Why Read?

* Please note from the get-go that this posting is likely to contain intellectual snobbery and sexism of a grade that may well make you vomit up all your clockwork. Readers of a sensitive disposition would do better to fuck off now. *

Last week, I went for an interview at Borders Books. Yeah, that's right - the bookshop. (As you'll note from the footnote at the end of the last post, I got sacked a couple of weeks ago, but I'll explore that particular piece of outrage-fodder when I'm feeling more sweary.) During the interview, the fella asked me various questions (as interviewers are often wont), but in amongst the usual bullshit about teamwork and time management, he asked a question that unleashed - to our mutual surprise - a moiling pot of rage that caused me to have to change my sitting position excitedly to contain it. He asked me what I thought of Waterstones.

Now let me interject at this point that I used to have a friend that worked at Waterstones a few years ago, and from time to time I'd go and meet her in the pub with her workmates. My rage against Waterstones isn't in any way related to the fact that they were the most pretentious and affected shop assistants in the country, nor was it related to the fact that I had to sit through hours and hours of them trying to remain civil with each other whilst arguing desperately about which of them was cleverest (when we all knew it was me, as I was the only one earning more than minimum wage). No, the pot of rage whose lid the interviewer had so carelessly kicked off was a relatively fresh one.

So what was my problem then? Well, I told him there was something about Waterstones that rubbed me up the wrong way. Only as I elaborated did I begin to realise what it was. I suggested that I found the atmosphere in Waterstones one of Sunday-Telegraph stuffiness, what with the thick red carpet and piped classical music. But this on its own wouldn't bother me especially. I went further. I explained that such an atmosphere seemed to be created to support the notion that reading a book made you part of some sort of elite. I suggested that Waterstones liked to make their customers feel elevated above the plebs just because they were buying a fucking book (which isn't exactly an uncommon marketing strategy), and I found the whole pretence unnecessarily jarring and exclusivist. I felt the need then to finish by opining that Borders, of course, was much more relaxed and inclusive.

A collective sigh of relief went up when I concluded and my face uncontorted. The interviewer and his note-taker may or may not have been aware of the abyss of anger they'd just skirted, but luckily they were spared having me pull them down into it. If I hadn't been so collected, I would have taken them down into the chasm into which we are now about to nosedive.

So what's my problem with people patting themselves on the back for reading? Surely the more people read, the better? Well, you'd think. On the surface this is true. However, scrape away the platitudes and truisms and you'll realise that this is wrong. Dead wrong. Because these days, most books are just ringtones with pages.

Example - the ingredients for a Richard & Judy Bookclub book of the month are as follows: Take a mundane object or profession, add it to an exotic place name, give the author a foreign-sounding name = 1 million plus sales. The following may or may not be genuine books - see if you can tell:

The Bellows-Mender of Tehran by Thebill Isgriti
A Box-Kite Above Belgrade by Lika Pudenda
The Trinidadian Cinema Projectionist's Assistant by Aureola da Silva
The Dog-Botherer of Tibilisi by Tenanz Supa
The Librarian of Pretoria by Castle Greyskull

Did you spot the genuine one? (Answers next time.) And who's reading these criminal wastes of ink? I'll tell you who: women. The pointless flow of words and punctuation amounts to a few hours of nothing but pink noise; a three-hundred-odd page journey into perfume-scented, faux-mystic soap opera. If there's any male other than Richard Madeley that reads this shit, then I shall cut my cock off in disgust.

Men, incidentally, are catered for with 'humour' titles. You know the sort of thing: Doing Some Painfully-Contrived Task Whilst Being Significantly Less Funny Than Cancer by Tony 'Bastard' Hawks, or Is It Just Me Or Is This Book Not Funny In Any Way?, etc., etc.. These are generally books that are funny in the same sort of way that radio comedy is funny (i.e. not at all), but are just as smug and self-satisfied.

But Waterstones like to make their customers think that by buying these disservices to trees, they are undertaking some huge intellectual journey that will enrich their soul and deepen their hearts. Yeah, right. And I just downloaded the Crazy Frog reading TS Eliot. Waterstones can kiss my arse. They can take their classical music and their nose-in-the-air demeanour and their stupid posh customers and their wanky magazine and their staff reviews and their recommendations of the week and fuck right off. Do yourself a favour - next time you buy a book, get it from Amazon. At least the person who fetches it from the giant, dark warehouse is going to have his feet firmly on the ground.

* I think this might be my most offensive posting to date. What do you think? Perhaps you think I haven't gone far enough. Post your comments below.