'Amsterdam'

I can't get through Ian McEwan's books fast enough. By my count, I have one left after Amsterdam.

Amsterdam starts out at the funeral of Molly Lane, who is basically the most perfect woman in the world. She was apparently free and easy. Sleeping with New York City's hotshot beat writers in the 1960s, drinking and sleeping with her modern intellectuals during mind-blowing holidays in the English countryside, rubbing elbows and other body parts with famed politicians, rich guys, journalists and composers.

She slept with whoever, did whatever drugs, drank as much as she wanted and nobody cared because she was a hot piece of ass.

Following Molly's funeral, two of her former lovers -- and best friends -- Clive and Vernon find their lives starting to unravel as they grow apart surrounding a set of circumstances that seem so ... dumb.

If you had to judge someone based on their art, I would suppose that McEwan is a pretentious piece of shit. His characters are pretentious. Their problems are problems only pretentious people get into and they live lives that pretentious people live. They even die pretentiously.

That's why, inherently, I'll hate McEwan's books.