Snuff

Snuff is Chuck without purpose. It stirs no thought-provoking ideas in its audience, its characters are bland and one dimensional, and it leaves you feeling wasteful and cheated. The only thing it has going for it is its level of entertainment and its occasional slivers of insight into the porn industry.

So, if you're a Chuck fan, just go ahead and get Snuff over with so you can say you've read it. It's fairly short and should only take you a day or two to knock out. If you're not a die-hard fan of Pahlaniuk, you'd be better off reading Fight Club or Survivor or Invisible Monsters.

Snuff

I've read Fight Club, Survivor, Choke, and Lullaby. The first 3 were 4-5 stars, while Lullaby was 3-4 stars.

Snuff starts off with a unique premise and largely untouched and taboo subject: hard core pornography. As in previous works, he uses the same ingredients of taboo/disgusting imagery, bursts of roiling humor, a fatalistic-nihilistic viewpoint of the human condition, and insertion of random facts (which seems more and more to impress the reader on how well he has done his research).

This time, Chuck, it just doesn't work...

I was surprised to see the mixed negative reviews about this book. This happened to be the first Palahniuk book I read and I haven't been able to stop since. Sure I like some of his other books better but that doesn't mean I don't think this is a really good book.

As a huge fan of his other work, Chuck really let me down with this book. I arrived at the bookstore the morning of its release, and convinced a clerk to fish a copy off the truck for me. My apologies to the clerk.
It's written as if Chuck was half asleep and completely disinterested in producing a good book, instead just counting on the fact that his rabid fan base would turn out and buy copies, which it would appear, many of us did...

I hate to be mean to authors because they're giving it their best (or at least I hope so), but this book made me feel like Palahniuk is just writing because it's his job. It wasn't a gripping tale like Fight Club or even Diary, and it was only 180 pages so it's only entertaining for a day. He throws a lot of gross descriptions in the book for filler, like how the floor is covered in sex goo, and that's about all you get out of it besides a twisted love triangle between the guys in the waiting room and the porn star.

All in all, if you want a great story, pick up Diary, Survivor, or especially Fight Club, but you can pass this one up unless you absolutely have to read all of Palahniuk's works.