Tuesday, August 24, 2010

So bad it is almost beyond belief

kw: book reviews, fiction, advice, anthologies

On three or four occasions, I've read a little of a book and decided it is so bad I would not even dignify it with a review. It didn't take me long to realize that the latest book is in another category entirely. I read the two opening sections, two random ones in the middle, and that was plenty. You're a Horrible Person, But I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice, edited by Eric Spitznagel (I suspect a composite pseudonym here), is in a category that cannot be described by the A through F grade range we all know and love. I grade it an H-, for lower than Hell.

It is clearly intended to be humorous. It ranges instead from banal to hateful. The editor(s) solicited phony advice column screeds from 45 sundry celebrities, and published the result. This isn't a case of offensive material, though plenty of it is sufficiently obscene or obtuse or grotesque. It is, in the end, simply a disappointment. Pity.

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