- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Extract from a Grauniad book review:
Why, you'll be asking yourself idly this Christmas, do pizzas come in square boxes? Where, as a matter of passing interest, is the middle of nowhere? Was cheese, as has been suggested, originally made from breast milk? Is it possible to bore someone to death? And, ultimately, that great imponderable, why can't someone drive over Jeremy Clarkson's writing fingers, ideally using a flaming vintage Maserati containing a bound and gagged Michael Winner?
All but the last of these questions come from the book being touted as this year's can't-miss, downstairs-loo-fixture of a dead-cert publishing-phenomenon-cum-stocking-filler sensation, namely Do Ants Have Arseholes? And 101 Other Bloody Ridiculous Questions. It is likely to be the publishing equivalent of the top Christmas song in the charts, and just as lucrative, if meritless (nobody won the Booker with a stocking filler; nobody got a Nobel, at least not one for literature, by musing on ants' bottoms).
It took two grown men - Jon Butler and Bruno Vincent - to write Do Ants Have Arseholes?, but any sozzled person can read it, and will do, probably after a nice doze in front of the Queen on Christmas Day. The book is topping the amazon.co.uk bestsellers list, Nigella's cardiac challenge of a cookbook having lost its blowsy allure. It is outselling other favourites to be this year's Christmas bestseller, such as Lewis Hamilton's autobiography, Russell Brand's My Booky Wook, Terry Pratchett's new novel and even Clarkson's Don't Stop Me Now. For the last one at least, Messrs Butler and Vincent, much thanks.
The question asked in the title, one might have thought, provokes two supplementary questions. First, if ants don't, then what, you know, happens to them after dinner - do they explode? Second, what kind of a person have you become that a relative, friend or lover thinks it appropriate to buy you a present with the word "arseholes" screaming in pink from its spine?
"The book's a spoof of those pop science titles that were spin-offs from New Scientist columns like Does Anything Eat Wasps?, which were great Christmas bestsellers in 2005 and 2006," says Kes Nielsen, head of book buying at amazon.co.uk. "But what is unusual is that it is outselling, by something like 40%, the New Scientist book published for Christmas called How to Fossilise Your Hamster, which was aimed at repeating those successes. The spoof version is outselling the genuine release. But then spoofs often do well in Britain, especially at Christmas." Which is probably vexing for Profile, the small publisher that has been responsible for infesting British bookshops with wasps, penguins and hamsters during recent Christmases, but not for Little, Brown, under whose Sphere imprint appears the volume the publishing world is learning to refer to as Arseholes
Ingeniously, the book takes apart a seasonal publishing trend and, more importantly, lampoons the fact-besotted, humour-befuddled British sensibility, while making lots of money from both. It often seems like a dig at not just the Guardian's Notes and Queries column, but also its Corrections and Clarifications column (or Corrections and Clarfications, as it is always referred to in Arseholes). "What have the Romans ever done for us?" comes the question. To which comes the rhetorical reply: "Who can imagine an England without ceramic cups and saucers, olive oil, antimacassars, Connect Four, dildos, frozen peas and hoodies?" How long is the longest noun-only tabloid headline ever? Read the book and find out the wrong, but entertaining, answer.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/stor ... 80,00.html
Why, you'll be asking yourself idly this Christmas, do pizzas come in square boxes? Where, as a matter of passing interest, is the middle of nowhere? Was cheese, as has been suggested, originally made from breast milk? Is it possible to bore someone to death? And, ultimately, that great imponderable, why can't someone drive over Jeremy Clarkson's writing fingers, ideally using a flaming vintage Maserati containing a bound and gagged Michael Winner?
All but the last of these questions come from the book being touted as this year's can't-miss, downstairs-loo-fixture of a dead-cert publishing-phenomenon-cum-stocking-filler sensation, namely Do Ants Have Arseholes? And 101 Other Bloody Ridiculous Questions. It is likely to be the publishing equivalent of the top Christmas song in the charts, and just as lucrative, if meritless (nobody won the Booker with a stocking filler; nobody got a Nobel, at least not one for literature, by musing on ants' bottoms).
It took two grown men - Jon Butler and Bruno Vincent - to write Do Ants Have Arseholes?, but any sozzled person can read it, and will do, probably after a nice doze in front of the Queen on Christmas Day. The book is topping the amazon.co.uk bestsellers list, Nigella's cardiac challenge of a cookbook having lost its blowsy allure. It is outselling other favourites to be this year's Christmas bestseller, such as Lewis Hamilton's autobiography, Russell Brand's My Booky Wook, Terry Pratchett's new novel and even Clarkson's Don't Stop Me Now. For the last one at least, Messrs Butler and Vincent, much thanks.
The question asked in the title, one might have thought, provokes two supplementary questions. First, if ants don't, then what, you know, happens to them after dinner - do they explode? Second, what kind of a person have you become that a relative, friend or lover thinks it appropriate to buy you a present with the word "arseholes" screaming in pink from its spine?
"The book's a spoof of those pop science titles that were spin-offs from New Scientist columns like Does Anything Eat Wasps?, which were great Christmas bestsellers in 2005 and 2006," says Kes Nielsen, head of book buying at amazon.co.uk. "But what is unusual is that it is outselling, by something like 40%, the New Scientist book published for Christmas called How to Fossilise Your Hamster, which was aimed at repeating those successes. The spoof version is outselling the genuine release. But then spoofs often do well in Britain, especially at Christmas." Which is probably vexing for Profile, the small publisher that has been responsible for infesting British bookshops with wasps, penguins and hamsters during recent Christmases, but not for Little, Brown, under whose Sphere imprint appears the volume the publishing world is learning to refer to as Arseholes
Ingeniously, the book takes apart a seasonal publishing trend and, more importantly, lampoons the fact-besotted, humour-befuddled British sensibility, while making lots of money from both. It often seems like a dig at not just the Guardian's Notes and Queries column, but also its Corrections and Clarifications column (or Corrections and Clarfications, as it is always referred to in Arseholes). "What have the Romans ever done for us?" comes the question. To which comes the rhetorical reply: "Who can imagine an England without ceramic cups and saucers, olive oil, antimacassars, Connect Four, dildos, frozen peas and hoodies?" How long is the longest noun-only tabloid headline ever? Read the book and find out the wrong, but entertaining, answer.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/stor ... 80,00.html
