| Bad Book Reviews on 10:40 - Apr 19 with 2075 views | blue_oyster |
Reading the Steve Bruce clips reminds me of Irvine Welsh. |  |
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| Bad Book Reviews on 10:54 - Apr 19 with 2046 views | Steve_M |
William Dalrymple's review of Michael Gove's Celsius 7/7 was excellent. I can't find it at the moment but the jist is:
In a scathing review of Celsius 7/7, however, the acclaimed writer and historian William Dalrymple, author of several award-winning books on Islam and Muslims, accused Gove of penning a “confused epic of simplistic incomprehension riddled with more factual errors and misconceptions than any book I have come across in two decades of reviewing books on this subject”.
Gove, Dalrymple noted, “has little knowledge of Islamic history, theology or culture” and has “never lived in the Middle East, indeed has barely set foot in a Muslim country”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/04/michael-gove-islam_n_5443576.html |  |
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| Bad Book Reviews on 10:57 - Apr 19 with 2037 views | Steve_M |
| Bad Book Reviews on 10:54 - Apr 19 by Steve_M |
William Dalrymple's review of Michael Gove's Celsius 7/7 was excellent. I can't find it at the moment but the jist is:
In a scathing review of Celsius 7/7, however, the acclaimed writer and historian William Dalrymple, author of several award-winning books on Islam and Muslims, accused Gove of penning a “confused epic of simplistic incomprehension riddled with more factual errors and misconceptions than any book I have come across in two decades of reviewing books on this subject”.
Gove, Dalrymple noted, “has little knowledge of Islamic history, theology or culture” and has “never lived in the Middle East, indeed has barely set foot in a Muslim country”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/04/michael-gove-islam_n_5443576.html |
Ah, more here. It turns out Gove was more right on the Islamification of Saddam's Iraq, and thus the later lead in to ISIS, than the review credits.
A prominent example of the sort of pundit who has spoon-fed neocon mythologies to the British public for the past few years is Michael Gove. Gove has never lived in the Middle East, indeed has barely set foot in a Muslim country. He has little knowledge of Islamic history, theology or culture — in Celsius 7/7 he just takes the line of Bernard Lewis on these matters; nor does he speak any Islamic language. None of this, however, has prevented his being billed, on his book’s dust jacket, “one of Britain’s leading writers and thinkers on terrorism
Gove’s book is a confused epic of simplistic incomprehension riddled with more factual errors and misconceptions than any book I have come across in two decades of reviewing books on this subject. Thus, we are solemnly told, for example, that during the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, the Palestinian population from Jenin to Hebron was “herded into, and kept penned up inside, refugee camps”, an idea as novel as it is comically ridiculous and ahistorical. During this period, towns such as Ramallah became sleepy backwaters, quite free from the land seizure and apartheid policies of Arab-free Israeli settlements and Arab-free road networks that followed the Israeli occupation — realities entirely at odds with what Gove calls Israel’s “culture of equality.
Gove rewrites history when he alleges that it was the “appeasement” of the Palestinians represented by the Oslo peace process that encouraged Al-Qaeda to launch the 9/11 attacks. In fact it was the violent repression that followed Israel’s unilateral ending of peace talks that formed the background to the attacks. Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, has written that the repressive campaign waged against the second intifada by Sharon in Autumn 2002 provided Al-Qaeda’s opportunity: as the corpses of dead children piled up, Al-Zawahiri realised that here was the rallying cry that could unite the Muslim world…
Gove is also quite wrong that few Muslims and Islamists really mind what Israel does to the Palestinians and Lebanese, and that it is “what Israel is, rather than what Israel does” that really provokes resistance. Instead, Israeli violence is the principal cause of anti-American anger — Bin Laden has written that it was the sight of US support for the Israeli bombing of Beirut in 1982 that initially radicalised him: “I still remember the blood torn limbs, the women and children massacred. Houses were being destroyed and tower blocks collapsing…As I looked on those destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America.
Throughout Gove’s book, neocon myths are reheated and served up, despite being discredited most recently by the 2005 CIA report…Saddam, believes Gove, “invited Islamists into Iraq”; “was determined to pursue his WMD programme”, and “dreamt of emulating” 9/11, strongly suggesting the central lie of Saddam’s non-existent links with 9/11…
All terrorist violence is contemptible. But just because we condemn does not mean that we should not strive to analyze accurately. It is exactly the sort of woolly elisions and linkages that Gove indulges in that have got us into the trouble we are now in. None of this would matter if Gove were still ring-fenced within his op-ed-page padded cell; horrifyingly, he now sits in the Conservative shadow cabinet and is credited with having influence on Conservative policy in the region. Worse still, this book was named as the one most taken by British MPs on their summer holidays. Blair was bad enough, the blind leading the blind; now it seems the madmen have taken over the asylum. | |
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| Bad Book Reviews on 11:30 - Apr 19 with 1998 views | connorscontract |
It's been posted before, and anyone reading it will need some heavy duty mind-bleach afterwards, but for anybody who grew up in the late 70's this collection of extracts, rather than a review per se, is the literary equivalent of going on the world's scariest roller coaster whilst off-your-tits on mescaline:
https://storify.com/Eamonn_Forde/the-krankies-joint-autobiography-condensed
The comedian Robin Ince used to tour a show called Book Club, where he and other comedians would read extracts from the worst books they could find in charity shops. Syd Little's autobiography fared particularly badly. |  | | |
| Bad Book Reviews on 12:38 - Apr 19 with 1877 views | Illinoisblue |
| Bad Book Reviews on 11:30 - Apr 19 by connorscontract |
It's been posted before, and anyone reading it will need some heavy duty mind-bleach afterwards, but for anybody who grew up in the late 70's this collection of extracts, rather than a review per se, is the literary equivalent of going on the world's scariest roller coaster whilst off-your-tits on mescaline:
https://storify.com/Eamonn_Forde/the-krankies-joint-autobiography-condensed
The comedian Robin Ince used to tour a show called Book Club, where he and other comedians would read extracts from the worst books they could find in charity shops. Syd Little's autobiography fared particularly badly. |
Ha! I thought for sure this was going to be the Lovejoy book review |  |
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| Bad Book Reviews on 13:43 - Apr 19 with 1788 views | footers |
| Bad Book Reviews on 11:30 - Apr 19 by connorscontract |
It's been posted before, and anyone reading it will need some heavy duty mind-bleach afterwards, but for anybody who grew up in the late 70's this collection of extracts, rather than a review per se, is the literary equivalent of going on the world's scariest roller coaster whilst off-your-tits on mescaline:
https://storify.com/Eamonn_Forde/the-krankies-joint-autobiography-condensed
The comedian Robin Ince used to tour a show called Book Club, where he and other comedians would read extracts from the worst books they could find in charity shops. Syd Little's autobiography fared particularly badly. |
Congratulations, that has made my day. Wasn't around in the '70s but did see a Krankies show at a holiday park as a kid... frightening stuff!
And cheers for the other contributions! Some great reading there, especially reminding me of the Lovejoy book... god, what an arse. Read the free bits on Amazon of that, and how little he knows about football is insane- how the hell did he land a job presenting a football show, or anything? Jesus wept. |  |
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| Bad Book Reviews on 14:36 - Apr 19 with 1714 views | Johnny_Boy |
| Bad Book Reviews on 11:30 - Apr 19 by connorscontract |
It's been posted before, and anyone reading it will need some heavy duty mind-bleach afterwards, but for anybody who grew up in the late 70's this collection of extracts, rather than a review per se, is the literary equivalent of going on the world's scariest roller coaster whilst off-your-tits on mescaline:
https://storify.com/Eamonn_Forde/the-krankies-joint-autobiography-condensed
The comedian Robin Ince used to tour a show called Book Club, where he and other comedians would read extracts from the worst books they could find in charity shops. Syd Little's autobiography fared particularly badly. |
The Tony Blackburn one is a little more grown-up than the mind-warping Krankies book, but it's choc full of Partridge style anecdotes + numerous "needless to say, I had the last laugh" chapter finishes. |  | | |
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