In my bad books (Top Ten Unreadable/Unfinishable Books)

Member Name: davidbuttery

Product:	Top Ten Unreadable/Unfinishable Books
Date:	10/03/02 (250 review reads)
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This isn't a particularly easy category to write in, actually, as many of the books that cause my brain to go numb at the very thought have also caused said brain to warn me not to read them in the first place! But one must be fair: that being so, I have restricted this list to books that I have actually read while (more or less) conscious. Looking at my list again now, it's turned into a bit more of a "worst books" list than a strictly "impenetrable books" list, but I don't really think that's a particularly big deal. So...

10) *FINNEGAN'S WAKE*
All right, so it's a bit of an obvious choice. But I happen to think it's a justified one. After all, the Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature calls it "the most difficult of [Joyce's] works to read", which is saying something when you consider Ulysses' denseness. In that work, though, the floundering reader does at least have a lifebuoy to grab hold of in the form of the Odyssey, to which Ulysses is analogous. With Finnegan's Wake, there is no escape. I suppose it is incumbent upon me to admire and applaud Joyce's originality of thought, breadth of language(s) and so forth, but I'm afraid that I can go no further. This book is certainly clever; my complaint is that it is actually "clever-clever".

9) *HOW THINGS WORK: SHOPPING ON THE INTERNET*
Now this really is bordering on the sacrilegious. When I were a lad, many moons ago (oo-arr, etc), Ladybird books were known for three things. Their (relative) cheapness, their attractive illustrations and for being produced in Loughborough. The company gave an impression (carefully cultivated I am sure, but none the less pleasant) of genuinely caring for its young readers, and if the books occasionally came across as being slightly insulated from the realities of modern life... well, where was the harm in that?

Now, however, all this has been lost. Though Ladyb
ird survives to this day, it does so in name only. It is no longer independent, the thoughtful illustrations are a thing of the past and even the company HQ itself has joined hoi polloi in London. Worst of all, though, that vital trust has been sacrificed for commercial gain, aided by, of all things, the BBC (or rather, its commercial arm, beeb.com). This book is an objectionably patronising "now let's turn on our computer" advertorial, and is an utter disgrace to the distinguished Ladybird name.

8) *BLUBBER*
Another controversial choice, I suspect, but I'm not at all hesitant about its inclusion. Often read in schools, this deeply unpleasant novel by Judy Blume thoroughly deserves to be "named and shamed", depicting as it does the unpleasant (to say the least) campaign against a fat girl (the eponymous Blubber) by a sizeable group, including one Jill. This Jill barely seems to feel any guilt about what she is doing - when she talks to her mother about it, the response is a shockingly banal "well, you need to stand up for yourself in this world"-type spiel. As that great sage, Nigel Molesworth, put it: "if you stand up to bulies, where ar you then eh? i wil tell you - you are in the duck pond and it is j. cold". And in the end, despite a superficially "happy" ending for Blubber herself, Jill turns to a new victim as though nothing had changed.

I remember sneaking a look at some of Blume's "girly" books in the middle school library (what boy that age doesn't secretly want to know what the girls are thinking?) and being... indifferent, I think is the word for it. At the time, though, I reasoned that this was just because they were, as I say, "girly". Flicking through them again, though, what leaps out immediately are the passages about sex. Not because of their explicitness ("Forever", though - well - forever being "banned", is quite tame by
today's standards), but because of the utter awfulness of the writing. Of course, teenage sex *is* often clumsy and self-conscious, but the sheer mechanistic ham-fistedness here is embarrassing. I'm with Michele Lansberg on this one.

7) *GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS 2002*
How are the mighty fallen. Up until around 1997, the Guinness Book of Records (to give it its "real" name) was a genuinely useful, well-produced tome which was always high on the list every Christmas. Now it's bordering on being a joke, appearing hugely reduced in remainder bookshops months before the decorations are up (and seeing as that's about August in some towns, this is quite an achievement). It's completely lost touch with its roots as an *information* book, and has become a glossy and tacky object aimed, it would seem, at that nebulous group "the young".

In practice, what this means is that the GWR has jettisoned most of the "boring" factual records (ie things people might actually want to know) in favour of an increasingly bizarre and flashy set of "achievements" which are unlikely to be remembered for more than 30 seconds, such as "greatest distance to spit a dead cricket" - 9.17m, if anyone *really* cares - together with some rather desperate-sounding "records" about the entertainment industry; behold "Lil Bow Wow", proud holder of the title of "youngest US No.1 solo rapper". Like, er, yeah, man. Oh, and the British content of the book is now virtually nil - it's world records only, unless they're American. Save your cash and buy the Top 10 of Everything instead.

6) *SHARDIK*
The phrase that sticks in my mind when I think about this book is from a newspaper review: "labouredly allegorical". Richard Adams' first book, Watership Down, was, and remains, a masterpiece - flawed most certainly, but then most masterpieces are. It was a terribly
hard act to follow, and regrettably Adams has never managed to do so - The Plague Dogs is his only other readable book. This ponderous fantasy about a magical bear is unbearably (pun intended) dull, and far too much time is wasted on unnecessary description. Long descriptive passages are also a feature of Watership Down, so why don't they work here? Perhaps (and this is a bit of a stab in the dark) because that book, for all its myth and magic, was firmly anchored in the real world, while in Shardik there is too much temptation to slip into hackneyed fantasy forsoothery.

5) *THE SILMARILLION*
This is probably going to get me into even more trouble than the Judy Blume criticism, but "true to thine own self be" and all that, so here goes. Although I enjoyed The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings a great deal (though the middle of The Two Towers is a little tedious), I have never found The Silmarillion anything but excruciatingly dull. It's not because it's a reference book rather than a collection of stories - I *love* old-fasioned reference books, and always look out for them - but because it's so unbearably dry in tone. One of those books that's only a classic because someone tells you it is.

4) *MEIN KAMPF*
Eh? I hear you cry. (Well, I don't, actually, but then that's writing for you.) What on earth could this be doing here? Well, it's not here because of its atrocious (in the true sense of the word) consquences - we all appreciate those - but because it is one of the most appallingly written political tracts in history. Frankly, the writing here makes the "Works of the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il Part 1: Volumes 1 to 103" look like candidates for the Booker Prize. (Having said that, "Booker Prize" and "readable" don't always go together...)

Mein Kampf is, as anyone who has had the misfortune to have to read it for research will know, a vast work, which could ha
ve done with editing down by about 75%. (Actually, by 100%, but you see what I mean.) In it, Hitler blathers on for pages and pages about his various obnoxious ideas, barely managing to string two coherent sentences together at times. He obviously had too much time on his hands in prison. To borrow a phrase used to refer to Eichmann, this book really does show "the banality of evil".

3) *ERIC*
I like Terry Pratchett. I like him a lot. I love him. In fact, I want to have his babi... sorry, got carried away there. The point is that the Discworld series, though perhaps running out of steam a bit now, is a wonderful creation, with rounded, believable characters and a fully functioning fantasy world (damn, there goes the alliteration). Eric, on the other hand, is a mess. The reason for that is not, I think, that it is semi-detached from the rest of the series - after all, so is The Last Hero, and that works pretty well - but that Pratchett has attempted (and in my view failed) to bring Earthly matters into the equation, in the shape of Eric himself. It doesn't work at all, and the writing feels unwieldy and inelegant throughout.

2) *ALL MUST HAVE PRIZES*
Now, Melanie Phillips is a writer I agree with on many subjects - but education is most certainly not one of them. In All Must Have Prizes, she rehashes the tired and lazy cliches about trendy teachers and the "fact" that grammar is now "taboo" in many schools. She pushes the idea that it's all the fault of that old right-wing bogeyman "moral relativism", and that schools have ceased to distinguish right from wrong answers. Quite apart from being utter bilge, this is also a very lazy book, which makes virtually no attempt to understand practices in education that disagree with her own. Phillips won the Orwell Prize in 1996: her constant obsession with the need for outside "authority" seems to make this rather appropriate! A supporter wri
tes in a review on amazon.co.uk: "Melanie Phillips gives a lucid analysis, with antecedents of the faux liberal ideology which has degenerated into libertarian excess". Well, that clears it up, then...

1) *DIANETICS*
Some years ago, I was cornered by a market researcher in Birmingham city centre, and foolishly agreed to go and watch a video on his "product". This turned out to be an introductory video on Dianetics, and frankly it was preposterous in every way. Another young man was with me (there was no-one else in the room), and every few seconds we would turn to each other with "they *can't* be serious?" expressions. We endured it for about ten minutes, and then got out fast.

A small plea, then. If there are any Scientologists out there who would care to look up from their piles of copywrits[sic] for a moment, and explain to me (in plain English, without payment) just what the heck all this is supposed to be about, then I'd be most grateful. Opinion seems to be so polarised on this subject - on the one side there are those who claim Scientology changed their life (for the better); on the other there are those (including the German government) who see it as a dangerous cult. So I was hoping for some insight by reading Dianetics. Unfortunately, it reads like any number of self-help books and management-speak tutorials available at your friendly neighbourhood motorway service station. That's not a compliment, by the way.

There are, of course, lots of people who will make great claims for Dianetics, even to the extent of "it saved my life!", but that's the case for pretty much any belief system you can name. And the reader is constantly niggled by the knowledge of Scientology's high cost (read that phrase how you like). Quite apart from that, I find decidedly unpleasant Hubbard's absolute opposition to abortion, homosexuality and various other "liberal" attitudes.
I'm an atheist, but if I had to choose a religion, it would be one a great deal more tolerant and coherent than this.

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