I Can Make You Hate

Charlie Brooker

Average Rating 6/10 (1 Review)

Would you like to eat whatever you want and still lose weight?

Who wouldn't? Keep dreaming, imbecile.

In the meantime, if you'd like to read something that alternates between laugh-out-loud-funny and apocalyptically angry, keep holding this book. Steal it if necessary.

In his latest collection of rants, raves, hastily spluttered articles and scarcely literate scrawl, Charlie Brooker proves that there is almost nothing in this universe, big or small, that can't reduce a human being to a state of pure blind hatred.

It won't help you lose weight, feel smarter, sleep more soundly, or feel happier about yourself. It WILL provide you with literally hours of distraction and merriment. It can also be used to stun an intruder, if you hit him with it correctly (hint: strike hard, using the spine, on the bridge of the nose).

About the Author:
Charlie Brooker is an award-winning writer, producer and broadcaster whose career has spanned television, radio, print, and online media.

Brooker is the creator and writer of Black Mirror, whose fourth season launched on Netflix at the end of 2017 and won a BAFTA Craft Award and has recently picked up three BAFTA TV Awards nominations. The critically acclaimed, mind-bending anthology series originally launched on Channel 4 in 2011 and over its four seasons has collected awards including Primetime Emmys® for Outstanding TV Movie and Outstanding Writing for a TV Movie, Producers Guild of America, Rose D'or, BAFTA, International Emmy® and Peabody.

Charlie has presented numerous television shows including three series of his BBC Two satirical review show Weekly Wipe, the third series of which was nominated for the 2015 BAFTA for Best Comedy and Comedy Entertainment Programme, and the annual shindig Charlie Brooker’s End of Year Wipe, which won a BAFTA for its 2016 edition.

Review by Ben Macnair (300419) Rating (6/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 6/10
I Can Make You Hate is a collection of television presenter and journalist Charlie Brooker’s columns from the Guardian written between August 2009 and July 2012, where he pokes splenetic fun at all manner of targets, from politicians, other newspapers like the Daily Mail, and the stars of reality television.

Most people, who are already familiar with Brooker’s work know what they will be getting from him, so the angry, well written rants are not surprising, but what is, is that half way through the book, he announces that he will stop writing his column, to concentrate on his television shows, and it is here there is a definite change in tone.

Maybe the TV shows would be reaching a wider audience than his columns, so maybe being less biting was seen as wise choice, but it means that in comparison, the second half of the book, which also includes scripts and monologues from the 10 o’clock show and his screen wipe programmes are also included, seemingly as filler, rather than for their intrinsic value. Some things working better on screen than they do on the page, and it is for this reason that the second half of the book seems to fall flat.

However, between his previous working such books as Screen Burn, Dawn of the Dumb, and The Hell of it All, Brooker’s life has changed, from being single, to marriage and the birth of his son (which is described, touchingly in the book) and has taken up running, so he has become the type of person that he used to despise.

Brooker is at his best when he is being satirically curmudgeonly. The intelligence, wit and bite of his earlier work may be missing, to a certain extent, but that doesn’t mean that this collection is not worth reading. For those of us that are nearly Brooker’s contemporaries, there is a lot to like, and sympathise with, such as the passage of time, how Television needs to be better to have the same impact on us now than it used to, and how it always seems to be the Tories and reality TV stars having a better time of it than you.
Ben Macnair (30th April 2019)