Tag: TV Show

Karl Pilkington – The Moaning of Life | Review

Title: The Moaning of Life

Author: Karl Pilkington

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 346

Rating: 4*/5

 

Karl Pilkington - The Moaning of Life

Karl Pilkington – The Moaning of Life

 

Technically, I’m giving this one a 3.5, because I think a 3/5 is too harsh on it. You basically know what you’re getting into, here – if you haven’t heard of Karl Pilkington then it probably isn’t the best place to start. But if you’ve seen (or heard) some of his work before then you’ll know pretty much what to expect.

Karl Pilkington is a cynic, a simple man who seems so daft at times that he attains a sublime sort of wisdom all of his own. But it’s the very strangeness and simultaneous familiarity that makes him so endearing. When he’s being grumpy about something, you usually find yourself nodding along with it. I think it’s because while he can be a miserable sod, he gets miserable at the same things that would make you miserable, too. He talks a lot of sense.

This book is basically a tie-in with one of Pilkington’s television series, although I haven’t actually seen it. That means that I can’t tell you how much crossover there is, but I imagine that it’s pretty much the same. It’s split into sections, and each of the sections follows a different theme, like the TV show. It also comes with a bunch of stills that show Karl in action as he tries to find a little meaning.

My main problem with it, and the reason why I didn’t give it a straight four, is that it’s kind of long. I got bored about halfway through, and while it wasn’t exactly a struggle to finish it, I was already thinking ahead about what I wanted to read next. I think it might be better to dip in and out of it, rather than reading each section back to back – that way, it’s more like occasionally watching one of the shows, rather than bingeing on the series over the course of a night. It’s better that way – it’ll go down much easier. So yeah!

 

Karl Pilkington

Karl Pilkington

 

Click here to buy The Moaning of Life.


Grant Naylor – Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers | Review

Title: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

Author: Grant Naylor

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 298

Rating: 7/10

 

Grant Naylor - Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

Grant Naylor – Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

 

Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers is one of several novelisations of the cult sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. The writers of the show are also the writers of the novel, hence the pseudonym that they choose to adopt – sadly, they had a big fallout and that signalled the end of the novels, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not a joy to read.

But this one is certainly the weakest of them, although it is a great way to find out more about Lister’s back story. The problem is that I find his back story to be less interesting than the adventures that he got up to after he ended up marooned on one of Saturn’s moons with no way of getting back home.

If you’re a fan of the TV show then you should definitely take a look at the books, but I’d read Better Than Life and Backwards first, in that order. There’s no reason why you can’t work your way through all of the books in the series, but it doesn’t really matter whether you read them in the right order or not.

Put simply, if you’re a fan of the writersquirky sense of humour then you’re going to be a fan of this book, too. It’s exactly what you might expect from a novel by these two, so if you decide to pick it up then you know what to expect. It’s good for a laugh, but it shouldn’t be taken too seriously as a piece of science fiction writing. They’re not in the same league as Isaac Asimov, or other writers of his ilk.

 

Grant Naylor

Grant Naylor

 

Click here to buy Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.