| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
SIDEWAYS is the journey of two men, Miles and Jack, as they leave Las Vegas en route for Santa Ynez and Jack's impending nuptials. For Jack the weekend represents his final days of freedom, while for Miles, who has divorced his wife, lost his money and his passion for life, the week long road trip becomes an opportunity to evaluate his past, future and self. A raucous road trip complete with fine wine, SIDEWAYS is a thought-provoking and often hilarious novel about men, friendships and human relationships.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"We were drinking a memory",
By M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Sideways (Paperback)
Rex Pickett, in his novel Sideways has probably created two of the most endearingly loveable characters of recent years. Both men are full of petty denials and insecurities about love, sex and life, but their immutable friendship, and their ability to laugh off their respective troubles, makes for a terribly funny, and heartfelt story as we follow their escapades throughout Santa Ynez wine country.The movie version of Sideways will be released later this month, so it will be interesting to see what director Alexander Payne does with this story. At times, the book seems a little contrived, reading like a budding screenplay, rather than a piece of literary fiction, but the sparkling dialogue and the fabulous descriptions of the local wine growing country will keep most readers entertained. Sideways is unquestionably one of the best "buddy" stories to be released in some time. Also, readers don't have to know anything about wines and wine growing to appreciate the detailed wine tasting elements of this story. Mike Leonard October 04.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Endlessly disappointing book spawns astonishingly good film in ironic shock reversal,
By
This review is from: Sideways (Paperback)
...or so the tabloid headlines might have read, in the weeks after Sideways (the movie) was released and the public inevitably sought out the book of the film. I was among them in being enchanted by Paul Giamatti's comically depressed and lovably amoral portrayal of Miles, the book's protagonist, and Thomas Haden Church's equally good casting as his equally amoral (yet somewhat more upbeat) best-friend Jack. So after contemplating what kind of wonderful, witty and wine-infused novel could have spawned such a timeless classic, I purchased the above.
Big mistake. "Rex Pickett," the book's dust-jacket warns ominously, "is a screenwriter who lives in Los Angeles. This is his first novel." Alarm bells immediately started to ring; but it could be a masterpiece, I told myself, the first of many - it could be a debut novel like Jonathan Safran Foer's "Everything is Illuminated" or Alex Garland's "The Beach". It isn't. Rex Pickett is quite obviously a screenwriter trying to write a novel. His dialogue is authentic but over-simplified, in the way that Hollywood dialogue often is. At times, the conversations sound so real that Pickett must simply have sat in a bar and eavesdropped and written down everything he heard. The rest of the novel? It consists of thinly-disguised yet helpful stage directions, peppered with a flagrant abuse of adverbs ("I was moving frenetically from bedroom to living room packing for a road trip" - "Paul," says the director, "Move from the bedroom to the living room, as if packing for a road trip, and do it frenetically"); combined with what can only be described as pretentiously-interspersed 'Words of the Day' (highlights include the opening line: "The sun poured bright parallelograms of mote-swirling light through the venetian blinds of my rundown, rent-controlled house in Santa Monica") and topped-off with what are quite obviously the tasting notes from several bottles of wine ("The second Pinot was a single-vineyard from the nearby storied Rochioli property. It had notes of cardamom and exotic berries.") I wasn't surprised to find out that the screenplay for Sideways was adapted by none other than its original author - having read the novel, I honestly believe that the adaptation process would have required little more than some judicious re-formatting and cutting-down of text. In spite of the novel's many flaws, Rex Pickett is clearly a good screenwriter. He has researched his subjects to the smallest detail, his dialogue is authentic, and the plot itself is fresh and worthwhile. This 'first novel', however, was quite obviously never intended as such. It was always going to be the 'book of the film', even before the film, because as a book it unfortunately has very little merit. It is a tangle of awkward descriptions, pretentious phrasing and clunky set-pieces which are ascribed no real signficance - all of which leaves as bitter a taste in the mouth of the reader as a bottle of sour, corked wine.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Every bit as entertaining as the film,
By
This review is from: Sideways (Paperback)
I loved this book. The characters are as large as life, I laughed out loud, and learnt something about wine. Although I read it after seeing the film, the screen version takes nothing away from the enjoyment of this novel. Oh, and by the way the ending differs from the screen version.....
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Mystery
- Books > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction
- Books > Fiction > Humour
- Books > Fiction > Literary Fiction
- Books > Humour > Fiction
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
