The Times Gives Away The Stupidest Book in the World

Last summer The Times newspaper gave away free copies of classic Penguin novels, from Austen to Tolstoy. That was very nice of them.

This year they’ve pulled the same trick, but the quality of the giveaway has dipped a little.

Today’s offering, which I can confidently assert is the stupidest book ever published, is good evidence of that fact.

Alastair Maclean’s UNACO: Hostage Tower by John Denis is a sizzling roller-coaster of a novel, 270-pages long, 200 words to a page, adapted from a television episode. It is written in a very large font.

Two quotes from this work will be enough to make my point.

The first is from the back-cover blurb:

“When the mission is impossible, who do you call?* UNACO. They answer to no one — officially they don’t exist. Created to battle a growing army of super-criminals and international terrorists, the UN Anti-Crime Organization comprises elite specialists from around the globe:** CW Whitlock — strong, smart and stealthy, it’s hard to stop this insertions specialist.*** Sabrina Carver, beautiful, deadly, with a soft-spot for diamonds,**** and Mike Graham — ex CIA, burnt-out, this weapon’s expert’s reliability is in question.***** Their assignment? Stop an ingenious enemy who plans to kidnap the US president’s mother and hold both her — and the Eiffel Tower — to ransom.” ******

* Ghostbusters?
** Like the one that actually exists. But deadlier, presumably.
*** Note the subtle double entendre there. Insertion. Guffaw.
**** Like a crow. A deadly, female crow.
***** I don’t want to spoil the book but I reckon Mike Graham’s jam is spread on the wrong side of the croissant.
****** Best plan ever. As one of the world’s most visible and see-through monuments, the Eiffel Tower is clearly the ideal place to hide the president’s mum.

The second sentence I have chosen to illustrate this book’s idiocy is the opening line of the novel. This is as far as I have read so far.

“Lorenz von Beck had three hours to kill. For a man to whom killing came easily, it was time enough. But on that fine, pastel-golden Paris day, von beck had nothing to kill but time.”

I will, of course, be reading the whole thing.

Update: Here’s another sentence that I couldn’t resist posting.

“Chapter One: It was a sheltered place, 28 miles from Stuttgart, a plateau in wooded country and hardly ever overflown. It made an ideal secret firing range. The US Army used the unfenced fields to test their newest toy, the General Electric Lap Laser Gun.”

Pleasure overload.

Why I Continue To Support The North Korean Football Team

Despite my enthusiasm for the black comedy of North Korea’s Politburo-Brand (TM) Football, I had fully expected the People’s Democratic Supermen to fall over and crumble like a poorly constructed statue of Stalin in the rubble of Leningrad. Not only is there no reason for their team to be any good — virtually none of the players are pros, since the concept of professional sports runs slightly upstream against the whole Glorious Equality thing — but their opening game was against Brazil, who I understand are fairly handy in a kickabout. Incredibly, it didn’t turn out that way. Oh sure — the Northie’s lost. And deservingly. But they held the South Americans to a measly 2-1 result and scored a pretty impressive goal. Even better they (allegedly) paid some Chinese actors to support them from the stands instead of allowing their own citizens to attend, which is amazing in an Iron Curtain sort of way, and their best player was Jong Tae-Se, who was technically born in Japan, drives a Hummer and listens to Tupac, meaning Kim Jong-Il probably can’t show the highlights on North Korean TV after all. Brilliant. Let’s just hope their grit, determination and hard work doesn’t also exist within the million-strong North Korean army, because if it does they’ll probably be in Vienna by July.

“We already know something about what motivates and prevents people from engaging with the news - whether in a call-in radio show or an ambitious crowdsourced project online. When newsrooms are planning these initiatives, it is worth considering if we have given people a reason to contribute - beyond simply contributing.”

— BBC Journalism Blog