Title: The Moaning of Life
Author: Karl Pilkington
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 346
Rating: 4*/5
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!