{"product_id":"9781859849453-secondhand-lord-gnomes-literary-companion","title":"Lord Gnome's Literary Companion","description":"\u003cp\u003eHis review has got to be 'in' by mid-day tomorrow ... at about 9 pm his mind will grow relatively clear, and until the small hours he will sit ... skipping expertly through one book after another and laying each one down with the comment, 'God, what tripe!' ... Then suddenly he will snap into it. All the stale old phrases-'a book that no one should miss', 'something memorable on every page'-jump into their places like iron filings obeying the magnet. Thus did George Orwell, writing forty years ago in  Confessions of a Book Reviewer , describe the labours of a typical literary hack. Precious little has changed over the intervening decades; the servility of the satirical magazine  Private Eye .  Lord Gnome's Literary Companion  assembles, in thematic order, the best of these columns to present an astringent, rude and funny survey of publishers and the published.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49027697148123,"sku":"9781859849453-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/9781859840450-uk._SL300_FMwebp.webp?v=1785116818","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9781859849453-secondhand-lord-gnomes-literary-companion","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}