kingjason's review
4.0
This book opens with a legal disclaimer: "The Scottish Arts Council strongly repudiate all the claims made in this novel" So I did what any good reader would do, travelled to Scotland and read the book there. In their faces!
I don't think a book has abused this reader as much as this one has, insult after insult is hurled in the reader's direction, daring them to continue. Your favourite authors will also be abused filling you with rage as you turn each page. Nicholls makes up words just to piss you off. And the book has no flow at all, bouncing all over the place. Still it made the 1001 classic books I read before this one seem bland beyond belief.
You get some truly stunning paragraphs, my favourite came right at the beginning:
"Like most sane human beings, his true calling was sitting in a vacant room with the blinds drawn in a comfortable chair reading text running from left to right, verso to recto, for hours at a time."
There were some real laugh out loud moments, the author's opinion on Goodreads reviews of crappy romance novels full of animated gifs which mean you spend ages scrolling down the page to get past to something worth reading was pure class. If I had more stamina I would fill this review with Gifs, but I can't bring myself to do it.
I have to admit though I did start to struggle a bit near the end, the authors inane lists, designed to annoy, did in fact start to annoy, it was probably an illusion but they seemed to get longer and longer. It's all worth it though for the last chapter, very reminiscent of Trainspotting "Choose life" clip, a call to arms to get people reading, deserves to be made into posters and pasted in libraries and bookshops everywhere.
So go on, give this a go, it might change your outlook on life or something.
Blog review is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018/08/22/the-1002nd-book-to-read-before-you-die-by-m-j-nicholls/
I don't think a book has abused this reader as much as this one has, insult after insult is hurled in the reader's direction, daring them to continue. Your favourite authors will also be abused filling you with rage as you turn each page. Nicholls makes up words just to piss you off. And the book has no flow at all, bouncing all over the place. Still it made the 1001 classic books I read before this one seem bland beyond belief.
You get some truly stunning paragraphs, my favourite came right at the beginning:
"Like most sane human beings, his true calling was sitting in a vacant room with the blinds drawn in a comfortable chair reading text running from left to right, verso to recto, for hours at a time."
There were some real laugh out loud moments, the author's opinion on Goodreads reviews of crappy romance novels full of animated gifs which mean you spend ages scrolling down the page to get past to something worth reading was pure class. If I had more stamina I would fill this review with Gifs, but I can't bring myself to do it.
I have to admit though I did start to struggle a bit near the end, the authors inane lists, designed to annoy, did in fact start to annoy, it was probably an illusion but they seemed to get longer and longer. It's all worth it though for the last chapter, very reminiscent of Trainspotting "Choose life" clip, a call to arms to get people reading, deserves to be made into posters and pasted in libraries and bookshops everywhere.
So go on, give this a go, it might change your outlook on life or something.
Blog review is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018/08/22/the-1002nd-book-to-read-before-you-die-by-m-j-nicholls/
matthewmansell's review
2.0
Reads like a joke that BJ Johnson-bro is telling to you, you’re aged 25/6 now four years plus removed from a 2.1 in english literature currently living with Boyfriend - a DavidFosterWallace-bro - and as someone who has only read two books since graduation: Little Women for the 3rd time, (this is the excuse for the lack of reading made as the existential crisis that occurred slowly payslip by payslip thrusting you towards the realisation that you are more like Amy than you had ever previously imagined) and half of The Testaments, a gift from Parents because they remember how much you ‘loved’ the first one’ when you were ‘sixteen’ which DFW-bro Boyfriend bullies you about because you ‘like’ “such basic entry level fiction, like, you don’t have to read Infinite Jest because you know I’m not like one of those ‘bois’ but you should at least read more, maybe American Psycho, it’s just begging to be a feminist classic you know”, to which you just couldn’t get into Atwood’s Booker Prize Winner and just sat down with a Sally Rooney instead, you realise that his joke is quite clever because it’s about a DFW-bro who retells the plot of a ‘mysterious novel set in Scotland about a madman hoping to read 1001 books, whose original manuscript was written in French free of style’ but that he’s unsure about the original language because he hasn’t studied French since Year 9 and it becomes clear that this is just a distraction in the hopes that he can chat you up whilst he slyly slides his hand slowly up your leg grasping for that thigh or perhaps taking a chance to try and cup your left breast, only for you to realise that BS Johnson-bro is doing the same, only for then for you to look down at the hand and see that it belongs to DFW-bro Boyfriend when you quickly throw his hand away and storm off to the bar, order a single vodka tonic and wonder how long, ‘probably half hour’, before one makes the other an offer of sodomy in vain of a joke about how much they both love Sade’s 100 Days of Sodom.
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