Whatever It Is, I Don't Like It

Love it! Simple yet profound,interesting,informative, funny, sarcastic and above all illuminating...

Short articles are perfect for bedside reading; and air travel.I laugh out loud. I love his kinky humour...'twas on the good ship Venus' at his father in law's funeral... and the tight way he writes. The variety is remarkable as well so I read about the clothes he buys in Soho and the food from Fortnum's.It's fun.In Sydney he said the human mind is made for stories; go Howard.

Bear with me while I run a metaphor past you.If you imagine The Newspapers [as a whole] as The Cheshire Cat and Howard Jacobson's columns in The Independent as the Cheshire Cat's smile, as I gave up reading the newspapers, section by section, the last of what I found I wanted to read was Jacobson's weekly column. For a variety of reasons my interest and respect for newspaper journalism of the so-called quality press [the Red Tops are not newspapers but comics] I gradually gave up, except his column. The Cat had disappeared. All that was left was the 'Jacobson' smile. Then I gave up buying any newspapers at all.So a book of his pieces gave me what I expected - a lot to smile about. Jacobson can be amusing, witty - downright comic. He can also be incisive, cutting and forensic in his demolition of [usually] political or multi-culti PC babble.So we have articles as varied as his delight at the giant mechanical elephant that paraded through central London, to his withering demolition of the inane vapourings of Cherie Blair in "Cherie Baby & The Bombers".Howard Jacobson's pieces are always superbly written. The ones that deal with serious subjects always leave me with much to think about and consider, even if I do not agree with his position or conclusions.

A fine and unusual collection of short essays (reproduced from his newspaper articles) that I find entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. He writes very well - which is increasingly rare.

Jacobson is an excellent writer, and his columns are pithy, opinionated and amusing. They are published without date references here and the reader has to perform a memory search to work out when and why they were written, and who are the people referred to. Almost all the pieces have survived well, but they are journalism and this method of publication, which attempts to elevate them to literature, doesn't quite work.

Great little 'essays'. Howard writes very well and can make you laugh whilst hd makes a serious point.