Duds

ah, I'd need to think about that. I finished Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, watched the movie (not bad) wrote a review. Like most things, can't remember if it's Monday or Sunday so don't ask. Liked The Secret History but not too much. Loved The Goldfinch. 

John Updike, tried reading one of his books...

War and Peace...finished it and was awarded the grand cross of crossing over. The winsome beauty became a fat slobber and stalker, Cities burned but that was my take. 

Shakespeare. Phew. I know. Contributed so many neologisms, plots, all the usual stuff. Boring as fuck. I've got the giganticallistic book of all his plays with commentaries. My favourite was Homer Simpson's verson of Hamlet. Eat your heart out Mel Gibson. (eat your heart was probably coined by Shakespeare). Fuck. 

The Old Testament. No wonder Jesus wept. I'd refer to our friend Homer Simpson here too. 

Maggie O'Farrell. I loved her memoir. I Am, I Am, I Am, 17 Brushes with Death. Couldn't get past the first few pages of Hamnet. Gave up, twice. 

Hilitary Mantell, Wolf Hall. Similiar to Hamnet. Yet here's the rub (no doubt coined by Shakespeare) I loved the BBC production. I watched all episodes. 

Charles Dickens good on telly. Not so good to read. Boring. 

J.K.Rowling. Harry Potter is great on the telly. I understand why kids loved it and lots of British actors got paid stacks of money for putting on a pointy hat. Her adult detective series...pish. 

Frank O'Connor, celebrated Irish short-story writer. But only if you've not read them. 

Anton Chekov's plays and short stories. The Cherry Orchard. The Lady and the Dog. Frequently referenced for it's...alrightish. Not sure what the fuss was. Read it several times. Can't crack the code. 

George Saunders. I've read all his books. Not liked any. 

Irvine Welsh. Kinda the same. Started with Trainspotting. Early novels...

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale. Obviously precient. But a bit boring.

Stephen King. I snacked on most of his big books in the seventies and eighties. Then he became more miss than hit. Or maybe I grew older. I'd like to say wiser. The kind of reader that can quote Shakepearian text and reference the Iliad. Eh, no. 

There are many others I could add. I just can't think of them now. Anything with an upperclass idea of forgotten glamour like Bridehead Revisted. I visited the first time. Never again.    

no doubt.

It’s difficult to buy English language books where I live so I tend to just buy and read what I find available rather than what people have recommended. And most of the books I read tend to be second hand ones picked up at village bazars at home or charity shops in Ireland and England. So I don’t mind picking up a book where there’s a risk of me not liking it because, generally speaking, I won’t have paid very much money for it. As I get older this is something that has become more and more important to me as my attention span decreases and I find that if I’m not totally immersed in a book by the end of the first hundred pages, I never finish it. It goes on the dud pile and eventually back to the second-hand booksellers.

It hasn’t always been like that though and I have in the past struggled on through some books that I haven’t enjoyed and I have put one or two back on my shelf with a mental note to try them again later. I will read all of James Joyce’s work before I die!

The greatest dud of all, and by a million miles, is Lord of the Rings by the boy Tolkien. Around forty years ago I read all but the last eighty pages of it. Some chapters I read twice as their contents hadn’t grabbed my attention and I’d gone off in a daydream as my eyes simply went through the motions of scanning over the words on the pages. On more than one occasion I asked myself “Why am I reading this? It’s complete and utter nonsense,” Then one morning as I was travelling to work on the bus I was finding it harder than ever so as the bus approached my stop I got up from my seat, rang the bell to alert the driver and stood by the door waiting to arrive and hop off. It was during that wait that I noticed the used ticket bin was marginally bigger than the book, so I dropped it in. Seeing it fit so snugly I had a great feeling of delight. It’s probably still there today going round and round Leeds Ring Road on a single decker number nine.

No other dud has ever come near to that but there have been others.

I really enjoyed Stephen King’s first two books and loved his third ‘The Shining’. I probably read three or four more that followed these but gradually noticed that their characters were all very similar and the plots might have easily merged into one. So after a promising start, he tailed right off and I gave up on him. To me he was the Elton John of literature.

I was promised that I would love Bill Bryson’s travel books. I bought three all at the same time and read one and a half of them. Instead of thinking ‘great writer’ I just thought ‘smartarse’ whenever I tried to read them.

Shakespeare. The whole world has told me how brilliant his writing is but I find it totally boring and seeing his plays performed on stage is even worse because in the theatre you can’t just wander away and put the kettle on (apparently) and you also have to listen to all the other theatregoers doing all their pretentious analysis. Shakespeare’s work, I admit, is very clever, but so is Faraday's Law of Electromagnetic Induction.

For a long time I used to think I hated poetry but eventually discovered that I only hated the stuff they rammed down our throats at school. I wasn’t even interested enough to remember the names of their poets. I really enjoy some poetry now, but there’s still a huge mountain of it that I can’t get on with.

But going back to Tolkien, I’m grateful to him because he made me realise that I never enjoy books (or films) about something that couldn’t possibly have happened in real life. In this I include fantasy, horror, science fiction, religion and Eastenders.

I’ve been reading books for sixty years but I’ve written this in ten minutes, so I’m sure there’ll be something to add to it every day after today.

I actually loved Lord of the Rings. I read the whole book in one go when I was 10 or 11. It took me 3 years. I was quite backward then and never caught up on on. 

George RR Martin. Now there is a dud.