— Stunningly Tedious

At the Times Online site, Rod Liddle presents the books that make him see red:

Powell’s name came up an awful lot as I importuned a bunch of writers and hacks about books they had read that now, when mentioned, make the red mist descend. Books that made them angry just thinking about them; that were once clotted with extravagant critical praise, like the butter surrounding the tiny crustaceans in the potted shrimp at White’s club, or that sort of sprang from the collective consciousness of the metropolitan elite of the time and that everybody felt they had to read. And that, from either category, we now realise are close to worthless.

You can, of course, add your own. Liddle’s list contains Anthony Powell, Robert Pirsig, Carlos Casteneda, Luke Rhinehart, Colin Wilson, Mervyn Peake, John Fowles, the entire Virago imprint, all magic realists and angry black novelists, Salman Rushdie, Herman Hesse, Henry James, and Zadie Smith.

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