01 January 2010

Only Three of Them?

The 02 January Grauniad contains an absolutely wonderful, meaty slugline in the books section:

George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove have all chosen to publish their memoirs in 2010, thereby ensuring that at least three of them will be on the remainder piles by Christmas. The problem is that we already know what we are going to get: a badly written piece of fiction about how nothing went wrong and how if it did it was nothing to do with me.

John Crace, "The Books We Would Like" (emphasis added). Which leads, with more than a bit of glee, toward Clive James's classic of schadenfreude.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.

Clive James, "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered" (originally published in The London Review of Books in 1983).