant past but which are bollocks, I'd like to nominate The Rotters' Club. What was all that about eh? If it's aim was to prove how drab the 70s were it did that brilliantly as it bored me to near death. The Osmonds by Denim said that sort of thing far more succinctly. And had a better tune.

holyzombiejesus

I used to go out with a girl who really liked Mills & Boon, especially ones written by some woman called Penny Jordan. Thing was, sometimes she'd get a bit horny whilst reading them and I'd get to have sex with her. So, especially when we were staying at her sister's in Middlesbrough, I'd sit next to her on the sofa and we'd read these awful fucking books together. She'd been enjoying them and I'd just be sat there with a semi waiting for some sign that she was getting aroused. I got some '70s soft porn versions from the market once - one was about a man who inherited a motel where the rooms came with "hot and cold running love" - and they worked a fucking treat. The books themselves were so bad, really rubbish. Normally I can whizz through trashy books but these were a real chore, although me spending most of the time focussing on my nascent erection and desperation for sex can't have helped.

Sebastian Cobb

Is 'hot and cold running love' taps that flow spunk? That's not romantic at all.

PlanktonSideburns


PlanktonSideburns

Oh I guess they could have been mixer taps

holyzombiejesus

Who says it's spunk? It could be fanny juice. Typical of the patriarchal attitudes that are blighting today's society.

Raskolnikov

Quote from: Dannyhood91 on February 12, 2019, 10:02:53 AM
I've just remembered reading Outsider by Colin Wilson last year. It's meant to be amazing but I found it pompous and long winded. I watched an interview with him from when he's fairly old and he seemed like a pretentious tool.

I had a brief dalliance with him a while back. Odd man, very gullible. He even had a spell in Holocaust denial for a while.

poodlefaker

Rags to Richie is a classic celeb-bio title. Not as good as Little Goes a Long Way, but up there...

Bently Sheds

Birdman by Mo Hayder.

Utterly bonkers Serial killer stalked by troubled, broodingly handsome detective. Quite obviously written in the desperate hope it would be made into an Inspector Morse/Waking the Dead/Luther style prime time BBC Crime Drama.

Characters are crudely drawn, dialogue is boilerplate police procedural - it only just stops short of the boss cop putting his own career on the line by  giving the hero 48 hours to break the case. The killer's signature way of displaying the victims is hilariously ridiculous, the author takes great pride in showing off her admirable research into police and forensic protocols regardless of whether the story requires it or not.

100% recommend if you want to laugh at an incredibly earnest and po-faced attempt at dark psychological cop drama.

Silence of The Lambs by Mumsnet.

Blue Jam

Mills & Boon novels are much funnier if you read them out loud in the voice of Alan Bennett.

Books I'd like to hate-read:

Morrissey's autobiography
Michael Flatley's autobiography

I could just re-read I, Partridge and Nomad though and save myself the bother.

Rolf Lundgren

I've read "There's an Awful Lot of Bubbly in Brazil" and "Both Barrels from Brazil", those seminal works from Alan Brazil. They're both great if great to you is reading lots of anecdotes about getting arseholed with Mike Parry.

I sort of regret it now but I didn't buy Jon Gaunt's "Gaunty's Best of British: It's Called Great Britain, Not Rubbish Britain" from a charity shop for 50p. It must have been written in a fortnight and if you can imagine for five seconds what Gaunty likes about Great Britain then you're exactly right. The bit that stands out is Rolf Harris making his list of top ten British heroes.

Blue Jam

It's Called Grrrrrrreat Brrrrrrritain, Not Rrrrrrrubbish Brrrrrritain