If you should buy a book without taking a quick look at the contents

You read the caption. The caption is amazing. I won't bother writing an actual caption, because I've written captions before and I know they'll be equally read whether good or shit.

You are reading his blog. You clicked the link he posted several seconds before you read this sentence. The blog you read is terribly post-modern, the way that wearing a t shirt bearing the legend “I Am Stupid” with an arrow pointing at your own stupid face is post-modern. It’s also extremely condescending; it suggests that you usually only like that blog with the lolcats, and to find you reading is a surprise.

Are you bored yet? That’s roughly the number of sentences it took for me to decide that my impulse purchase of Italo Calvino’s If On AWinter’s Night A Traveler was a huge mistake.

The unfinished title should have been a tip-off; this reads like a book written by a man who really can’t be arsed writing a book. He’s written books before;you bought them, you’ll buy this. You know what books are like, you don’t need to read another one. Read this instead, which is like an idea for a book, but you fill in the blanks. It breaks the fourth wall and addresses the reader directly, but not in the way a novel formatted like a journal might; rather, as though the author is watching the reader and describing not only what the reader is doing while reading the book, but also assumes the reader’s thoughts and feelings in doing so. It’s not as confusing as it sounds, but it is a little infuriating. I’m sure in literary circles it might be seen as a deeply clever, original and true depiction of what the experience of reading a book feels like, but it is utterly dull as a result, failing to draw the reader in on any level. Which is why after only an hour or so I took it straight back to Waterstones and traded it for a book I read and loved in school, and had been meaning to revisit for some time: Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day.

I'm currently reading 'Never Let Me Go'. It's like he knew.

It neatly filled the time I spent inhabiting Costa coffee like some bookish young thing while waiting for my girlfriend to finish work, and as I left it with her on the last day of my visit, I will be careful to avoid spoilers; suffice it to say, this is a deeply involving and moving, realistic portrayal of a human being who allows his misplaced sense of pride to interfere with the living of his life.

If you’ve only seen the film adaptation, do please read the book, as your experience of the tale is altered dramatically when viewed solely through the eyes of one character, who sees himself as an unreliable narrator, and who internalises constantly.