Yellow Dog - Martin Amis

 

Wow. Just wow. Not a good wow. A bad wow. This book is definitely a worthy candidate for worst book I've ever read. 

It was bought for 50p at the local farm years ago, but we definitely overpaid for it. 

It's disjointed, deeply unfunny, seriously self-absorbed and simply, quite frankly, uninteresting. Perhaps Amis was trying to be clever and put together a bunch of odd bits that he had flying around his office, or maybe he thought that his fame would allow him to publish anything, but wow (again) this book was bad. 

The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett

Probably my favourite book by Alan Bennett. The market is saturated with 90-page novellas that are meant to make readers laugh. This one didn’t make me laugh, but it did make me smile – and that’s probably a much greater accomplishment.

An even greater accomplishment is that, despite the fact that the monarch portrayed has probably got very little to do with the actual Elizabeth II, Bennett actually made me like the Queen a lot more (something that, at the London Olympics, also James Bond managed to do). I mean, who wouldn’t like to have a Head of State who sneaks out to read Dickens and Hardy (and Proust too, but why? Why? Why should anyone do that to him/herself?!?)

I wish there was someone in Italy capable of producing something this enjoyable. I’m not saying a masterpiece (this book is lovely, but it isn’t one), but something so delicate. Unfortunately, most Italian writers have spent their last 20 years copying themselves (at best) or failing to reinvent the wheel (at worst).