2017 Reading Challenge discussion

The obvious route to finding a book for this category--looking for books with average ratings of less than 3 stars on Goodreads--completely eluded me. Instead, I browsed for hours (they were fun hours) for books reviewed poorly in publications by more widely read critics.

That's how I found out about The Omnivore and the Hatchet Job of the Year Award which "is for the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months". Shortlisted for the 2014 prize (the winner was AA Gill's review of Autobiography by musician Morissey), Hedley Twidle's New Statesman review of Theroux's 2013 travel essay heaps insult upon injury (a "tour de force of pseudo-ethnography") and makes many sharp points that I found myself agreeing with. Twidle isn't alone. Craig Fehrman, writing in The Boston Globe noted that "[t]he personal sections feel monotonous and detail-free — perhaps because the author needed to pad his book after cutting the trip short, although Fehrman does find no lack of things to admire in the work.

But I found so much to appreciate in the book that I gave it 4 stars; and the average of Goodread's reviews is 3.85 stars.

You can find Twidle's and Fehrman's reviews on-line, so I won't quote any more of them here. The book is about Theroux's journey from Cape Town to Angola, and Twidle is a university lecturer in Cape Town, no doubt the possessor of many West African experiences that conflict with Theroux's. I enjoyed the way Theroux paints details with words ("...but of course being a frontier [Oshikango] is only half a town, walled of from its other side by a high chainlink fence...") that leave little sketches behind as the reader moves from page to page.

Theroux's opinion of foreign aid informs much of the book. For me it was an education, a view I'm likely to think of whenever I read and hear about philanthropic programs in the future.

22 out of 50 / 52.

I was just coming to add this information here, too. Glad to see it's already on this board. I was having trouble "accepting" any book based solely on a bad Amazon review or the like. Also, I didn't like the idea that I could use a bad review on a book that is now seen as a classic. I'm not criticizing others for being okay with this, I'm simply saying that I was having trouble justifying it for my list. I suppose I take the "challenge" part of this too seriously, which is what makes this particular category so difficult for me.

Even after looking at these "bad" reviews, if I look at the book on Amazon or Goodreads and find that a good number of people praise the book, then I have trouble considering that book for this slot. I suppose I'm just going to have to reconcile myself to the fact that there will be no book out there that a group of people don't find entertaining. No blanket, "bad" book, per se.

Here's the link to the Hatchet Job of the Year Award page on the site from The Omnivore. At the top of the page, you will see a link to take you to both the shortlisted reviews and winners for the previous two years (it's been an annual award only since 2012).