Thirty-six books I haven't read

Aiaiaiaiaiiiiiiiiii.

I say this because I’ve just counted how many unread books are sitting, pages all crisp and un-dog-eared, on my bookshelf.

Thirty-six.  Aiaiaiaiaiiiiiiiiii.

So I’m going to cheat. B*gger the books I’ve been reading. Here’s what I’ve been avoiding. Grouped into loose categories and accompanied by a few dog-ate-my-homework excuses.

Should have read yonks ago

London the Biography – long
The Corner – do five seasons of The Wire get me out of jail free?
Homicide  – as above
The Glass Bead Game – the prologue is TEDIOUS
Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy – should read something on the financial crisis… but is this The One?
The Map that Changed the World ­– borrowed … must read and post back
Baby No-Eyes – I quite like Patricia Grace… no excuse to hand
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree
How to be Alone – one and a half essays into it… must try harder.  See New Year’s resolutions
The Three Musketeers – waiting for someone else to finish it. YOU know who you are 

Still on the shelf for the sake of appearance
Balzac: Nine Tales from Les Contes Drolatiques – sounds hard
The Great War for Civilisation – has the moment passed?

Erring too much on the side of non-fiction and other unlikely contenders…
The Collapse of Globalism
Brothers Grimm Complete Fairy Stories  – ‘and then the soldier cut off the witch’s head’… tedious
Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You  – I bet it can
Dreams from my Father – sorry Mr President… I do hear you have a particular way with words
Stonefish – dunno, didn’t read The Bone People…
A Short History of Nearly Everything – got the text message bed-time version back in 2005
No 1. Ladies Detective Agency  – sigh
The Trouble with Physics  – it sounds too, too difficult, is the trouble
Wool to Weta 
Hitler’s Empire – he was a bad man…

Left by a friend, sibling or parent
The Unconsoled
Tales from Firozsha Baag
Touching from a Distance
The Harmony Silk Factory

The Art of Power

Baudolino

Meh!
John the Revelator – sorry McGee
Blood River – ditto
The Binding Chair
Prochownik’s Dream

On the shelf fewer than six months
A History of God
Mao: the Unknown Story
Out of Mao’s Shadow
Alone in Berlin

American Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?

American Psycho killer, the Talking Heads might warble sinisterly over Patrick Bateman’s six-foot Duntech Sovereign 2001 speakers in Brazilian rosewood… qu'est-ce que c'est?

Qu'est-ce que c'est, indeed, Mr Easton Ellis… qu'est-ce que c'est?

Brutal, clever, despicable and funny. One of the better (near best) and one of the worst books I’ve read.

You know the premise, you’ve probably seen Christian Bale (perfectly cast, I bet) as Patrick Bateman: Wall Street wealthy, obsessed with luxury goods, restaurant reservations, torture, mutilation and murder (animals, children, women, homeless people, he’s not picky – though he seems to leave blokes with jobs alone, give or take a work rival and a taxi driver).

Despite this year marking its 20^th birthday, it felt like a pretty contemporary read. The technology, fashion and music are old but the themes are familiar: a glut of vapid pop culture, a recession, a rise in homelessness to match it, a load of moneyed chaps in designer pinstripes who protest they’ve got nothing to do with it all (Bateman goes a step further and gouges out a homeless man’s eye). Trade Bateman’s Sony Walkman for an iPod touch, swap Les Misérables for the Glee soundtrack and abracadabra alacazam … it could be 2011, no?

And so, the book hypothesizes, satirically: preppy consumerism and bland vanilla culture spawns knife-wielding psychosis (I was so bored listening to Genesis, Whitney Houston and the English cast of Les Mis on CD that I just had to kill someone…) or perhaps just that such a culture could disguise such a psychosis.

At any rate, living in a city that pays a fair bit of homage to the bling (I present you with the queues outside Chanel in Tsim Sha Tsui on 23 December) it feels very relevant.

So what did I like? The obsessive descriptions of who furniture, clothes and anything else consumable was ‘by’; Patrick’s fixation with his David Onica painting (right before he kills his ex with a nail gun, she lets slip that he’s hung it upside down); the routine mistaken identity – all the guys he knows have the same haircuts, suits, girls...

But of course I hated the decapitation, the cannibalism and vicious violence against women and particularly, the scene with the rat. Though the title gives it away, right? It’s a book about a psycho killer, the violence is there for a reason. Is it gratuitous? Yes. Did I stop reading it word for word towards the end? Yes. If I were his editor, would I have asked Bret Easton Ellis to take out some of the gory bits? Probably not. And do I think it would be a better book without it? No.

So… if you don’t have the stomach for gut-drenched horror, I say run, run, run, run, run, run, run awaaaaaay from part-time banker, full-time homicidal maniac and Talking Heads fan Patrick Bateman. If you’re okay with skim reading, and the blackest of black-hearted satire then I say do it (read it in the afternoon when it’s sunny and you know the world is not such a bad place).

Apologies to Christian Bale, I don't think I'll ever be able to watch the movie. I couldn’t handle the rat scene.