5 Books I definitely do not love (part 5)

Well - what horror has been reserved for this slot? I have gone with the only book which not only made me really angry, but made me have strong feelings of dislike for the author, someone who I had previously thought was cool. 5. Silent Bob Speaks - Kevin Smith This book really, really annoyed me. I had been a long-time fan of Kevin Smith's films, and I would still say that Clerks is one of my favourite movies, but the man behind them came across in this book as a complete James Blunt. I could put up with the slightly vile way in which he referred to his wife on the grounds that she puts up with it and him and so has obviously made her peace with being called 'the woman who lets me fuck her'. I could put up with the sycophancy - we all have people we admire, and sometimes it is easy to be rapturously caught up in your personal relationship with them and fail to realise that you come across like someone with an ulterior motive for banging on about how fabulous they are. But what really annoyed me was his claim that Michael Moore stole one of his ideas, and then his passive-aggressive 'Hey, if you don't want to give me credit for coming up with an abstract concept, never acting on it, and then noticing the similarities between a half-formed idea I had and a campaign you worked hard on, that's fine man, whatever.' line on it really wound me up. If you have something to say to someone, say it. Don't write about it in a book, don't overplay your involvement to try and undermine someone else's achievements, and don't expect everyone to bow down and be grateful that you're not 'taking action' when your claim to their achievements is minimal at best. I actually read this book a good couple of years ago and as I had borrowed it from a friend, I haven't been tempted to re-read it to ascertain whether it gets better with time, but I do remember being angered by it, and for a book which I was fully intending to enjoy, that's quite rare. I will often convince myself that I like a book, against all the evidence, because I like the author, the premise or the subject, but this is the only book I remember failing so spectacularly to please me on any of those counts. Which is a shame - I don't like discovering that people I admire aren't people I would like to spend time with. I think that's worse than suddenly being forced to concede that someone who I have always considered to be a total tit might have enough redeeming qualities to be reclassified as a partial tit instead, which I am please to say happens more frequently than the other way round. Which gives me an idea for my next list....