She stuck it in her, in her......... in her what?!? (Pornographer Diaries - Danny King)

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	Pornographer Diaries - Danny King
Date:	22/08/06 (115 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A bit of a break from the norm for bloke comedy

Disadvantages: not much of a storyline and a bit too crude at times.

Speak to any stereotypical bloke and ask him his true dream job, if he's not embarrassed by admitting the truth, most men would say - working for a porn magazine, hell most straight Men'd love to get paid to sit around an office all day either planning to go out and take pictures of naked women or picking which pictures of naked women he's taken would look good, right.... Right?. Well if any man reading agrees with the previous statement, I'd recommend picking up the Pornographer Diaries by Danny King, a humorous look at the real world of working for a porn magazine.

Godfrey Bishop is a sub on a Caravanning magazine, he's bored heck he always thought that he'd make it bigger than this, or at the very least earn a bigger pay-packet, that's when he sees an advert to start work as a sub for a new magazine, with a starting salary of £17k, on further investigation it turns out that he'd be working for porn mag 'Bling' and of course to keep the story going he gets it. As he starts to work the book quickly turns out a tale of starting out excited before finding most of your colleagues mess around all day and beggar off to the pub early in the afternoon, finding yourself slowly getting bored with porn and starting an e-mail affair with one of your writers before culminating in a court case for breaching the peace.

From the above paragraph you've probably guessed that this isn't your normal style of 'lad-lit' usually the books are along the lines of Nick Hornby and his tales of Men doing Women wrong and realising/winning them back or John O'Farrell doing pretty much the same, or Tony Parsons, again doing pretty much the same, so for a different type of book I was extremely welcoming, mainly as the jokes in all the previous writers books were getting kind of similar.

The actual cringe-worthy ‘I’ve done/seen that’ tales that are so expected from the usual lad-lit books are still there, but just a lot more intensified, such as the works party where you either admit to the office gossip that you’ve got a thing for someone else, or actually admit it to them - for example in The Pornographer Diaries, try more ‘I came onto at least 3 people - 2 of which I really dislike anyway, first thing I did next day? Went to the pub and got bladdered again’ and to be honest, that makes for it being an even funnier read as you don’t feel like you’re re-reading your own life again as you’ve never done that (well I’ve never done that).

Although what gives the book an added edge is that Danny King in his rise to writing his own novels actually worked as an editor for a porn magazine (he hasn’t said which one) and that a lot of his tales are actually just slight embellishments of the truth. Which then gives an added snigger as it means you can imagine it happening ‘in real life’ but again, just not to you.

However there is a slight gripe I have to it, almost every over ‘lad-lit’ book I’ve read at least had a decent storyline going along with it, The Pornographer Diaries tries, but it really doesn’t at times it reads more like a dirty letter sent into the magazine itself (A Police Officer who arrested Godfrey begging to be in the magazine per chance?), which albeit I don’t think Danny King was aiming to write a realistic book, but just sometimes you need something storyline-wise to keep you going in a book, and this is where the Pornographer Diaries is sadly lacking, at times you’ll just need to push on with it.

Also it has to be said (and you’ve probably guessed it), if you’ve got a low shock/outrage threshold then the Pornographer Diaries is probably not for you, there are explicit descriptions of Sexual acts and there’s more swearing in there than a Priest with Tourettes. However it has to be expected that the kind of person to be disgusted by that isn’t going to be looking to read this book.

But that gripe aside the imagery (easy) of the book is excellent, King describes most of the situations with a great detail, enough that you can imagine how the scene plays down in your own head, which I personally feel is a huge factor in any book, because if you’re not able to imagine what the writers trying to tell you how are you expected to understand it?

Overall thoughts on the book are generally good, its not an excellent book by a long shot, nor will it ever be a chart-topper, but if you’re bored of ‘I nearly cheated on my wife, she found out, threw me out, I hit rock bottom, but then everything was ok again’ books you’d do a lot worse than picking up the Pornographer Diaries, and if you’re not a usual reader of the lad-lit style books but are looking for a humorous read again its worth a read. However as you’d probably expect it isn’t an easy book to find, I ended up picking it up off of ebay, or alternatively if you go to dannykingbooks.com you’ll find it on there too - usually at around a fiver.

Summary: A Hilarious look at the world of porn but without much storyline.