Illiterates

Unlike many book critics, I found Vernon God Little, DBC Pierrre's satire of fat, Texas hickdom, to have a heavy hand when it comes to pouring on the acid. It was unfunny, relentless and eagerly unsubtle in dealing with Bush America. Not surprisingly, the novel won the Booker Prize, more as an anti-American political protest from British intellectuals, surely, then any sort of praise for a novel that didn't rise to the lampoon level of Cletus, the Simpsons' slack-jawed yokel.

Now it's won another award, unsurprisingly: It topped out the Guardian's list of books Britons bought and never finished reading.