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I used The Da Vinci Code purely as an example up there; I don't have a grudge against it personally though I didn't like what I read and did think it was 'bad writing.' I haven't seen this argument myself but for me this sort of thing and the claims that the book is...

I only read To Serve Them All My Days about a month ago, poppy, so I'm pretty new to Delderfield's stuff myself, and A Month in the Country was the first J.L. Carr I've read. As I said above, this sort of thing tends to be somewhat unfashionable: not actiony enough to be a bestseller, not cool...

At the risk of bandying labels about, isn't it a bit patronising to gather together all the 'average working' folk and assume they don't or can't read interesting or challenging stuff? And for that matter, I consider myself an average working Joe. I agree absolutely. In fact I had this...

I don't. Except in the specific sense, eg "The Da Vinci Code, a story where something actually happens, is crap." Indeed I don't think I would tolerate a book where nothing happened, unless it was done tremendously well, eg Heller's ironically titled Something Happened. I don't agree...

This slight, superb novel must count as the shortest ever shortlistee for the Booker Prize, at 85 pages. In the year of publication, 1980, it also won the Guardian Fiction Prize (since discontinued in favour of the Guardian First Book Award). So why isn't it better known? Was its success too...

Sorry to mislead, Doug. I don't actually think that (or not in that blanket way): hence the distancing inverted commas, which were also just to take you up on the possibility of someone saying "Bestsellers are crap," which in fact nobody had up until that point. As an aside, I tend to think of...

Thought I'd float this old thread to the top in light of the repeated raising of the word elitist in some discussions recently. I'm surprised, on reading this thread for the first time now, how much there is of what would now be considered 'insulting' or 'elitist' comments. Are we much more...

Just as well nobody on this thread has said that then.

I agree, MC. And with your latest response to Dogmatix. Of course most of the books on the bestseller list are crap. But so are most of the books not on the bestseller list. There's no certain correlation, positive or negative, between popularity and quality, but wildly popular success does...

Can I expand this discussion to request recommendations for very very long books that do contain excessive sex?

That's right Mari. Plus there seems to be a lot of confusion among eBay sellers and others (including teadude above) about the difference between a first edition and a first printing. The number line 10 to 1 concerns the number of printings, not whether it's a first edition. For example the...

I applaud ions's post of a few pages back detailing what's wrong with The Da Vinci Code. And I see that most of what he said remains undisputed.

Who's William Kristol?

Shit stirring, steffee, and of the most disgraceful kind...

Good stuff, MonkeyCatcher. This is what the Book Forum is all about!

Mission accomplished? If your mission is to irritate people by making insulting and misleading posts, then that is up to you but it's not what this board is for. My mission here is to discuss books. If you review the thread, you will see that your post (#21) was insulting and misleading...

How about these, from this very thread: Anyway, moving on (or rather, backward...) Moto, stop! You're making me feel all warm and fuzzy again...

Please can we have a no flouncing rule added to the Membership Agreement? So Stewart takes the time and makes the effort to reply to all the pro-Brown posts in turn, some of which were highly insulting (like Bountyhunter's) or sarcastic (like zen's), and this is behaviour sufficient to drive...

No, it's just that Janet Maslin is a film critic, not a literary critic. Presumably she thought she was reviewing a screenplay (which in a way she was). I doubt Michiko Kakutani would have given it much leeway. Still, with the late John Cheever as her father-in-law, she should still know better.

Surely this is whatever the opposite is of 'damning with faint praise'? To say merely that The Da Vinci Code is 'not literary greatness' is a little like saying 'Harold Shipman was perhaps not the finest family doctor ever' (for those outside the UK, he killed hundreds of his patients). My...