Customer Reviews

Don't Stop Me Now

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm quite a big fan of Jeremy Clarkson. Primarily because of his role as presenter on that most amusing of car shows Top Gear, of course. But also because of his writings. He is a regular columnist for a couple of English newspapers (newspapers that I normally wouldn't come near) and writes in his usual style, full of hyperbole and wit, about all kinds of subjects. Most of his other books are collections of these columns. As is this, as a matter of fact. Only, in this volume the pieces are all car reviews.

Which is all perfectly fine. His literary style is still the same, his reviews are of the same kind as always, yet, there seems to be something awry. The reviews in the book are quite old, which when talking about cars, is not that good. Some of the cars he reviews have already been replaced by newer models, and the reviews in themselves are not funny enough to arrest your attention for long stretches of time. Let's face it, smartly written or not, they are still product reviews. If you are a fan of Top Gear, which I suppose you are, looking at this book, you'll have seen most of the cars on the show anyway (definitely the more interesting ones at least), thus making the experience of reading about them less than exhilirating.

It is not a waste of time reading this book, the man is still entertaining, but it is far from being as good as Clarkson can be, and that's a shame.

3 Stars

Due to his good name via association with the highly popular Top Gear series Jeremy Clarkson has found there is a market for books with his name on the cover. I've yet to read them all but presumably not all of them are like this. For this book is a set of reviews of his about cars. All of which have already seen the light of day in his regular columns in a UK paper.

Written with the mans usual irreverent style and often delving into areas that have nothing to do with cars whatsoever there are a number of chuckles and a lot of erudite musings on vehicles and their manufacturers in general before Clarkson gets around to giving you 'the skinny' on whatever car he is supposed to be reviewing. Yet at the end of the day the witty writing and hyperbole is not enough to mask the fact that this sort of book will date very quickly and really the best use for such a volume is probably as an amusing read on a long haul flight or something like that where you don't have to engage your brain. A valid enough reason to exist to be sure but not something of true grit.

I am a great fan of Jeremy Clarkson, but you can't take him too seriously. Some of the references to UK celebrities are obscure to Americans. Some of the reviews are a little dated, and some of the chapters refer to other chapters which are not in this book, being a compilation of weekly columns. Nonetheless a great read!

My wife gave me this book in the belief that it might be interesting.
Alas, Clarkson shows himself to be an old man with painfully narrow views, trying to inject some humour into one of the most pointless jobs on earth. That of a motor vehicle review.

This book is NOT comedy. It is NOT prose. It is NOT even informative.

Mr Clarkson would probably do well on an outback sheep station in Australia, as a fence post.
But as a writer, he comes across as repetitive, bland and old-fashioned.

As someone who COULD write once said, this is not a book to be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.