Booking Through Thursday: Best ‘worst’ book
March 26, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Uncategorized
It’s Thursday so time for another Booking Through Thursday meme. and this week Deb is really testing the brain cells by asking the opposite of last week’s question:
“What’s the best ‘worst’ book you’ve ever read — the one you like despite some negative reviews or features?
This is an interesting question and I have to go back to 1993 in order to answer it. The book in question is called Hunting the Devil by Richard Lourie. It’s about the police operation to track down and bring to justice one of Russia’s most unsavoury characters – the cannibalistic killer of 53 women and children Andrei Chikatilo.
A lot of these ‘true crime’ books, especially ones that centre on serial killers, have the nasty habit of glorifying the featured criminal, but this book is nothing of the sort. It’s told more from the perspective of the detective hunting the criminal – Chief Inspector Kostoev, and it’s both a riveting and wholly engaging read, although definitely not for the faint of heart.
Now while I can’t necessarily remember anyone being particularly negative about the book when it came out, I can’t remember anyone being particularly positive about it either, and it’s one of these books that landed with a whimper but quickly vanished again into obscurity. A real shame because this a true gem, and I’m usually far from a fan of ‘true crime’ titles!
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Rob, a self-confessed bibliophile, is without any hope of rehabilitation. He gets unnaturally excited over anything book-shaped, and if book sniffing were a crime then he would have been locked up years ago (which wouldn't bother him in the slightest provided his cell were lined with books)
Never heard of it, but I have heard of the guy.
Interesting.
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Haven’t heard of this title.
I’m going to need some more coffee before I’m awake enough to think of an answer to this BTT.
Have a good one.
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I havent heard of this title but it sounds interesting and its the killer that Tom Rob Smith based Child 44 around and then jigged with it and changed the dates but that was the killer that set of his books and I liked Child 44 so I may indeed like this!
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I have never heard about this book too. But it sounds really interesting. I have a book called ‘The world’s most famous serial killers’. What can I say? Serial killers intrigue me…
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I’ve never heard of it either. Interesting post. Happy BTT!
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I’ve never heard of the book. Even though it sounds interesting, I would have problems with the subject. Glad you enjoyed it. My post is up now. here
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Now that I have read everyone’s answer, I realize last week’s and this week’s questions are really the same question, depending on how you look at it.
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I haven’t heard of the book you mentioned and I went with Twilight and The DaVinci Code
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