It's not true to say that only bad books make the bestseller list. But it is a little bit true, and it is always the case that bad books greatly outnumber good ones at the top end of the charts. Sometimes, too, you come across an example of pure negative correlation between the quality of a book and the level of its sales. One such example is upon us in the case of Being Freddie, the autobiography of England's cricketing national hero Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff. Being Freddie has sold more than 300,000 copies in the UK, and is set to be the bestselling cricket book, not only of the current moment but of all time. Even by the standards of numbingly dull sports autobiographies, Being Freddie is an absolute corker - one of those books so boring that to read it is to attain some meditative or Yogic state of internal emptiness and non-being. Typical sentence: 'The big win at Lord's instilled us with confidence as we moved on to Edgbaston, another of our favourite venues.'

LRB 8 June 2006 | PDF Download