In case you haven't spotted it: over on the main site, Sam Jordison has begun the great 2011 Not the Booker reading frenzy. First up is Julian Gough's Jude in London, about which Sam says
There's a lot going on here – so much that I worry it's impossible to do the book real justice after one reading. For the purposes of this Not the Booker review, I've had one week to look at Jude in London; to disentangle it properly would take months. I'm pretty sure I got all the nob gags. I know I'll never look at Martin Amis the same way again thanks to a memorable riff that ended with the line: "with my kingsley amis tall, ruddy, at a drunken angle and my martin amis small and wrinkled and smoking." But I'm also sure I was missing things elsewhere. References to Wittgenstein slip by as quickly as daft jokes about the "Doe, a deer, a female deer" song – which itself may, worryingly, contain another joke about Schrödinger's cat … There are jokes within jokes, within philosophical ideas, within nob gags. It's impossible to catch them all.
Despite some reservations, on the whole, Sam liked it. Did you? If you've yet to read it, there's an extract here; if you already know what you think, go tell him about it.
