My friend Matt recommended this book. Matt’s a quiet genius with very well-defined musical taste and he plays in a band. Also, he recommended to me “Le Freak” by Nile Rodgers which I read and loved, so I thought nothing of taking another recommendation from him.



The book arrived and, to my pleasant surprise, a quote from Ben Goldacre featured on the front cover saying “By far the best book this year. Brilliant, discursive and wise.” Ben Goldacre is, of course, the author of Bad Pharma, which I al

My friend Matt recommended this book. Matt’s a quiet genius with very well-defined musical taste and he plays in a band. Also, he recommended to me “Le Freak” by Nile Rodgers which I read and loved, so I thought nothing of taking another recommendation from him.



The book arrived and, to my pleasant surprise, a quote from Ben Goldacre featured on the front cover saying “By far the best book this year. Brilliant, discursive and wise.” Ben Goldacre is, of course, the author of Bad Pharma, which I also read and loved and 2012 was a good vintage for books, so that made it two solid recommendations.



Thus encouraged, I set about reading this little book and some seventy pages into it I thought it was utter drivel. Not just average, run of the mill, garden variety drivel, but drivel of the highest (lowest?) order. So I put it to one side.



I got sacked from my job in February, but did not get around to organizing my leaving drinks till December. Matt turned up and I confronted him about the book. I even tried to couch my criticism by saying “I totally loved the Freak book, but I have no idea what that KLF book was all about, I’ve kind of given up on it some 70 pages into it.”



“Ah, that’s the better book, actually, you just need to persevere a bit,” Matt advised me.



I really really respect Matt’s views on all sorts of issues (mainly to do with bond trading and desk politics, admittedly, but also music) so I concluded it must be me. Also, my worst fears about the book, that it’s a compilation of quackery mixed with the odd musical reference, were assuaged by the fact that Ben Goldacre is quite possibly the best known British crusader against quackery.



It had to be me.



So I packed the book into my backpack for this past weekend’s trip to Greece.



And now I’ve read it.



I must confess it did not leave me totally unmoved. Rather, it transported me back in time, a good 25 years. It brought me back to my days in college.



Not any days either. More like the nights, in fact. Those nights when I was unlucky enough to be semi-unconscious on a couch while an inebriated loser has been spouting cod philosophy inspired by the latest science class he’s taking and mixing it with the little philosophy he thinks he knows, more often than not for the benefit of some girl who decided an hour ago to give him the benefit of the doubt and is patiently waiting for him to be done talking and solicit her preference of his room or hers. Except this was worse, and there wasn’t a noble cause involved, so to speak. It was me on a plane and valuable reading time being wasted that will never come back.



The book is a gauche attempt to weave together the story of a band (about which I actually learned very little, but perhaps and in retrospect more than I needed to) with an eclectic mix of incongruous, incoherent and poorly stitched together theories about art, psychology, alchemy, magic and (I’m serious) the world financial crisis of 2008. It is the worst book I’ve ever finished out of, don’t know, more than 500, perhaps 1000, I’ve never tried to count.



I resolved to publish as soon as I got off the plane, to make sure my fury at having wasted my reading time is undiminished:



The one star I am assigning to this book is a total insult to the other two books I’ve given one star to. This is a zero star book.



No more Ben Goldacre books either. Might have to revise how I feel about Bad Pharma at this point. I guess Matt remains a good friend, but no more book recommendations from him.

