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  1. Toadal

    Excpert from The Oligarchicon

    I think it is good stuff too!
  2. Toadal

    Excpert from The Oligarchicon

    Great pace, interesting characters and an unusual amount of humour in this sci-fi epic tale. Huth sounds like an excellent anti-hero. Roughly how long will the finished book be, do you think? Have you had any publishers express an interest, thus far?
  3. Toadal

    The slow lingering death of fantasy writing.

    Wow, that's some site! To be quite frank with you, eye (can I call you 'eye'?) I think Wright's books are shit. But I will read your story with interest. Many thanks Terry Oadal.
  4. Toadal

    The slow lingering death of fantasy writing.

    Ainulindale Interesting to note from your signature that you are interested in speculative fiction. Have you heard of the British writer SEAN WRIGHT who places himself at the forefront of the new wave of speculative fiction?. He has written books like Dark Tales of Time and Space and...
  5. Toadal

    The slow lingering death of fantasy writing.

    I should think so too! Of course, the truth is that all big fantasy books are innately bad, by virtue of being fantasy books.
  6. Toadal

    Name a "Mainstream BlockBuster" you actually like!

    Martin - that has all been explained earlier in the thread. Do keep up. Motokid - enjoyment is of course a huge part of reading, and no book is worth reading if it isn't enjoyable. On a one-to-one level, there really isn't anything wrong with people reading blockbusters and enjoying them. But...
  7. Toadal

    Name a "Mainstream BlockBuster" you actually like!

    No one, Martin, is looking down on anyone else. Why would we? But a question is asked and it's reasonable to answer it as truthfully as possible. Am I really insulting people who like a certain book if I say that it isn't of the highest literary merit? I would suggest that most people who have...
  8. Toadal

    Name a "Mainstream BlockBuster" you actually like!

    Martin You clearly aren't taking any notice of any of the posts made in this thread. Stewart was making those specific points in contrast to yours. Why is it tragic that these people are just reading Dan Brown? Because your argument was that by reading his books, people would open themselves...
  9. Toadal

    Name a "Mainstream BlockBuster" you actually like!

    Just where is the evidence for this claim? Were these people illiterate before they came across this sacred text? Had the thought of reading books never occured to them before? Nonsense. Maybe a couple of thousand readers got caught up in the hype and picked up a copy of TdVC as their first book...
  10. Toadal

    Name a "Mainstream BlockBuster" you actually like!

    Exactly! This is why there is no snobbery involved here: there are good books and bad books, but they don't have to fall within specific lines as far as content goes. Le Carre is good, as is James Ellroy. They write their books with a little bit of intelligence, style, and depth. Subject matter...
  11. Toadal

    Name a "Mainstream BlockBuster" you actually like!

    That question, of whether it is worth reading rubbish books at all, is an interesting one. Shade was quite right in comparing the act of reading a Crichton or Grimsham to stuff like reading the back of a cereal packet, or possibly a poor quality newspaper. What does it mean to 'read'? Are we...
  12. Toadal

    Name a "Mainstream BlockBuster" you actually like!

    I have been following this thread with some interest and continue to be flabbergasted at some people's ability to miss the point entirely. The quoted post above, stating that "good" and "bad" in literature depends on the reader, is utter gibberish, and a classic example of the nonsense of...
  13. Toadal

    Do you read non-fiction?

    A Brief History of the Future - John Naughton This is an excellent study of the origins of the internet, by academic and journalist John Naughton, whose Observer column (go to http://www.observer.co.uk and search on his name, or try his entertaining blog at http://www.skillbytes.co.uk/memex/)...
  14. Toadal

    Jonathan Coe

    Which one?
  15. Toadal

    How To Grow The Forum

    Politics With regard to the setting up of a Politics forum, this was done on Palimpsest a few months ago and so far hasn't degenerated into a bear-pit at all. It can be done, but you do need a relatively sensible user base.
  16. Toadal

    Jonathan Coe

    I've been a big Coe fan ever since I picked up The Rotters Club a few years ago. I think he is just about the only literary author whose every book I have bought. He tends to write rather sensibly for The Guardian too, and I recommend a trawl of their website for any bits of his journalism you...
  17. Toadal

    James Ellroy

    Frankly, James Ellroy is God. He is without doubt the world's best living crime author, and I'd wager that he'd the best crime writer ever. Fascinating, if horrifying, life, too: his mother was murdered when James was ten, a crime that has gone unsolved. He then lived with his father, a man who...
  18. Toadal

    Where do you go for "new authors"?

    Shade recently linked to Palimpsest which I really liked.
  19. Toadal

    Iain Banks

    There are some interesting thoughts on Iain Banks here. And Iain M Banks here.
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