The Point! by Nasser Hussain due early September 2026; mostly “read” via an online reader copy. (My rating is an average of my feelings on the book, so actually it is a 2.5) After writing a draft of this review I read it again via a phyical finished copy. Didn’t change my mind, yet I just got a bigger giggle out of it. Also I read the publisher review for it and found the first line interesting. Which, I am glad I did not read it before reading the book. I don’t think I would have if I had read it.
The exclamation point is much maligned. It’s bad style. It’s like laughing at your own joke. It screams, it yells, it’s hysterical, it’s maybe even embarrassingly obsequious.
I will leave that just hanging and go to the reveiw. The point of this review is to talk about a book. The point of this review is to tell you, the reader, what I read, thought, felt and engage you to pick it up. 
Do you see the cover? That is the most words in the book. Okay, there are a couple of “poems” that have other words in them, but mostly they are just various exclamation points and other punctuation in various states of “undress.” One of the first ones to show more than images of lines is ceci n’est pas une virgule (which google translated as the below).
“This is not a comma” is the English translation.
The French phrase “ceci n’est pas” means “this is not.” The noun “une virgule” means “a comma.”
This phrasing is a fun spin on the famous 1929 painting The Treachery of Images by surrealist artist René Magritte, which features a pipe and the caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe). 
There are a few pages that have images that are pretty. They create something that is “Normal” to the eye. Others are just black lines on a lot of white. A lot of white. I mean a ton of white space. The journalist in me hates white space. The claustrophobic in me loves space, but something about this all black and white makes me feel like I’m going to fall off the page. 
By around page 60 or so my computer or the link acted up. I was officially unable to finish the book. As I was going through the book, I was writing down thoughts I had and weaving them into this review. The point of this review was to tell you why I didn’t like this book. But I can’t. Because I realized that there is a lot going that each person will feel differently about. 
In the end, this reviewer realized that this is performance art on the page. And everyone has their opinion on that.
I had no idea what to call this so what would you pick from my POSSIBLE TITLES list?
What’s the Point?
Get the Point?
I didn’t make the review long enough to put all the images I wanted to add
Performance Art on the Page
Did I read that?
Did I read that right?
Is this Klingon?
Why didn’t I write this book?
I read it, now you need to read this review
But I went with another line with from the publisher description.
