The 446-page mistake

Ask yourself: is this a salmon farm?

I’ve always wanted to use the standalone, “Various”, as a subject line. It was a favourite of another prolific email writer, my grandma, Jo. She would place it atop correspondence that, as one might expect, covered a wide range of subjects: what she’d been up to of late, what annoyingly impressive feats my cousins had achieved, what I ought to be reading.

Of course, grandma didn’t have to worry about open rates.

Books

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

What is the latest point at which you have given up on a book? For me, it was page 446 (or, rather, hour 16, minute 49) of Archer’s apparently “global number one best seller”, Kane and Abel. I’ve tried to spin it in my own head as a triumph of staring the sunk cost fallacy in the face and winning but no one’s buying it.

Having previously enjoyed ‘First Among Equals’, a political thriller that follows four ambitious British MPs with the usual intertwined careers, this one is another multi-decade drama following two men, born on the same day to vastly different circumstances, whose lifelong rivalry for power, wealth and… no, I refuse to relive it for your benefit.

Prose as thin as the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, plot as formulaic as a party conference speech and the greatest crime of all (in a literary sense, not in Archer terms, obviously), the length. I know I’m one to talk here, but my dude.

No Spin by Shane Warne

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received comes from a perennially single friend of mine, and in the form of a flow chart, which starts with the devastatingly simple question: is this a salmon farm? If the answer is ‘no’ (and, let’s face it, it usually is) then do not expect to find salmon there. Salmon, of course, standing for eligible, non-creepy men.

I find this adage can also be applied more widely. For instance, if you find yourself reading Shane Warne’s autobiography, and feel consistently punched in the temporal cortex by the level of prose, ask yourself: is this a salmon farm?

The thing about Warne, the greatest leg spinner in the history of Test cricket, and the reason why he transcended the sport, became clear in the viewing. Even if you didn’t understand the laws of the game, you could instantly tell he was doing something self-evidently absurd with a cricket ball.

To hear Warne describe the art of spin bowling is to be in the hands of a consummate storyteller. The way he played with chaos and control to create things that weren’t there to get into the opposition’s head. Airhead fast bowlers can always run up and aim one at the batsman’s neck. Spinners have to harness deception, cunning and guile.

But his views on corporal punishment? What makes a “ripping bloke”? Why some people are annoying haha actually they’re alright? Look, I’m really not a literary snob. You could withdraw food from me until I read Middlemarch and I’d die of hunger. Meanwhile, the sections on Warne’s treatment by the media, in the days before in-house training and pastoral care, were genuinely insightful.

Still, you’d be better off just watching this great bit of footage between Warne and Afghan leggy, Rashid Khan.