Bookie Wookies (Without Russell Brand of course)

Hola, book review time! Here’s what I’ve read over the past couple of months

Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham.

I’ve loved some of his other stuff that I’ve read-Cakes and Ale is one of my favourite books of all time- but this prolonged vanity exercise in how to depress your reader and infuriate them with your protagonist’s backboneless buffoonery has led me to have to quit good ole Maughy. It’s also supposed to be all but a memoir of his twenties. Ye gads, no wonder he buggered off to the south of France. Wouldn’t you?

Still want to read The Painted Veil though. Not even a movie version with Naomi Watts in it could dampen my enthusiasm for that.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson

Oh, those Swedes! I bought the first one in the series last year because it was on cheap, got a little addicted and read it in two days. Then did the same with this one. It’s still a crime thriller but it definitely counts as a good one. Howevs one cannot say one enjoys reading about a protagonist who is loosely based on the author getting his end away with every woman he meets because there’s some sort of animal magnetism about a commitment phobe divorced serial adulterer journalist in his mid forties. Also the female lead character is bisexual and we get never ending scenes with her and her lesbian lover having muff fun in the first half before he remembers to start the action. Also, all other female characters seem to have their sex lives explained to us but not the male characters. Which is odd.

Also, Sweden is commonly regarded as a utopia (Albeit a cold one). And yet apparently it’s corrupt from top to bottom with a completely useless social services and healthcare system that couldn’t get itself out of a wet paper bag. But que sera and all that jazz. This is a crime thriller after all.

Mapp and Lucia, E.F. Benson

Camper than a row of pink tents with a bunch of gay guys on poppers having sex in them while Kylie and Lady Gaga run around outside having a diva-off. Funny, fluffy, fun.

Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh.

I hate Stephen Fry. I hate Catholicism. I hate Brideshead Revisited. I hate spoofs and satire when they go overboard and fall into the eye-rolling silliness and farce category.

Put all these things together and you’ll understand why I skimmed several parts of this book. Interesting subject matter. Badly, badly executed.

Have also read some Brontë but words cannot bring themselves to discuss it. Am currently reading the third and final instalment of the Swedish lesbian tale as well. Also about to start on Bram stoker’s Dracula which I’m really looking forward to.