Raise the Titanic! - Clive Cussler

Just to contrast nicely with The List and all its literary pretensions, I think the first book I shall devote a blog post to is going to be Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler.

Firstly, whilst I will read most things quite happily, I'll admit that this was a slightly unusual choice for me. However, as a child I was the victim of a fairly weighty obsession with the Titanic (blame my father for showing me A Night to Remember when I was three...) and still find it hard to pass by anything that mentions it. This was, I hasten to add, before the DiCaprio/Winslet/Dion love-in (I'm so ahead of the trends) and also resulted in my persuading my long-suffering maths teacher to let me do my GCSE maths course work on it. 

Anyway, obsession notwithstanding, this is Not A Very Good Book. I'd find it hard to say it's even a moderately good book. It's page-turning in places, but far too stuffed with 'characters' who are mostly just stereotypes and who don't seem to add much to the story, and bubbling with casual sexism and racism that I couldn't help but wince at. I think it probably works best now as a period piece, and there were definitely moments where I was reminded to be glad that I was born in the 80s rather than the 50s. I rather doubt that was Mr Cussler's intention in writing it though.