simon

At long, long last arrives the word from the Man himself. The book that fans and critics having been waiting years for hits the shelves and the question is, was it worth the wait? For those hoping for a blow-by-blow account of the construction of some of the greatest songs in the canon of popular music, a full revelation of the meaning of his lyrics or even a detailed account of Dylan’s everyday life for forty-five years will be disappointed, for this is no warts and all autobiography. Rather Bob offers up his reflections on what he considers key periods of his life and those people who have b

I also thought it was terrible - it reminded me of the sort of "adventure" stories I used to read as a kid, only they usually had better characterisations and slightly less ludicrous plot developments. There were simply far too many convenient coincidences for the plot to be in any way credible. And I'm sure that everyone could see the way the story was going to end up a hundred pages before the end of the book!

I was recently given a copy of the Da Vinci code as a present and, having heard lots of enthusiastic comments about it, was rather looking forward to reading it. What a disappointment, then, to find this novel to be predictable in its plotting and with characterisations that would be scarcely credible on the set of Eastenders. No doubt the author is not complaining, having sold millions of copies already but the whole book reeked of an effort cynically churned out for the inevitable Hollywood adaptation. Fortunately, it was so laughably simplistic I got through it in a couple of days!