Its been a while since I've read it, but I just had to review it because it was so unlike just about anything I've ever read. It was so original - such a breath of fresh air! Everything kind of transpired like a bizarre dream, and it was quite suspenseful. You couldn't help but like and sometimes pity the main character. It was interesting how he actually lived in the shopping centre, yet distanced himself from the obsession with consuming. I love a book with intriguing characters, and this one had plenty of them. It was basically cool.

One of Nicholson's best books (second only--maybe--to Bleeding London), Everything and More is also one of his most accessible. If you've read Hunters and Gatherers, The Food Chain, or any of his other novels, you know that he's a pretty tough author to categorize. His books--while focusing on eccentric, offbeat characters and situations you rarely (if you're lucky) encounter in real life--manage to convey a universal sense of what it means to be obsessed with...well, anything. If you haven't read any of Geoff Nicholson's books before, this is a great place to start.

"A sort of travel book" is how this memoir bills itself. You do travel with the author to four different deserts in northern Africa, Australia and America, and follow along while he ruminates on the desert, the death of his father, his disintegrating marriage and his new girlfriend. This is a highly entertaining and readable book, one I would recommend as a companion for your own journey to the desert.

Might be worth the price as long as you don't get it from used Marketplace seller, MORCAP, this person is a cheat, will take your money and not deliver the product

This volume could also be called 'The Best of Richard Kern' as it presents a review of his work ranging from 1976 to 2001. Covering a wide range, we find bondage shots and girls with guns, as well as girls in the bedroom, bathroom and other scenarios, presenting an overview of Kern's interests and low-key fetish work.

Perhaps the strongest pictures are the close-up portrait shots, where the models reciprocate your gaze, as though daring you to enter their slightly dark and edgy world. In one shot, a small lizard crawls over a model's face, in the stark monochrome looking almost like a tribal tattoo. Most striking is the picture from 1993, simply titled 'Monica with Candle'. The model tilts her head backward and a lighted candle protrudes upright from her mouth. A very arresting picture the first time you see it (why that was not used on the cover is a mystery. Too provocative maybe?) Certainly a deeply erotic image.

Like all the best books of photography, this one starts well and gets better the more you look into it. A good one to keep on the bookshelf and delve into from time to time, and well worth buying.

Richard Kern here has presented a fine collection of photographs. Though his style, at least in this presentation, seems to be mostly snap shots of ameture models; there are some nice shots none the less.

Apparently this is the second Volkswagen-themed novel by this British author. I have not as yet read "Street Sleeper," so I can't tell you if this is the better of the two or not. What I can tell you is that is a mostly amusing tale of a number of Brits all bound together in one way or another by Volkswagens. The main problem is that all across England, there are Volkswagen's blowing up left and right. Who is doing and why, and how they can be stopped is the alleged plot which drives this book, but the reader is mostly along for the ride as the main characters search for meaning in their existence. I get the impression that many of the main characters appeared previously in "Street Sleeper," but how long the interval has been in unclear. It's a little tough to describe a novel which culminates in a rave/VW expo under siege by eight neo-Nazi skinheads and their delusional leader, who is questing after a holy grail comprised of a hand carved VW whose sun roof opens to reveal human bone replicas of Hitler and Eva Braun in flagrante... All I can say is that if you have a taste for the quirky, check it out.

I bought this book at first because I too have a strange passion for Volkswagens. I was thoroughly delighted when I discovered that Mr. Nicholson had a great story to back up the VW obsession, once I got over the horror of destroying all those VWs that is. The strange cast of characters and their individual motivations are brilliantly woven together. The amazing thing is that even at it's most confusing and destructive I didn't want this novel to end. I look forward to trying his other works.

I was worried that this book might be to 'British' for my American tastes, but it was wonderful. Well paced, colorful characters, and a good mix of action and humor. Well worth the money.

This is quite a delightful little book. Despite what some of the reviews might say, it's very humerous in a generally light and almost chirpy sort of way. The hero remains likeable and upbeat despite whatever pervy behavior he might be describing and his great lady friend is, despite some initially sinister intimations quite the sanest and most reasonable person in the book. The author, Mr. Nicholson, has obviously done his research on the subject and provides such a detailed account of the vagaries of foot love that one begins to wonder about his own proclivities. The only problem I have with the book is that Catherine is a little flat and underwritten.

I have heard that the book has been optioned for a film but, seeing no reference to it on the IMDb, I wonder how true that is. I could quite well see a film of this being made which, if cleverly cut, could easily pass for an R if not an NC-17 rating. It would be something like Crash, but a whole lot funnier and more fun. Biggest problem, though, would be the casting. Ralph Fiennes and Catherine Keener would be great, but I doubt they'd be caught dead peforming any of the books various, um, activities on film.

I recommend this witty, absorbing book to all foot fetishists. Written by one (I heard Mr. Nicholson on NPR where he admitted such), this piece of fiction - a quick read - shows clearly the love and inspiration brought by something as simple and mysterious as a woman's beautiful foot.

Definitely a book to read with one hand! For anyone remotely curious or strongly aroused by foot fetishism, this is fascinating, deeply insightful, new age adult novel about a fetishist and the worship of his mistress' feet. The character Catherine is every foot fetishist's dream date. The author writes well and tells a doubly dark and erotic tale. From what I've heard on the street, FOOTSUCKER is soon to become a major motion picture. let's hope the film is as arousing as the novel.

I was attracted to this book by a magazine's reference to it as a book capturing the feel of London. Nah. What a waste. Dumb and dry fiction with cardboard characters shuffled chaotically by the pretending but never delivering author.

Like the main hero's plan to visit each and every London's street this book idea may have sounded cool, but the book itself plain and unfunny.

The only laughing matter here is author's constant helpless trying to imitate Martin Amis-style cool wit. It never ever comes close to it, being barely amusing at its best.

Half a star for the good title. Let it be the only part you happen to read.

Bleeding London is one of the quirkiest, darkest and funniest novels I have ever read! (That says a lot, for I have read thousands of novels.) It focuses on various characters whose experiences in London are both sinister and funny. Mick, Judy and Stuart are quite different, but are somehow brought together in strange ways. They all have a different take on London -- Londoners feeling foreign in their natural habitat while out-of-towners see it as an exciting and daring challenge.

Nicholson does a great job with the description of a big city. As a New York City native, I am able to identify with the story line and the dark message the author is sending. The backdrop of London is different from all of the other British novels I have read -- it shows a more realistic view of the city.

Thought provoking and darkly funny, Bleeding London should be read by those who enjoy a unique literary experience.

I really enjoyed this book and loved learning about the sides of a great city that I didn't know about...very entertaining.

I loved "Everything & More" and "Bleeding London," and while this book started with Nicholson's trademark razor-wire wit, I thought the last quarter or so of the book suffered from awkward, forced and unbelievable resolutions. I also found some of the social observations, which were so keen in the other Nicholson books I'd read, to be unconvincing and even, in some cases, irrelevant to the main story. I will say, though, that his metaphors are great, and I love the irony of a book of collected anecdotes railing against the collecting of anecdotes (among other things). I say skip this one and go right to "Everything & More."

This is a comedy novel about collectors, with an oh-so-perfect title. It begins with a long list of things that collect, in all manifestations of the word, then proceeds to introduce us to a weird cross-section of British society. There is the car wash man with a craving for knowledge who decides to collect the entire contents of "The Books of Power," a strange encyclopedia set, into his memory. His boss, the prototypical used car salesman, with the pitch perfected, and a collection of knickers from his one-night stands (funny, how knickers is so much more tame than the American version "panties," no?). The wealthy auto collector and his wife who collects sexual experiences. And, finally, the narrator, who is writing a book on collectors, and so finds himself ironically in the position of collecting collectors.

The plot is an intricate construction that links all of the above together. I found it almost exactly opposite of a mystery novel, in that you have to unravel the events to get to the point, whereas Nicholson works to weave his characters together to show you the mystery. The book has echoes a couple of other works that I had read in the past, but these are not conscious on Nicholson's part, I believe, but simply the baggage I brought with me. It is similar to Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus, which should not be that surprising, as Fry's novel was also a British comedy about writers. It had some of the feel of A.S. Byatt's Possession, in that Nicholson continued to explore the theme of collecting much farther than I thought possible, and possession is an aspect of collecting.

It is a short book--only about 200 pages in the American edition--and Nicholson's prose style is breezy and vibrant, easily sped through. The only thing I could find to complain with was the strange narrative shifts early on when I had trouble placing the narrator in the sections told in what I had thought was third person, but later ended up being first person anecdotal. I've got Nicholson's earlier novel, The Food Chain, and I'm looking forward to spending three hours with it sometime soon.

This is a story about a writer who is collecting stories about people who collect things. Things such as cars, beer cans, lovers, sounds, knickers,information,even a man who collects Martini Recipes: " I made a series of variations on the Martini theme for this guy. I became familiar with the Naked Martini, the Trinity, the de Luxe, the Gibson, the Perfect, the Gordon, the Somerset and the Queen. We could have had the International but I was clean out of absinthe. I was initiated into the mysteries of the vermouth rinse and the vermouth spray, and told of barmen who merely SHOW the vermouth to the gin. I was lectured on the significance of bitters, the twist of lemon peel and the cocktail onion."(p66 Paperback Edition). In the event, the barmen, our hero, gets irritated with the arrogance of the customer, urinates in one martini which the customer mistakes for yellow Charteuse and promptly hurls the drink into our hero's face who relaliates by throwing the jug full of the special mixture over the customer. A melee ensues. Apart from the sheer joy of the characters and their situations, it does make one reflect on the obsession which is the novel's themes: Imelda Marcos and her shoes, Pol Pot and his skulls, Elizabeth Taylor and her husbands, me and my ? You and your...? A very enjoyable read.

This book follows a lot of the themes common in Geoff Nicholson's books - intrigue and sex revolving around an unlikely pivot, in this case a TV gardener. The book is written from a number of peoples views, and whilst this worked well in his other books, the number of angles taken spread the story a little thinly. Whilst I enjoyed the book, it is by no means his best, and is probably one for the true fans.

I am very happy to say that I did not purchase this book; it was loaned to me for my opinion. I find the author's mentality so disgusting (you can see why from the other reviews) that I am not even going to finish reading it. Generally speaking, I enjoy satire, but I find this just a vehicle for the grossness that so many find desireable and amusing in today's culture. Save your money - buy a GOOD book!

All right, I admit it. I have become a depraved and obsessive fan of Geoff Nicholson! I was compelled to read all his titles and each one has pleasantly surprised me. I don't know how the mind of this man works but it is scary how he can, with such dark humour and hysterical grotesqueness, manipulate his plots and characters.

In "The Food Chain" he does this once again. I literally was wincing as I read it. I have been to movies where I was afraid to look at the screen but was so morbidly tansfixed by what was going on that I couldn't completely turn away. This was how I felt about the entire book.

In short, if you love a good read and wish you could tap into the twisted side you know you must have deep down somewhere, get this book. Then again, I suppose I'd say that about any of Nicholson's works.

Can't wait for "Flesh Guitar"!

i loved this book so much .. yet at tymes i wanted to throw it and still i kept on reading it .. the story hold's you captive as it twist and turns revealing the story bit by bit.. if you haven't read it yet i sugest doing so soon... i could not stop reading it

Michael Smith is a man who is convinced that he is your pretty decent, average sort of guy with absolutely no outstanding talents either positive or negative. However, that is not enough to stop him from having an extraordinary adventure. In 1974, when he attends a "book-burning" party of an eccentric old college professor, Smith meets Gregory Collins, the epitome of a loser and a self-proclaimed writer-wannabe. However, when Collins actually succeeds in acquiring a publication deal for a bizarre novel, he calls on his old acquaintance, Smith, to help him out by posing for him on the author-jacket to improve sales by making the author seem attractive. Amusedly, Smith agrees. When events take a surprising turn and Gregory Collins is asked to do a reading for his book, he is left no option but to call on Smith again. And again, Smith comes to his aid. It is at this reading that Smith meets, Alicia, an attractive young female psychiatrist. She wants to hire him to work at the Kincaid Clinic (a lunatic asylum) as a writer-in-residence to inspire the patients to pour out their thoughts and feelings through the catharsis of penning them. Desperate to remove himself from his own trite job and London life, and eager to be in the vicinity of the attractive Alicia, Smith agrees, carrying his duplicity even further.

Under these circumstances, Michael Smith cannot possibly be expecting a typical sort of reception. However, when he finds himself wading through thousands of pages of anagrams, trivia, sex-and-violence stories, football matches, and spiritual enlightenment guides, even he finds himself overwhelmed. When his boss responds to his gesture of furnishing the patients' library by tearing the covers off of all the books, he begins to feel a certain amount of concern over his current situation. The inmates come in varying degrees of catatonia, hyperactivity, psychosis, and antisocial, yet how can he resist Alicia's fulfilling--even if strange--sexual encounters? And how can he escape from his scheme, when the entire clinic is counting on him to publish an anthology of their creative writing efforts?

The first one hundred pages of this book were absolutely hysterical. The plot was funny, engaging, and never dragged on with non-essential details. It was very fast-paced and did not take long to read. However, I found the parts detailing Alicia's sex with Michael, which described her coprophemia (arousal by spouting verbal and graphic obscenities) to be a bit over-the-top. At times, the plot seemed to get a little far-fetched and unbelievable beyond the point of satire. Some people might find the book irreverent in its treatment of the mentally ill (the concept of the so-called Kincaidian therapy being quite laughable itself). However, this novel was unlike anything I had read in quite a while. The characters were very well-developed, Michael Smith was very likeable, as the self-assured yet blundering narrator, and whenever Gregory Collins appeared on the scene you were rolling your eyes. A certain amount of wry amusement is warranted as you find that you ought to have guessed what was coming next in this corkscrew plot. In the end, Geoff Nicholson does manage to very cleverly reign in all of the chaos he produces and give us a conclusive--if not somewhat tidy--finale.

Geoff Nicholson's Bedlam Burning is a cleverly-told story about, Michael Smith, an attractive 23 year-old British man, who allows a less-better looking acquaintance of his from University (they met at a book burning party), Gregory Collins, use his photo on the book jacket of Gregory's first novel. Michael, masquerading as Gregory at a book reading, is offered a position in a psychiatric clinic as a writer-in-residence, part of the therapy for those being treated there. Bedlam Burning is also a witty examination of what it is to read, what it is to write, who, and how much, we can believe. Michael almost immediately begins getting submissions from everyone at the clinic. As he ruminates on these submissions, you may wonder, who is really writing these? Can you believe it at all? Gregory keeps coming back into Michael's life, complicating things, but allowing Nicholson to give us more ruminations on the nature of writing, authorship and reading. The novel is engaging, humorous and witty. The characters are just that--characters. The story moves along fairly quickly and it works. An enjoyable read.