The Night Mail

[iL Dottore]

13 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Harry Potter is just a rehash of Enid Blyton.  Mallory Towers intertwined with the Famous Five.  Just spin it out as a series and don't mention the g*p*y children.

Cobblers!

You clearly haven’t read either (or not for a long while),

 

Saying Harry Potter is a rehash of Blyton is like saying Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing are rehashes of work by Bocaccio (which, in a way, they were).

 

There’s an awful lot of snobbery about writers like JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett or Stephen King. It’s almost as though telling an engrossing story is something, well infra-dig. Yet the writers that have endured over time - such as Dickens, Blyton, Agatha Christie, Len Deighton etc - set out to entertain, not show how “clever”, “innovative”, “exciting” or “relevant” they are.

 

“Living well is the best revenge” and I reckon JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett etc have had the last laugh (books sold by Terry Pratchett = more than 100 million; Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children [his Booker Prize winning novel] = 1/2 million)

[Hroth]

7 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

And I just finished re-reading “Raising Steam” for about the 20th time a couple of nights ago! 🤣

 

Totally agree re: the great Terry Pratchett, although most of my collection was binned by a vindictive ex-wife. Together with my full set of Isaac Asimov books, my Harry Harrison ‘Stainless Steel Rat’ collection, all of my Douglas Adams books, my Lord of the Rings trilogy volume (the prize award from secondary school) and my set of Iain Banks books (the originals, in monochrome book covers).

 

Now, there’s a writer who can be read again and again! The first book of his that I read (and actually the first he had published) was recommended to me by a close school friend when we were at sixth form college together; my friend was a brilliant artist, going on to achieving a first class honours degree in fine art, and was the coolest person I ever knew (never understood why he had me - the uncoolest of the uncool - as his friend!), sadly succumbing to liver failure aged only 49 due to a long struggle with mental illness and the bottle, which I knew nothing about…

 

I digress, but I remember him handing “The Wasp Factory” to me as if it was yesterday - “Read this - it’s brilliant. As long as you don’t skip to the end. Don’t skip to the end. Read it. It’s worth it!”

 

If you haven’t read it, get a copy and do so. Don’t skip to the end. I can vouch that it is worth it, and that the twist at the end is such a surprise that it may leave you - like I found myself all those years ago -

with mouth agape! In fact, you may end up rereading the whole book again immediately in light of the revelations in the last few pages, in order to suddenly make some sense of everything previously read!

 

The books I read once tend to be work related 🥱 or manuals. Anything fiction that gets read once gets donated PDQ to any local charity shop that will take it!

 

Steve S

 

I don't know why I bought it, but I got the paperback of The Wasp Factory when it first came out (with the embossed cover!) and was hooked by the storytelling.  I liked The Bridge, Complicity, and The Business but the other so-called "mainstream" novels were drowned out by the Culture sequence.

 

Douglas Adams was first discovered on the radio, I got the Hitchhikers trilogy and also the double lp versions of the radio series. I read the extensions of Hitchhiker but they felt a bit like flogging a dead horse!

 

As for terryp, I've got all the DW novels, in very ragged paperbacks from when I discovered TCOM in the mid-80s, switching to hardback around MAA.  I think the last ones I can read without feeling something something was wrong is Unseen Academicals and perhaps Thud, while the last few have too much of the fading of the light for me.

 

[SteveyDee68]

8 minutes ago, Hroth said:

the other so-called "mainstream" novels [by Iain Banks] were drowned out by the Culture sequence.

His SF writing, as Iain M Banks, is absolutely superb; I thought the Foundation series by Assimov was great, but then Banks just reset the bar in the Culture novels - and it is interesting that he sees the development of AI as something that will benefit humankind, freeing us from the shackles of capitalism, which maybe might be why the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are suddenly so cautious about its development; after all, multi billionaires simply don’t exist in a post capitalist society!

 

I must recommend the Dirk Gently novels by Douglas Adams - those don’t feel like they are flogging a dead horse (even if the first book is basically about a ghost) and like many others I feel DNA’s premature loss to this day.

 

42

 

 

[SteveyDee68]

7 hours ago, pH said:

there’s no way of finding out now whether that’s true

Ian Banks, another talent taken from us too early

[PhilJ W]

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Cobblers!

You clearly haven’t read either (or not for a long while),

 

Saying Harry Potter is a rehash of Blyton is like saying Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing are rehashes of work by Bocaccio (which, in a way, they were).

 

There’s an awful lot of snobbery about writers like JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett or Stephen King. It’s almost as though telling an engrossing story is something, well infra-dig. Yet the writers that have endured over time - such as Dickens, Blyton, Agatha Christie, Len Deighton etc - set out to entertain, not show how “clever”, “innovative”, “exciting” or “relevant” they are.

 

“Living well is the best revenge” and I reckon JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett etc have had the last laugh (books sold by Terry Pratchett = more than 100 million; Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children [his Booker Prize winning novel] = 1/2 million)

Here is a list of best selling authors, headed by William Shakespeare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

Here is a list of best selling authors, headed by William Shakespeare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors

Some interesting names on there but not Nevil Shute another very good storyteller. 

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

I think that the best opening line in any book I have ever read is in Iain Banks’s The Crow Road - “It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

 

Brilliant.

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

Just to show how hard life can be, here is the view from where I am typing this:

 

And this is where I plan on spending some time this afternoon having manfully struggled at least five yards:

 

In order to prepare for such an ordeal I am about to consume some cheese, chorizo and beer.

 

TTFN

 

Dave

 

 

[Tony_S]

I did think at first someone had driven a car into the pool but using my "big" monitor all is clear!

[Hroth]

27 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Just to show how hard life can be, here is the view from where I am typing this:

 

And this is where I plan on spending some time this afternoon having manfully struggled at least five yards:

 

In order to prepare for such an ordeal I am about to consume some cheese, chorizo and beer.

 

TTFN

 

Dave

 

 

 

Its a hard life, but someone has to do it....

 

[SM42]

On my return from work this morning  a bleary eyed SM42 was greeted with ' the washing machine is broken"

It apparently made a funny noises and stopped working. 

 

Such illuminating symptoms have been passed to the repair company who can't come out till the 18th. 

 

As the machine is 16 years old, I'm not holding my breath but at least it is only costing a 16t mineral plus any parts. 

 

A bit early for joining the great unwashed at Warley, but then again, time to ferment nicely

 

Andy

[Dave Hunt]

A colleague of mine who spent some time with the RAAF told me that one of their Mirage pilots once wrote in the unservicability page of the aircraft log book, “Something in the back squeaking.” The maintenance response of remedial work carried out was, “Something in the back oiled.”

 

Dave

[TheQ]

Just worked out it's in excess of 52 years since i read most of Asimov's books, along with Heinlein's and Clarke's.. Though Adams books were somewhat later.. I've got AC Clarke's biography somewhere which was of interest to me, as he too was a former radar technician.

 

With the comments here I'm tempted to get a H Potter book, though it's rare I read fiction these days.. ( i stopped reading newspapers long ago). Next time I'm in the charity book shop, I'll have a look, for an HP all books £1, except for a few in certain cupboards, guess where the railway books are.!!

 

I have seen in Saudi on a genuine technical defect report. The classic. "IFF does not work in the OFF position"....

[5 C]

52 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

A colleague of mine who spent some time with the RAAF told me that one of their Mirage pilots once wrote in the unservicability page of the aircraft log book, “Something in the back squeaking.” The maintenance response of remedial work carried out was, “Something in the back oiled.”

 

Dave

Reminds me of an alleged Tech Log entry:

 

Pilot entry: "Autoland does not work"

 

Maintenance entry: "Aircraft does not have Autoland".

[AndyID]

9 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Cobblers!

You clearly haven’t read either (or not for a long while),

 

Saying Harry Potter is a rehash of Blyton is like saying Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing are rehashes of work by Bocaccio (which, in a way, they were).

 

There’s an awful lot of snobbery about writers like JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett or Stephen King. It’s almost as though telling an engrossing story is something, well infra-dig. Yet the writers that have endured over time - such as Dickens, Blyton, Agatha Christie, Len Deighton etc - set out to entertain, not show how “clever”, “innovative”, “exciting” or “relevant” they are.

 

“Living well is the best revenge” and I reckon JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett etc have had the last laugh (books sold by Terry Pratchett = more than 100 million; Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children [his Booker Prize winning novel] = 1/2 million)

 

I suspect His Royal Hipponess was indulging in a bit of a windup 🤣

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Love all the reading. Did 'all' the scifi in my teens, and the standout was and remains PK Dick for imagined futures. No small accident that his work lives on in many film productions. The contrast with Isaak Judah Osimov's inevitably Torah influenced ideal galactic civilisation epic is so striking.

 

The sad 'drop off' in Terry Pratchett's ability as the dementia hit is sad but also informative; matched what I perceived in four of our family's seniors suffering with Alzheimer, and assisted putting my own brother in front of a psychiatrist very swiftly. The current therapy is much superior to what older family mamber received and has pretty much arrested his deterioration, and there's the promise of yet better coming down the track.

 

Just finished rereading 'Cancer Ward', which explains everything you need to know about current Russia. (Started on this diet thanks to 'One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich', a book which dominated my early years in secondary education, when so many well educated but deluded folk still propagated the idea that the USSR was a liberal worker's paradise.)

 

The rightly applauded late Hilary Mantel offers 'A Place of Greater Safety, which does the same job for France, and hasn't a fraction of the attention given 'Henry the Bonkers' (Wolf Hall trilogy) as it is known in our family.

 

23 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

They are based in the Lake District and intend taking a day trip by car to Polperro in Cornwall.

Ah what joyful memories this recalls. Back in a 1970s December, a young couple from Calif. joined our team based 20 miles North of Trafalgar Square, and as keen skiers announced their intention to drive over to the Swiss Alps for a weekend on the pistes; they would slope off Friday lunchtime (as so many did) and be back before Monday lunchtime, would colleagues cover for them? Being a cruel bunch we all offered hearty support. 

 

By chance there was a two day blizzard in central France and eastward from early on the Saturday, and a fairly major Channel storm on Monday. Strangely enough when they reappeared on Tuesday morning questions on the snow conditions for skiing were not cheerfully answered...

[J. S. Bach]

35 minutes ago, AndyID said:

I suspect His Royal Hipponess was indulging in a bit of a windup 🤣

As long as it was not the tail!

[Dave Hunt]

As a firm fan of Terry Pratchett’s work (the autocorrect just tried changing Pratchett to Prat Jet 😙) I concur that his later books didn’t have the same attraction as the majority and although I still enjoyed all of them the poorest in my opinion was, sadly, Raising Steam. Even so, I think that his insight and inclusion of references, some of them very subtle, to some of the classics and social questions was remarkable. The Discworld has to be one of the all time greats of popular literature. And like some other contributors here, experience has brought me to the point where the mere mention of the Booker prize in connection with a book is enough to ensure that I will never read it.

 

Dave

[AndyID]

I was always a big fan of James Thurber and P G Wodehouse.

[PhilJ W]

Re the list of authors, the two best sellers of all time are William Shakespeare and Agatha Christie. Shakespeare is understandable, his books have been around for yonks and Agatha Christie has probably been published in more languages  than any other author. Agatha Christie IMHO only used about five or six plots just changing the detective/victim/murderer/weapon/location as and where necessary.

[Hroth]

Speaking once more of the Booker, here's a list of winners and shortlists by year

 

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/full-list-of-booker-prize-winners-shortlisted-authors-and-their-books

 

There's a number of recognisable authors and books, and I've actually read some, but most are the literary worlds yearly fads who's individual total sales must have been in the thousands.

 

[polybear]

3 hours ago, TheQ said:

JWith the comments here I'm tempted to get a H Potter book, though it's rare I read fiction these days.. ( i stopped reading newspapers long ago). Next time I'm in the charity book shop, I'll have a look, for an HP all books £1, except for a few in certain cupboards, guess where the railway books are.!!

 

It's worth reading the series in order to understand and get the best out of them.  It's also worth trying your local library service website as many offer free downloadable talking books to listen to - incl. HP; many say you should delete them after a month (and somehow threaten banning you if you don't) but I found that saving the book as a file on my lappy got round this threat

 

3 hours ago, TheQ said:

 

I have seen in Saudi on a genuine technical defect report. The classic. "IFF does not work in the OFF position"....

 

I wonder what Royal Prince wrote that?

[Northmoor]

16 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

There’s an awful lot of snobbery about writers like JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett or Stephen King. It’s almost as though telling an engrossing story is something, well infra-dig. Yet the writers that have endured over time - such as Dickens, Blyton, Agatha Christie, Len Deighton etc - set out to entertain, not show how “clever”, “innovative”, “exciting” or “relevant” they are.

 

There is snobbery in every branch of the arts (and as I've said on here before, also in things like food).  With the arts, excusing yourself by saying you "haven't sold out", is just code for not being able to sell your work because it's too cr@p.  

 

Ditto pretentiousness; the earlier comments about Booker Prize winners reminded me of my Mother being given Ben Okri's The Famished Road as a Christmas present.  She said it was probably the only time she gave up on a book a quarter of the way in.  I remember the author doing a Great Railway Journeys programme where he wanted to talk to everyone about the meaning of their journey.  It was almost hilarious by the end; most of the other passengers were looking at him like he was weird.

Edited October 10, 2023 by Northmoor

[Darlington_Shed]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

the Booker, here's a list

 

As I suspected, I've read none of them, winners or shortlisted. In fact, apart from Pat Barker's Regeneration I'm pretty sure I've never read any of the authors.

 

I do read, a lot - averaging about 50-60 books a year for the last few years, much reduced from around 150-200 a year in previous decades.

 

I've not read any new SF for years, since - I think - William Gibson's cyberpunk series. I do regularly re-read Heinlein, Asmov, Clarke and the other SF greats - an old man's comfort reading 😃

[Northmoor]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Re the list of authors, the two best sellers of all time are William Shakespeare and Agatha Christie. Shakespeare is understandable, his books have been around for yonks and Agatha Christie has probably been published in more languages  than any other author. Agatha Christie IMHO only used about five or six plots just changing the detective/victim/murderer/weapon/location as and where necessary.

When doing "wider reading" for English GCSE, anyone doing detective fiction was told that they could not do AG as she wasn't challenging enough, perhaps the repeated plots is what our teacher meant?  I chose Sci-Fi and read John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos and The Day of the Triffids; I keep looking out for more of his work in charity shops as one day I'll find the time to read them all (the book backlog is almost long enough to see me to retirement, so long as I keep commuting).  Commuting by train involves either reading, doing a crossword or dozing, the time is never wasted.....