Surfing through the Web this morning, I came across a blog at The Guardian about ‘concept’ books published for the Christmas market. The top book in the UK at the moment is Do Ants Have Arseholes? And 101 Bloody Ridiculous Questions, Now, I’m in Canada and haven’t seen this book so I can’t really comment on a train thought that it is utterly rubbish.
However, scroll through the article until you get to the comments underneath.
This is the first one….
“I specifically tell people that wish to keep me as a friend to never, never, never buy me books like that or so-called “humour” books for Christmas. It’s all for stupid thickos that probably don’t even read books anyway.”
A good point well made….
About half way down you get this comment….
“I’ve read some of Do Ants… - it’s not actually that terrible. There’s quite a good joke about Martin Amis, which suggests it’s not for the completely illiterate.”
And then someone comes up with a football team consisting entirely of Russian authors - God knows where that came from but I’m sure they’d be a pretty effective outfit. A lot of experience but those huge Russian beards might slow them down?
“This would be my Russian team, using a 4-3-1-2:
G: Bulgakov
CB: Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy
LB/RB: Pasternak, Gorky
CM: Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoevsky
CF: Pushkin, Nabokov
Subs: Saltykov-Shchedrin, Lermontov, Goncharov, Bely, Sologub.
I think they would take the English no problem.”
God bless the Internet!!!
While we are on the subject, here is today’s recommendation for Christmas…..A Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Search For Culinary Extremes by Tom Parker-Bowles. This book is a year old but still worth considering even though the author has two last names and is the son of Camilla.