For Richer, For Poorer, by Victoria Coren

(Typo alert: I just wrote For Richer, For Pooper, which would be a very different type of book.)

For Richer, For Poorer is Victoria Coren's memoir of playing poker, from childhood games with her brother's friends to winning a million dollars in the European Poker Championships. It is also a more general memoir of growing up, and of losing her father.

(Oh, FFS. It is impossible to be interesting while writing book reviews. How does anybody else manage it? This is why I never review books. Anyway.)

Is it any good? Yes, it's bloody good. It will make you desperately want to play poker for a start. This may not be a good thing, as gambling destroys lives etc etc, but if you are anything like me you will have got to the end when Coren finally explains the rules, having got very confused for the whole of the rest of it (I still don't get the stuff about blinds) and then gone onto a poker site where you can play for free, but not even played one hand because you got too scared, so called your friend who also read (and loved) the book, agreed to schedule a poker night, except we're only going to play for buttons, only we're not sure how many buttons everyone should start with, and neither of us understand the blinds so maybe we won't have them, nor do we understand pot odds but maybe that doesn't matter if neither of us do, but we will wear visors and put cigarettes behind our ears even though we don't smoke, and we will invite our friends to join in even though one of them is a maths teacher and can probably therefore count and is thus at an unfair advantage, although maybe she can explain pot odds, which would be helpful, and then the whole discussion descends into what food it is appropriate to eat during poker (chicken wings, we think, and maybe pizza).

(Hmm. This may be the other reason I never review books.)

Anyway, the reason that you will get obsessed with poker reading this book is that it is all about poker, which may sound obvious. You spend almost the entire book at once poker game or another, whether it's in someone's front room, at a seedy London club, in a TV studio, or in Vegas. You get the impression that Coren never does anything else (and if you follow her on Twitter this is an impression that will certainly be reinforced) but that can't entirely be true as I know how long it takes to write a book (ages) and she's written this one, and another one, and maybe others I haven't noticed. Also newspaper articles and so on. But describing yourself writing books is boring, whereas describing yourself playing poker - the wins, the losses, the nerves, the adrenaline, the excitement, the sleep deprivation, the people called things like Huckleberry Seed and The Sweep - is a lot more fun. It's also a lot of fun to read, especially with Coren as your warm, honest, deadpan guide, and you can, and do, start playing along in your head, and next thing you know you are seriously considering buying a packet of cigarettes just so you can put one behind your ear.

As it happens, while I did think it was great, I didn't enjoy For Richer, For Poorer quite as much as I enjoyed Once More With Feeling, Coren's book (with Charlie Skelton) about making a porn movie, but that was one of the funniest books I had ever read, which is a tough act to follow. For Richer, For Poorer (I have not managed to successfully type Poorer on the first attempt once this entire review) is less funny, but it's more thoughtful and more moving, and you get a far better insight into what kind of person Coren is (bright, self-deprecating, sensible, or at least as sensible as someone with a massive gambling habit can be) BUT you do not get a photograph of a man with a pixelated semi-erection, wearing only an 18th century wig, on a break from shooting a porn film, reaching for carrot batons at a buffet table next to the fully-dressed son of a vicar.

In conclusion: if you love poker, would like to love poker, don't love porn, or have already read Once More With Feeling, you should absolutely read For Richer, for Poorer.

If, on the other hand, you love porn, would like to love porn, don't love porn but do love funny books which really aren't as yucky as a book about making porn sounds, and in any case there's a whole bit in the middle about poker anyway - read Once More, with Feeling.

If you love Victoria Coren, would like to love Victoria Coren, or just have plenty of time on your hands, read both.

If you're my mother, read neither.

Hope this helps.