The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (Neil Strauss)

I have to admit I bought this book out of pure curiosity and with very low expectations. Any NY Times bestseller normally sets my mediocrity alarm bell off, all the more when it comes with a positive review from GQ and Esquire... And yet I have to admit it is quite a witty piece of writing, very entertaining, genuinely funny and at times downright hilarious (I particularly enjoyed the bit where the author says men get excited by anything, even half a pitted avocado - just to quote one among many nuggets...). Except for the last few chapters, which I found frankly boring and way too conventional for my taste, this is a hugely enjoyable book - even though I am not planning to buy the sequel. The author writes unusually well for a journalist. Gentlemen, a word of warning - the "sarging" & pick-up techniques explained in this book work only (as the authors himself admits) with "nightclub chicks with an attention deficit disorder". Don't try these on any woman with half a brain, at best it will get you ignored - you don't wanna think about the worst...

Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile (Geraint Anderson)

A most entertaining read, hilariously funny and sadly very close to the truth - many situations will sound strangely familiar to anyone who has worked in the Square Mile. This book got me laughing out loud on a plane, which earned me disapproving glances from fellow City-types sitting in buz class - yes I was the only chick in there and yes, I had the bad taste of being seen reading something else than the FT in public... Some will say it's a little bit too easy for the author to be spitting in the soup after having "enjoyed" the system for so long, I would still give him a few brownie points for opening is eyes, albeit a bit late... The book can be summed up in one quote - to become a big swingin' d!ck, you have to become a d!ck in the first place...

Blind Faith (Ben Elton)

Another good read by Elton, who proves once again to be reliably funny and dyspeptic. The theme itself is nothing new, and was visited much more brilliantly by Orwell in 1984 - that said, Orwell's masterpiece was a work of fiction, which this book is not, and this makes it all the more disturbing. There is more to Elton than just the public entertainer we know, and he clearly has a gift for social satire. Which gets me thinking that some of his books may well pass down in the history of 20th/21st century litterature and end up in school programs in a not-so-distant future...