For information about places not to visit, click here.
To buy the lovely paper version of Sod That!, click here.
The author reads from his book Sod That!
Have you regretted running a Marathon? Have you been persuaded to read a terrible book? Have you realised that dolphins may not appreciate you swimming with them? Have you eaten something you shouldn’t have on someone else’s bad advice? Did you have an awful time at Glastonbury? Has your dream holiday turned into a nightmare? Can’t be arsed to read Ulysses?
This is the place to vent your spleen!
Are you as narked off as me at all those websites, newspaper articles, books, TV programmes, and (even!) films that tell you what you have to do before you die?
And have you, like me, noticed that most of the stuff they tell you to is really a bit, well, shitty. Where’s the fun in throwing yourself out of a plane? How does walking on hot coals validate your life? Have you actually read the Kama Sutra? Do you know what it tells you to smear on your lingam? It’s not advice that any sane man would take.
All of these idiocies are investigated, debunked and derided in exquisite detail in the forthcoming book: Sod That: 103 Things Not To Do Before You Die, which the UK publisher Orion have kindly agreed to print up and send to the shops. It’s out now, with a paperback version coming in September 2009*.
In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to share a few suggestions for things not to bother doing, stories about things you might have been persuaded to do that ended up being rubbish and general gripes about the selfishness of self-help culture.
So! I’d be delighted if you were to email in and tell me your stories. There’s a contact form at the bottom of this page. Or, more simply, just post a comment.
I’ll also be building up a comprehensive list of all the stuff we none of us don’t want to do half so much as self help writers might think… All ideas gratefully received.
Finally, this is a soft and quiet launch of this site, so it might look very empty… I’m just floating it out there to see what happens. But! If there are no comments or new pages for a while, I’m taking this as a sign of success. It proves that people have taken the central message of this site to heart – and not bothered.
Sam Jordison
*Please don’t confuse this book with a rival version which is also doing the rounds. I’m not saying it’s an inferior quality rip-off, but I have my suspicions.
