How to talk to a liberal (if you must) –Ann Coulter
Right wing journalist and author, Ann Coulter, airs views which really never needed to be aired, such as her forward-thinking response to 9/11: “I am often asked if I still think we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. The answer is: Now more than ever!” The real problem with this book is the response it receives from its readership, who are either right wingers looking to confirm their political views or left wingers looking to do exactly the same. One choice comment on Amazon reveals a lot about her readers: “the American Leftist, or, as he calls himself (to better hide his goatish hooves and curling horns) the “Liberal”, is a tireless enemy of freedom.” Anyone currently wondering what his definition of freedom might be, is not alone…
The Sea
–John Banville
Beautiful prose, a remarkable density of poetic allusion, and comprehensively boring. Every other adjective sends you to the dictionary, which would debilitate the narrative thrust, if indeed there was one. An ageing art historian with too much time for reflection (a la The Untouchable, a la Shroud) returns to the Irish coastline of his childhood holidays to escape his wife’s death and his own oppressing intimations of mortality. He recalls his obsession with a more wealthy family who also holidayed there. He constructs a mythology for them of Alexandrian intricacy. Not much else happens. Banville is a wonderful novelist, but in The Sea his talent is reduced to a sterile narcissism. This novel won him the Man Booker prize, though, so what do we know?
The Twilight Saga
–Stephanie Meyer
Vampires. Who cares? Who wants to read about vampires as an analogy for Christian dogmatism and no sex before marriage? Who can write a book so bad that even Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, men who make women’s knickers wet with a look, cannot even save the film adaptations? The answer is of course Stephanie Meyer. The writing is so bad, it’s comical and quite frankly if you’re older than twelve, not of the female persuasion and enjoy what is essentially tripe on a page then you need to do some serious soul-searching. Don’t ever read this book, don’t ever read any of these books, don’t even watch the film because you’ll regret it, more than William Hague regrets his dalliances with his young aides.
The Da Vinci Code
–Dan Brown
There is so much to say about Dan Brown’s awfulness and so much that has already been said. Given that his prose struggles to reach a key stage 2 standard, his success has to be seen as one of the most astonishing things to happen in the last 100 years. Screw colour tv, screw sliced bread, screw the internet; none of these achievements are anywhere near as extraordinary as those of Mr. Brown, who has the eloquence of a slightly retarded pot-belly pig and the wit of a near-blind cat. There are so many lines to choose from in order to demonstrate the fact but this is a personal favourite, showing a complete lack of understanding for the English language: “The Knights Templar were warriors,” Teabing reminded, the sound of his aluminum crutches echoing in this reverberant space. Awful.
Atlas Shrugged
–Ayn Rand
Atlas may have shrugged – but so did most of the critics. A monumental book, by which we mean it is the size of a small plinth and colossally dull. Perhaps it is a historical misfortune. At a time when American literature was probing the fault lines in the capitalist dream, a paean to that system was distinctly off-key. This may explain the revival in the novel’s popularity since the recession. Bankers needed some reassurance from a sacred text; it is a telling indictment that they resorted to this stolid, undemanding page-turner. “Who is John Galt?” asks the first sentence of the book. Don’t waste your time finding out.
