Humor

As a fan of 'Slowly Downward', the author's website, I was excited to hear about this publication. These writings are essentially fragments, ranging in size from a single paragraph to around a dozen pages. They are collected under the headings of the four 'humours', the ancient system that categorises human temperament, and separated by some wonderful examples of Stanley Donwood's famous artwork. The stories are the collection of Stanley's dreams and nightmares, and the author's introduction eloquently describes the true purpose of the collection. The writing is beautifully descriptive sometimes, very visual with some wonderful phrases ("I stood transfixed...watching an aeroplane scratching the underside of the shredded clouds"). show more Typical to dreams, there is a disconnection between the pieces, the happenings are disconcerting, some genuinely frightening, mostly just weird. We are shown the strange places the mind can go, but it does feel a little like reading someone's diary. I'm left thinking that this project is more for the author's benefit than the reader's. The experience for me was both unsettling and strangely fascinating. show less

This book is basically the same book as Household Worms, shuffled into a different order. Do publishers and authors not realise that people pay for books, or do they simply not care as long as they get a few more pounds out of readers? This is a terrible excuse for a book.