One For The Books

I've been a fan of Joe Queenan's writing for quite some time now. If You're Talking To Me, Your Career Must Be In Trouble is one of a handful of books guaranteed to make me laugh out loud and his writing on films, film stars and the film industry generally has been mercilessly scathing and mostly right on the button. By his own admission his work "largely consists of ridiculing nincompoops and scoundrels", and he is refreshingly unapologetic in his refusal to suck up to the movie business or any other business that has an inflated sense of its own importance. Up until recently I'd assumed that film was his overriding passion as well as the target for his vituperative wit, but it seems that Mr.Queenan is first and foremost a bookman, a voracious reader and an incorrigible collector of books. I chanced upon a copy of One For The Books in The Last Bookshop, a well-stocked and imaginatively presented remainder book shop in Bristol, read it in a day and, in as much as my own deranged book-acquiring habits pale in comparison with those of Queenan's felt much better afterwards. I even went out a bought some books I felt so good. Queenan may be sarcastic and dismissive about certain books and authors but there is no doubting his passion for books and reading and libraries and bookshops and all things literary. One For The Books would appear to be a partially re-written, re-editied and re-configured collection of columns that Queenan has had published in various magazines and papers and it is perhaps a little drawn-out and repetitive in places but there are enough laugh-out-loud moments and passages of shrewd observation to make it well-worth the investment. And Queenan makes the best argument for printed books over e-books that I have read anywhere.

One For The Books by Joe Queenan (Viking U.S.) (£3 in The Last Bookshop).