Freewheeling Andy

Now, I liked Disgrace, and thought it was a thoroughly worthwhile book. But "Best of the Booker"? It's better than Life of Pi, of course, but it's hardly very ambitious, and I find that lack of ambitious should surely mitigate against it as "best book by a British published author in the last 30 years". (But then, having looked down the list of Booker winners, there's not much that comes close to Midnight's Children in terms of either ambition or achievement).

It's not necessarily a good review, I agree, ii. But I'm talking about the value of a review to me, rather than, necessarily, the quality of the review.

Er. Point to you. But, at least, that has plot, fun, humour, and playfulness. Rather than just dreary tiresomeness where the sole value is in the writing itself, and the turgid plot is almost completely redundant.

A good review, in the sense that we're generally describing here of the "should I buy this book or not", rather than the more literary sense, is one that informs me enough about the book. If the review is coming from someone who despises Murukami but loves Henry James and JRR Tolkien, I will treat the review with an awful lot more scepticism. So, to an extent, yes. A useful review, in these terms, comes from someone who has similar tastes to me. Or, at least, someone whose tastes I know and can trust, and whose judgement I can trust.

Absolutely right. Which is why I generally find the democratisation of media and publishing that's come from the internet means that those kinds of book reviews are inevitably less reliable than ones from more traditional sources. A site like this is better because you become increasingly familiar with contributors and know who's likely to enjoy books that you, too, like. (oddly, the McEwan is a counter-example, as people who are almost inevitably reliable also like McEwan for some unfathomable reason).

All reviews are inevitably subjective, though. And you can "prove" all kinds of things with a couple of judiciously chosen quotes, too. So I'm much happier to accept recommendations, and trust reviews, from people who have a previous good track record matching my tastes, whether or not there's a rigorous defence of position.

If the criticism without back-up comes from someone whose tastes I trust and who is reliable, it may seem like a random attack to you, but may be useful information to me.

But, for example, I think that Ian McEwan writes tiresome, insufferable tosh. It's wet, effete, nothing happens, and it's written solely for hyper-literary book reviewers and has no value to real people. Some people (hyper-literary types) might view that as a bit of an attack on them. But I think his writing style is entirely tailored for that tiresome, self-congratulatory, inner circle, where the writing is about writing, and is written in a way writers will get all excited about, and has no real value in telling us either anything about the world, or in providing any plot to be interested in. That could seem to be an attack on the readership, and on people who like Ian McEwan (and, frankly, it is an attack...). But it's also a criticism, and one that I feel stands up. I think "robust" others will think "personal attack", and it's a bit of both. Where is the dividing line. I mean, sometimes I want to write "People who enjoy reading this kind of useless verbiage should be sent to Karelia to eat nothing but moss" about some books, but it's patently not a worthwhile review, and is just a satisfying spleen-vent for me as reviewer.

Actually, that's generally more true in music, which is much more tribal in the way that people are fans of bands. See something critical of the bland vacuousness that is Coldplay, say, and hordes of their fans will be down on you. Fortunately, being Coldplay fans, their attack will be as vicious as a swarm of narcoleptic sponges. I've actually not noticed a particularly strong defensiveness about books. I tend to find that people are more aware of variation in taste, so you end up with "I can't understand why other people like this drivel" or "unlike everyone else, I loved this book". There is another thing, too, though - which is that the dividing line between "robust" and "offensive" is different to different people. I mean, I though Atonement was insufferable drivel, and I'd call that fair judgement. But others might think that that is just a pointless, substanceless attack. All that said, any worthwhile reviewer must be left to express their views on a book however they feel fit. As soon as a reviewer is shackled by concern about how the review's audience will respond, then the review loses a lot of its value.

It goes back to the self publishing thing, to a degree. With a lot of reviews there's no editorial control. If I'm browsing Amazon, I can be pretty sure that people won't comment on books unless they love them or hate them, and you're not really getting a representative feedback. If I'm reading reviews on BCF, though, over time I get a feel for who enjoys the kind of books I enjoy, and then I know that I can find their reviews more reliable - still unreliable, of course, otherwise I should enjoy reading all the ian McEwan garbage. Plucking a review out of mid-internet is generally not going to enlighten me much, but if I've fuond a source that I trust, then I can stick with it. It's one of the key problems of the democratisation of media that, for example when reporting news or politics on their blogs, hundreds of people are going to produce reams of pointless guff, but every now and again someone is going to be utterly fantastic. In the end, though, until you find them, you still read traditional news media because it's (comparatively reliable). The same, really, is true of self-published books; and the same, really, of reviews. There is, of course, the other element - a "proper" review doesn't just give you a brief precis of a book and a number out of 10. That's really just a scorecard. Admittedly, it's also often a lot more useful than a "proper" review. But real reviews, which give the review-author's own opinions around the subject matter of the book, and give proper insight into the content, are very often worth reading if the subject matter of the book is of interest - even if you're never going to read the book.

The thing is that I find it well written and intelligent, and worth the effort. It's hard, but it needs to be hard. Although, perhaps I made Vineland harder than it should have been because I've been exhausted when trying to read it.

Anyone for Pynchon? Any comments? I've just finished Vineland which was really, really enjoyable to read, but also fairly difficult. And somehow not fully satisfying. Mason & Dixon, which I read a few years ago I thought was harder to read, and much more satisfying. It's all very consciously clever, and I guess that could really wind people up, but there's so much substance to it, too. It seems to play around, in both those books, in some hinterland on the edge of reality, but it's not fantasy or SF, and it's not really magical realism. Vineland had a lot of a feel of Japanese fiction about it, but was all set in post-hippy California. I'm interested to know what other people think.

Others have said that Vineland is about as easy as Pynchon gets. I, though, preferred Mason and Dixon, which would probably be in my top 20 novels. They're both pretty daunting (as, apparently, are all his books). But they're sufficiently wonderful that it's well worth the effort. I'm surprised there's no Pynchon thread on BCF, actually. Perhaps I should rectify that.

Well, it was only 2 months to read Vineland. A fantastic book, I think, but hard work. So much going on in it, in some twilight between real and fantastical, with madness abounding in a post-hippy-60s insane California populated by ghosts and the mad employees of Nixon. Wonderful but madly complex. Then I read The Business by Iain Banks, which took all of about 2 days and is a great fun tale of a modern global version of the East India Company, running large chunks of the world. Hugely fun. And I've started on The Human Stain by Philip Roth, which seems like a more sordidly fun version of Coetzee's Disgrace so far.

I really must read Pale Fire some time. Have you read Lanchester's other books? Mr Philips was rubbish, but Fragrant Harbour is great.

I've not read the other two. I can see why people might get bored, it's not full of clever writing. In fact, I've read more than once that Singapore Grip is the worst of the three, so probably isn't for you. Much more exciting is the fact that you're currently reading one of my two favourite books of the last decade. That's a book I really, really love.

That was meant to be praise, about Foucault's Pendulum. Good plot and interesting writing. Eco isn't just about the writing style.

You say that but, say, Foucault's Pendulum is Da Vinci Code written by someone who knows how to write. Massive difference there. And Midnight's Children, too, has a genius plot based around possibly the single most significant event in world history since the second world war. They don't write shopping lists. They manage to write brilliant plot.

Part 2 of it is pretty good (the rest is horrible, though).

I've not read On Chesil Beach. And after disappointment with Atonement, being deeply underwhelmed by Black Dogs (which I read when I was much younger), and thinking Amsterdam was dull and pointless to the extent that I can hardly remember a thing about it except that I wondered why the hell I was reading it... it's unlikely I'm going to try to read any more McEwan. I suppose Remains Of The Day could be tarred with the same brush, but the fact it was written 20 years ago meant that it was tramping over quite such ready-trammelled ground, and also I actually enjoyed reading it even though not much happened.

Atonement is what finally drove me up the wall. It's had such rave reviews all over, and for the first half it's just a really tedious upper class mansion kitchen-sink drama, with one little event. Then there's the brief good bit, with the war stuff, and then it's back to the girls, and then finally it has that insanely annoying "twist" ending. Which is even more annoying than just usual trite twists, because I had books about writers. Bah. Dreadful rubbish. And completely affected and mannered and pretentious and part of the dreadful backward looking parochial garbage nature of British literature, where it becomes ever more inward looking and is rapidly vanishing into its own sphinter.

I want to throttle Ian McEwan. There's something about the dreary nothing-happening lovely-writingness of his books which really, really riles me. I probably wouldn't mind so much if he weren't so popular, but I find the popularity inexplicable.

Hahahahahaha! How very right. I liked it as an 11 year old though (who skipped past all the pointless Elvish poetry. I would recommend it to nerdy 11 year old boys. Not to anyone else, mind you.

I'm still 21, the same as I have been for at least the last 16 years.

Oops. Have I got this wrong, and there's only two daughters? Maybe it was someone else's daughter. I was sure there were three of them...