Only in Wales

Ah, OK. I know some people have that failing, and it's not a pleasant one,
I'd totally agree.

Ali

 

I don't care myself, I don't need my entertainers to be excellent
people in real life as well, what they produce is sufficient. However,
as mildly entertainting as his stuff is, I hardly think it compares
with the likes of D. Adams and more than that his reliance on
internet-garnered jokes and memes is stunningly lazy. Again, I don't
mind him doing that per se, it's earned him a lot of money, but hardly
worthy of being elevated to some literary figurehead. He's the literary
equivalent of Kylie Monogue. Easy and disposable.

 

Hm. That may be why I couldn't get on with his books - I like Adams, well
written and clever, and he never seemed to take himself seriously, which is
endearing in my book. I can't read J K Rowling, either, despite liking that
genre.

Ali

 

Pratchett

Which novel are you thinking of here? I've not noticed this trend. His
most recent, Wintersmith, impressed me with its summation of village
communities.

 

I've read quite a few as they're easy to chuck in the bag at the last
minute for winter sports holidays or conferences, events where I might
want to kill time but not get too taxed/involved in the reading matter.
I can't remember any specific books as I stopped reading them a while
ago, after the death one- just that I became more and more disenchanted
with "his" universe. It was a similar feeling of disatisfaction that I
had reading Victor Lewis Smith's Evening Standard column and for the
same reasons.

 

That's the point of Pratchett, easy read but enough in there to keep
brain ticking over.

There was a really ropey patch at one point.

I gave up on VLS years back. He always struck me as trying to be Miles
Kington and failing.

 

You could say that of almost any writer. I must reiterate, I don't
think he's useless or shit, I just see his near deification as
symptomatic of a society that venerates mediocrity in all its forms.

Sorry, can't remember those kind of details.

I hate him as well.

 

I loved that aspect too. I also liked the way he wove the
Morris into it. Morris men dance through the valley[1] and spring comes.
That's the way it is.

[1] It taks a long time because there are lots of villages and every
village has a pub.

 

Morris dancing, country pubs, "researching" via the net...you haven't
got a long lost twin brother that you're trying to find have you?

 

Nope, sorry, don't get this.

 

He was on a TV interview back in December and said something along the
lines of "I'm not a particularly good writer, but if people are happy
to buy the books and they enjoy them, great..."

 

Congratulations for using the right word rather than the ugly
abomination so often seen these days.

 

What, disintrestinated? Disintrestified? Distintrestudicated?

 

No, no, no. The a-word.

 

Arbitrator?

 

Aaaarrrggghhh! Make him stop.