#69 Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll, by Alex Marsh (The Friday Project)

Has it really been a month since I last blogged? No matter. While my writing may have stalled slightly, my reading has continued apace, so prepare yourselves for some regular updates this week as I play catch up – on this challenge, on my nemesis and perhaps even on life itself.

We’ll start with a piece of harmless flim-flam. Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll: How I Swapped My Rock Dreams For Village Greens is, I realised after I had finished reading it, one of those books which has stemmed from a blog (privatesecretdiary.com, apparently).

Unfortunately, in my experience, this is rarely a good thing – although I’m willing to change my mind if I get the right offer. Publishers, you know where to find me!

The blurb on the reverse instructs readers: “You’ll piss yourself laughing, and if you don’t believe us, turn to page 16.” Unfortunately, I neglected to do this before taking the book out of the library. Had I done so, I might have saved myself a medium amount of bother.

To set the scene, there is this bloke who fancies himself as a musician, who moves to Norfolk, where he finds there are very few musicians with which to form a band. So he takes up bowls. With little success. And so Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll is a knockabout tale about his bowls matches, his general countryside mishaps and everyday life in a small village.

Much as I couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for the book when I was reading it, so I can’t summon much energy to criticise it following its completion. There was the odd humorous line, but it was nowhere near as funny or poignant as it should have been and perhaps took itself to be.

Page 16, by the way, features the author at the dentist. With a knob gag. It’s hardly Voltaire.

So, rating time:

#69 Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll, by Alex Marsh (The Friday Project) - 6/10

Next up: Crossfire, by Dick Francis & Felix Francis (Penguin Group)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating