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Writer's Block If you're sitting on a whopper, good idea to go back to basics and type up a one or two page synopsis of your whole story. If it still excites you, you'll finish the book. If not, you need to work on the synopsis, which is sometimes harder than the book itself.

Reviews There are also some sites that pay you for reviewing books - as long as the review is good/comprehensive enough. You could, theoretically, make a living reviewing - and writing short stories as Writer John suggests.

Typo Apologies - 'masturbatory'.

Language vs plot? Choice of words vs pace or plot? Hotel du Lac (Anita Brookner) is not a great work - dull, boring, dull again - but it won the Booker prize 10-15 years ago. 'His Daughter' does not grip me at all and I find the language grates at times. I think that I would not be able to...

Simple and striking - and nicely ambiguous

Claustrophobia/kidnap...gulp... Trapped on a whim and held by fear There's something I don't want to hear: The voice I heard not long ago Beckoning me forward in the snow. "It's only a flat, I'll need your help You mustn't shout, you needn't yelp, Just get inside and we'll be done...

Hard I think the subsidiary debate here is similar to the one about going to a bad film. Go to a big film festival, see a few films and you learn astonishingly quickly to do what most critics do - exercise the right to leave ASAP. Ions - as a matter of interest, and this is not intended to be...

Chaucer Hi Hermione - it was either the Miller's or the Wife of Bath's, the two really bawdy ones!

Frying tonight! Crackling books - try The Rainmaker (John Grisham) or The Good German (Joseph Kanon) or Julius (BA Levine) or The Beach (Alex Garland). They're all fast reads and give you something you can warm your hands with.

Catch 22 Wow! That's the first edition. I can't believe I lent it to you... :D

Catch 22 A third and mysterious new person - my lovely wife - has now entered the fray and ordered one for me (amongst other books which I used to have but don't anymore) which makes matters even more complicated. Your offer - our offers - are very generous but I risk incurring the wrath of my...

Re-read books Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Hard Times, (yes I rather like Dickens..) Tom Jones, Vile Bodies, Forty Years On (play), The Importance... (play), lots of Shakespeare, Gullivers' Travels (unexpurgated versio:eek: n), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Catch 22, London Fields... probably a lot...

Male thrillers I assume you've read Clancy and Ludlum? Good books for aeroplanes and beaches...

Comparables... Hi Manuscriptx - check out some old (1930) thoughts that strike a chord perhaps with what the writer in your passage is feeling: 'No no - you mustn't be serious...it's just what they want. Laugh at everything...be flippant!...laugh at everything, all their sacred shibboleths...

Solution We could lend one to each other perhaps?

Thank you John! Thank you John!

It's good - maybe you should put off revising again... It would actually make great song lyrics (imagine Nirvana): another string to your bow?

My message I meant to say 20th century. :)

Catch 22 This is one of the greatest books of the 21st century, and the film is pretty amazing as well - and very disturbing. I am sure I have bought at least 3 copies of this over the years and lent it to friends who have 'mislaid' each one, leaving me in my own little Catch 22 situation.

Business-book/fiction Try Liar's Poker - a true story of how '80s Salomon traders made millions and acted like idiots. It's factual/fun/fiction in one take.