BigWords

Welcome to the BCF.

Welcome to the BCF.

Welcome to the BCF.

The television series Neverwhere was during a time at the BBC where the budgetary concerns were paramount - they shot the series on videotape rather than film (which made selling it abroad nigh on impossible) and screwed up the FX to a degree that Gaiman had good reason to be annoyed. I am pretty sure that is where the comment comparing the BBC to a sausage factory was originated - no matter what you put in, out comes Doctor Who (at a point where that wasn't considered to be a good thing). And the casting was abysmal as well... And the music...

This. Lord of The Rings, whatever deficiencies the series may have, manages to combine the epic fantasy with smaller moments of terror - not entirely the answer you were probably seeking, but it stuck around on bestseller lists for decades for a good reason. Conan's various titles are probably a better example of the mingling of those genres, but it is very difficult to pinpoint any specific books which fulfills both genres fully.

The Mist by Stephen King has slowly building dread, though for overall creepiness I suggest that anything by Lovecraft stands out. Try to get your hands on the unedited versions of the stories (i.e. anything not edited by Derleth).

The link to the book blog in my sig hasn't been updated since some point last year, but there are some brilliant blogs which are regularly updated. Check out Google, under the Blogs category (the drop-down choice) to search for book reviews - it would be interesting to hear what differences people here have found between the most popular book blogs. Does opinion really differ so greatly that a work of outstanding merit can be easily dismissed, and 'froth' can attain the highest commendations? Maybe a list of the best book review blogs would be in order...

Welcome to the BCF.

Welcome to the BCF.

Welcome to the BCF.

E-book pricing makes an appearance on the BBC's dot.Rory technology blog. Oh, and if you have any aches and pains don't take your doctor's word for what's wrong. Demand a specialist.

You're a bunch of lightweights. I read through all of her books during 2008 and '09, and the only lasting impression those works made on me was a headache and the feeling that Objectivism is overrated. The Romantic Manifesto is probably the most turgid, overwritten book ever published, while For the New Intellectual lacks any redeeming features. All IMHO, of course.

For someone who has never read any of King's books, maybe one of the short story collections would be a more suitable place to begin. With a novel there is always the possibility that it may not entirely live up to the promise of all the glowing reviews, but I've found the collections to be eminently accessible for those who don't really read horror or fantasy. Dolan's Cadillac is one of the best shorts, and even though the science makes no sense I really liked The Jaunt.

Especially as it had the best in-depth articles on old novels, comics and other weird stuff. There may be hope for it returning in another form at some point though - at least a dozen magazines in the last few years have found a new lease of life on the net.

Half 'n' half. Although I gain some information from hokey old science books (the 1940's and 50's stuff especially) I actually find them really enjoyable, so I don't know where on the scale they land. The dawn of the information age (the early to mid-seventies) had a lot of great non-fiction books which are more enjoyable than they had any right being, so those would also fall under the category of reading for pleasure.

The holocaust-deniers seem to have found willing publishers, though - as I haven't read any of the books - I don't know if a disclaimer of some sort has been added. This is one instance where, no matter the subject matter, historical importance overrides personal opinion. There is a Penguin edition of the book which I have somewhere, though I have yet to open it, much less read it. I'll get around to it one of these days, but it still doesn't seem the easiest reading material. Morbid fascination with serial killers such as Manson is another debate, but I rarely find anything of merit in the step-by-step books. The psychology is more interesting than the actual murders, though publishers find it hard to push a book which doesn't titillate those seeking the macabre on some level.

It's hard to define his work as horror due to the non-supernatural and non-other (which is as good a definition of horror as I can come up with), so I tend to place his work amongst books such as Clive Barker's non-horror output - dark, edgy, but not really true Horror (capitalized). If anything, he's "dark adult contemporary" - a cop-out, I know, but defining anything these days (with so many genres, sub-genres and side-genres being created by marketing and publishing forces) does it really matter? If something is good, it is good... Regardless of what labels are put on the story.

Because Stephen is such a massive geek, I wouldn't put it past him to start tying in the expanded universe to the New Who - therefore (on the off-chance that anyone at the BBC pays attention to what I say) I really, really want an Abslom Daak episode. He doesn't even have to be named, but the presence of the character in an actual episode would make me happier than I have any right to be. That is all.

Even though I've only ever seen the one book by P.J. Hammond, there was a rumor circulating back in the early nineties that other stories begun as scripts (though never filmed) could possibly be released. I haven't had the courage to listen to the Big Finish audio dramas for fear they might be less than brilliant, but it seems there is very little in the way of merchandise for such an innovative and intellectual show.

Does anyone feel they can trust a bank with their money if they are willing to waste cash on that advert? It's almost as if they are trying to convince people they will throw around their cash - and how much would it have cost them to secure the rights to that song alone? That advert has Epic Fail written all over it.

Welcome back. I've been on quite a few of those semi-abandoned forums in my time, and the one thing they all share in common seems to be a narrow focus. There's enough variety in the books discussed here that it doesn't give off a niche feel. To think of all the time I wasted elsewhere... Ugh.

Catcher In The Rye is worth reading. Even if you only read it the once - it is kinda like Marmite, people either hate it or love it.

I keep hearing good things about The Lovely Bones, so it's creeping to the top of my TBR pile.

You probably managed to pick up the main points through skimming. And you managed to do it in less time than it takes to watch the film. I'm impressed.

It isn't so much the theme of racism (Harper Lee gets no criticism from me), nor the fact that a character is racist which has been bothering me. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Philip Francis Nowlan, and Sax Rohmer (and others) all use casual racist epithets throughout their texts - in descriptions of characters, not through the words of their characters. This, to me anyways, crosses the line between using racism in the context of a story (as Harper Lee did) and being... Well, the judgments on the authors can be seen in their writing. It seems to be a recurring theme that anything disliked enough by a minority gets pulled from the shelves anyways. There was a kerfuffle over a reprint of Tintin In The Congo a few years back (which shouldn't have been in the childrens section anyway, IMO) and a Dandy (?) annual reprint (I think that was another 1940s title) made the newspapers due to its' depiction of a character. I don't have the Little Sambo (?) cartoons to hand at the moment, but an internet search should reveal exactly why so much was made of D.C. Thompson's decision to release it unedited and without due annotation. I think (though I would have to flick through the books again to confirm my suspicions) that King uses the trope of "the drunken, stupid Irish" as a joke rather than anything else, but it does bring into question the responsibility of authors in regards to alienating entire demographics. And I was under the impression he had some Irish blood in him, making the joke somewhat at his own expense. There is too fine a line on modern authors for the most part - it's the dusty old racism left over from the Empire which is bugging me at the moment. There are plenty of books which I'm struggling to contemplate reading (and in some cases re-reading) due to the heavy overtones of smug superiority through them.