Sorry to hear that @zappa. I hope she was none the worse, but it does illustrate why living alone would be a bad idea.
Someone from mums care home called into the charity bookshop where I work to look for large print books for some of the residents. She reckoned Fifty Shades of Grey would be going down a treat!
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... Someone from mums care home called into the charity bookshop where I work to look for large print books for some of the residents. She reckoned Fifty Shades of Grey would be going down a treat!
Really?!?!?
Poor Mrs. Zap99 - sorry to hear she's taken a tumble. Hope she didn't do any serious damage.
I did ( ) - it was a terrible book (as in really badly written), and by the end I cared so little for the characters I didn't bother reading the sequels.
My sister read it and was moved of the spirit to toss the book across the room while looking directly at me and saying, "Even YOU could write better than this!"
I can thoroughly recommend "Fifty Sheds of Grey" - gratuitous quantities of shed-based innuendo and double entendre. Obviously ideal for the shed-pottering demographic.
My mum (she would be in her 80s now if still alive) would have loved 50 Shades in her old age. She read trashy sex novels all her life. When I was a teen there was a row of books in the bookcase that I supposedly wasn’t allowed to read!
Apparently the residents (not mum, she's a bit beyond being able to read), are quite keen on 'sexy' books.
My mum, who would be 102 if she were alive today, made it clear that "that side of things" between her and my dad were always very good, but she didn't go for sex in books and definitely didn't like anything poorly written. Like @Piglet I thought 50 Shades was terribly badly written. I did leaf through all the sequels as our daughter was decluttering them, and was amused to find the ending of the last one is immensely traditional.
... When I was a teen there was a row of books in the bookcase that I supposedly wasn’t allowed to read!
I bet you did though ...
I grew up in a house with brothers 10 and 12 years older than me; I read a lot of things I wasn't supposed to. Lady Chatterley's Lover, which always fell open at the interesting bits, pretty much completed my sex education but left me with a few odd ideas about the uses of flowers.
My dad worked early mornings in a dairy factory and came home at lunch time and went to bed. As a result I had 7 siblings - sex certainly wasn’t a secret in our house!
There was only one book in our house that my mother advised me against reading as a teenager.. It was by Lord Russell of Liverpool* and was titled The Scourge of the Swastika. Amongst other things I think it describes Concentration Camps.
I have never felt the least temptation to read it, although of course I have read other books and watched documentaries about the camps as an adult, but I am relieved that I never read it when I was younger. Sometimes Mothers are right.
*50 Shades* was popular with some of my lady colleagues at the Ambulance Station. There seemed to be only one copy circulating, though, with the interesting bits marked by yellow post-it notes...
Fifty Shades along with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code are two books that you are guaranteed to find in a charity bookshop. I haven't read the former, but I must confess to a soft spot for the latter. It is one of the most badly written books I've ever read and Robert Langdon one of the most useless heroes I've ever come across but it did keep me entertained
Never read 50SOG, but saw all the movies, mostly because there were no other interesting English-language films in the theatres at the time.
The first was a little underwhelming, I think because I had been led to think it was gonna be about a BDSM relationship, but it was more about someone making the decision to enter into a BDSM relationship, and the movie ends pretty much right after the decision is made.
The second I remember as being the spiciest of the trio, but I don't recall much of the details, except that it involved Kim Basinger as some sort of pedophiliac femme fatale come back to haunt Christian.
The last one I remember as being just a sorta garden-variety kidnapping movie. As with the first, whatever kinky sex scenes there were didn't make a lasting impression.
Always nice to see movies shot against the beautiful backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, but other than that, meh.
It is one of the most badly written books I've ever read and Robert Langdon one of the most useless heroes I've ever come across but it did keep me entertained
I feel kinda bad for the guys who wrote Holy Blood Holy Grail, because by billing their work as non-fiction, they inadvertantly allowed Brown to duck their lawsuit by arguing that he was just using their book for historical research, rather than ripping off someone else's story to write his own.
Not that the Holy Blood guys are in the poorhouse, but when you look at the profits they made, compared to what Brown made, it's gotta hurt.
I once gave Ma and Pa Reckondwyth "The Joy of Sex." My father's comment was, "That's all well and good if you don't have to get up for work the next morning."
As a teenager I once stayed (with the family as a ŵhole) with a friend of the family, and was put up in the study. They had a copy of the Joy of Sex and 150 days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade which was, for want of a better expression, eye opening.
Fifty Shades along with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code are two books that you are guaranteed to find in a charity bookshop. I haven't read the former, but I must confess to a soft spot for the latter. It is one of the most badly written books I've ever read and Robert Langdon one of the most useless heroes I've ever come across but it did keep me entertained
Yes, I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, too. Ridiculous Tosh, but, as you say, entertaining...
Fifty Shades along with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code are two books that you are guaranteed to find in a charity bookshop. I haven't read the former, but I must confess to a soft spot for the latter. It is one of the most badly written books I've ever read and Robert Langdon one of the most useless heroes I've ever come across but it did keep me entertained
Yes, I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, too. Ridiculous Tosh, but, as you say, entertaining...
Indeed. I wouldn't go as far as saying I enjoyed it, but it kept me reading to the end.
Some books in this category are sequels I've read. Years ago I read an appalling sequel to Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" and I really wished I hadn't. I spent a long time trying to forget it and am pleased to say I have been successful.
I've also read "Scarlett" by Alexandra Ripley, the sequel to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind" which was moderately OK but I certainly could have lived without it.
What I haven't read is Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea", the prequel to Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre", which I have heard is good and might make a guest appearance in February's book group discussion in Heaven.
I'm rather partial to the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L Sayers (apart from the anti-semitism), but the sequels by Jill Paton Walsh (Thrones, Dominations and A Presumption of Death) are somehow unsatisfactory - can't put my finger on exactly why, though.
Has Ms Paton Walsh written any other Wimsey-related stuff?
I thought there were diminishing returns with the Jill Paton Walsh Wimsey books. The first one, which I think was from an idea of Sayers, was good. The rest less so. Certainly the last one I read seemed to have not quite got the tone right.
I thought there were diminishing returns with the Jill Paton Walsh Wimsey books. The first one, which I think was from an idea of Sayers, was good. The rest less so. Certainly the last one I read seemed to have not quite got the tone right.
In a way, I suppose this is inevitable with sequels by other authors. However good a writer she may be, Jill Paton Walsh is (obviously) not Dorothy L Sayers!
BTW, the titles I mentioned have both names on the covers, so perhaps both were derived from ideas or notes of Miss Sayers.
I remember being vastly disappointed by Tolkien's The Silmarillion - I actually bought my copy on the very day it was published! - as it seemed much more like a rather dry and academic historical treatise than the epic adventure saga of Lord of the Rings...
I've also read "Scarlett" by Alexandra Ripley, the sequel to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind" which was moderately OK but I certainly could have lived without it.
I felt the same way about "The Wind Done Gone" by Alice Randall.
I read Da Vinci Code to find out what everyone was talking about so that I would be able to take part in office conversations. I think I was a bit too late, as the topic of conversation had moved on.
I agree with Sarasa - it’s poorly written and it got donated to the church fair as soon as possible!
I quite like autobiographies. I bought Kaffe Facett’s book some years ago. The photos of his work were gorgeous, but I found that I didn’t like him very much, so that also went to a church fete.
Billy Connolly’s autobiography might go the same way for the same reason.
I got pretty much all my early sex education from my big sister's Angelique books and dirty jokes.
I also read all the James Bond books that my older brothers left lying about the place. I guess they were a balance to Lady Chatterley's Lover . I definitely remember an incident involving sea urchin spines and toe sucking.
I thought there were diminishing returns with the Jill Paton Walsh Wimsey books. The first one, which I think was from an idea of Sayers, was good. The rest less so. Certainly the last one I read seemed to have not quite got the tone right.
In a way, I suppose this is inevitable with sequels by other authors. However good a writer she may be, Jill Paton Walsh is (obviously) not Dorothy L Sayers!
BTW, the titles I mentioned have both names on the covers, so perhaps both were derived from ideas or notes of Miss Sayers.
I remember being vastly disappointed by Tolkien's The Silmarillion - I actually bought my copy on the very day it was published! - as it seemed much more like a rather dry and academic historical treatise than the epic adventure saga of Lord of the Rings...
I belong to that weird subset of Tolkien fans who like the Silmarillion more then tLotR...
I thought there were diminishing returns with the Jill Paton Walsh Wimsey books. The first one, which I think was from an idea of Sayers, was good. The rest less so. Certainly the last one I read seemed to have not quite got the tone right.
In a way, I suppose this is inevitable with sequels by other authors. However good a writer she may be, Jill Paton Walsh is (obviously) not Dorothy L Sayers!
BTW, the titles I mentioned have both names on the covers, so perhaps both were derived from ideas or notes of Miss Sayers.
I remember being vastly disappointed by Tolkien's The Silmarillion - I actually bought my copy on the very day it was published! - as it seemed much more like a rather dry and academic historical treatise than the epic adventure saga of Lord of the Rings...
I belong to that weird subset of Tolkien fans who like the Silmarillion more then tLotR...
Don't get me wrong - The Silmarillion is a brilliant work, but I had to grow into it IYSWIM. It does have a rather more lofty tone than LOTR, but that may be due to the lack of Hobbits...
I wasn't a huge reader of The Hardy Boys, but one notable aspect of my stint with them was that it continued past the age that's usually considered normal. I think I was in middle school when I finally gave up on Frank and Joe, after classmates made fun of me.
I also recall a time in my life when I had read Les Miserables, and LATER read The Prophet, and thought that they were both profound pieces of writing. (The Prophet is generally considered schmaltz, though I will still say that it's better-than-average, as far as schmaltz goes.)
And I think I was in high-school before I ever encountered the idea that the articles in Reader's Digest are anything but top-notch journalism.
The thought of there being a large print version of 50 Shades of Grey gave me a moment of delight. Thank you @Sarasa. Not that I've ever read the book.
I have read the Da Vinci Code. A work colleague exhorted me to do so because she was adamant that as a religious person, I'd be interested in it. I wasn't. Any other use of my time would have been better.
I've a sort of memory from a few years ago hearing that the bearded man and his hirsute lady in The Joy of Sex either are or were until recently still alive and still together. I also seem to recall hearing that she was originally German and hence the armpits.
Another book I've read and thought was abnormally bad is one probably no other shipmate has encountered. I only have because it was someone else's choice in a book group. It is Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Unless for some reason you have to read it, don't. It's badly written. The language is hyperinflated to such an extent that the story is difficult to follow. And when you've managed to follow it, the story isn't interesting. Unless you're very keen on long distance running, the people you meet in the book are obsessives you'd go out of your way to avoid at parties. The one bit that could have been interesting in a different book was a group of rural Mexicans with quite an unusual culture. Alas, having introduced them, he drops them again to treat them merely as background furniture for his obsessive joggers.
A book I definitely shouldn't have read,aged 11, was The Pan Book of Horror Stories. It came between me and sleep for months, if not years. I avoid the genre to this day.
I've a sort of memory from a few years ago hearing that the bearded man and his hirsute lady in The Joy of Sex either are or were until recently still alive and still together. I also seem to recall hearing that she was originally German and hence the armpits.
I'm afraid that I sniggered when the author died and the comment in the obituary was "...following a number of strokes". I couldn't help thinking that a phrase less open to misconstruance would have helped.
A book I definitely shouldn't have read,aged 11, was The Pan Book of Horror Stories. It came between me and sleep for months, if not years. I avoid the genre to this day.
Yes, same here. IIRC, there was a series of such books, and many of the stories were realistically, yet casually, horrible, IYSWIM. Never again.
OTOH, I enjoy H P Lovecraft and his heirs and successors, partly perhaps because the stories are so improbable...
I'm rather partial to the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L Sayers (apart from the anti-semitism), but the sequels by Jill Paton Walsh (Thrones, Dominations and A Presumption of Death) are somehow unsatisfactory - can't put my finger on exactly why, though.
Has Ms Paton Walsh written any other Wimsey-related stuff?
They've got that artificial flavoring taste. It's overwhelming.
In answer to the OP - I think I found the sequels to 'The little world of Don Camillo' a bit handle-turn-ey, compared to the first which I really liked - and they spoiled the thing for me, slightly. A bit like the way I quite liked the first few TV-ised 'Call the Midwife' episodes, but found it pretty shmaltzy after a little while. I think the two examples are related - they seem to start off trying to gently point at something real and perhaps even profound, but then get distracted by their own whimsy which up to that point had had a kind of charm as a style, but not the substance. Well, that's how it seems to me. IANAC (Like IANAD, but 'C' for 'Critic')
@mark_in_manchester, that's interesting: I enjoyed the first one or two I read (including the original book), but the third I read seemed to drag, despite the short length. So it's not just me, then!
Re. the Silmarillion: I found most of that a bit of a slog, but I loved the creation story.
I belong to that weird subset of Tolkien fans who like the Silmarillion more then tLotR...
Me too.
Yeah, I liked the Silmarillion, too. 'cause it has a lot more "this is why this is happening" and a lot less "let me just spend 300 pages describing this footpath."
Dorothy Sayers outlined parallel plot lines for the various themes in Thrones Dominations. She also wrote part of the text, but did not finish it. There are some passages that are clearly written by Sayers, and others which clearly are not.
I thought there were diminishing returns with the Jill Paton Walsh Wimsey books. The first one, which I think was from an idea of Sayers, was good. The rest less so. Certainly the last one I read seemed to have not quite got the tone right.
In a way, I suppose this is inevitable with sequels by other authors. However good a writer she may be, Jill Paton Walsh is (obviously) not Dorothy L Sayers!
BTW, the titles I mentioned have both names on the covers, so perhaps both were derived from ideas or notes of Miss Sayers.
I remember being vastly disappointed by Tolkien's The Silmarillion - I actually bought my copy on the very day it was published! - as it seemed much more like a rather dry and academic historical treatise than the epic adventure saga of Lord of the Rings...
I belong to that weird subset of Tolkien fans who like the Silmarillion more then tLotR...
I have read the Silmarillion once and it was hard work.
I first read The Silmarillion as a LOTR fan aged about 11 and was hugely disappointed by it for the reason Mousethief suggests. When I re-read it aged 21 I thought it was brilliant and have re-read a number of times since. You have to think of it as a compendium of myths rather than as an adventure story (plus you have to enjoy compendiums of myths).
Like Pure Sunshine I always loved the creation story, even the first time I read it (and the Downfall of Numenor too).
I thought there were diminishing returns with the Jill Paton Walsh Wimsey books. The first one, which I think was from an idea of Sayers, was good. The rest less so. Certainly the last one I read seemed to have not quite got the tone right.
In a way, I suppose this is inevitable with sequels by other authors. However good a writer she may be, Jill Paton Walsh is (obviously) not Dorothy L Sayers!
BTW, the titles I mentioned have both names on the covers, so perhaps both were derived from ideas or notes of Miss Sayers.
I remember being vastly disappointed by Tolkien's The Silmarillion - I actually bought my copy on the very day it was published! - as it seemed much more like a rather dry and academic historical treatise than the epic adventure saga of Lord of the Rings...
I belong to that weird subset of Tolkien fans who like the Silmarillion more then tLotR...
I have read the Silmarillion once and it was hard work.
Funny thing is I've heard this from people who've read Dickens and Austen and Tolstoy, all of whom I find impenetrable, while the Silmarillion I found straightforward.
I belong to that weird subset of Tolkien fans who like the Silmarillion more then tLotR...
Me too.
Yeah, I liked the Silmarillion, too. 'cause it has a lot more "this is why this is happening" and a lot less "let me just spend 300 pages describing this footpath."
Probably one of the reasons I prefer it too. Plus for some reason I classify it as 'mythology' instead of 'stories', so I don't look for a continuing plot line / characters in the same way.
I first read The Silmarillion as a LOTR fan aged about 11 and was hugely disappointed by it for the reason Mousethief suggests. When I re-read it aged 21 I thought it was brilliant and have re-read a number of times since. You have to think of it as a compendium of myths rather than as an adventure story (plus you have to enjoy compendiums of myths).
Like Pure Sunshine I always loved the creation story, even the first time I read it (and the Downfall of Numenor too).
Yes, but there's an overarching narrative - the loss and hopeless war for recovery of the Silmarils. It's the story of Arda Marred over and over. The same theme occurs in LotR; whatever the outcome of the War of the Ring, Elrond loses everything in Middle Earth. Frodo saves the Shire but not for himself; even Sam has to leave in the end.
I thought there were diminishing returns with the Jill Paton Walsh Wimsey books. The first one, which I think was from an idea of Sayers, was good. The rest less so. Certainly the last one I read seemed to have not quite got the tone right.
In a way, I suppose this is inevitable with sequels by other authors. However good a writer she may be, Jill Paton Walsh is (obviously) not Dorothy L Sayers!
BTW, the titles I mentioned have both names on the covers, so perhaps both were derived from ideas or notes of Miss Sayers.
I remember being vastly disappointed by Tolkien's The Silmarillion - I actually bought my copy on the very day it was published! - as it seemed much more like a rather dry and academic historical treatise than the epic adventure saga of Lord of the Rings...
I belong to that weird subset of Tolkien fans who like the Silmarillion more then tLotR...
I have read the Silmarillion once and it was hard work.
Funny thing is I've heard this from people who've read Dickens and Austen and Tolstoy, all of whom I find impenetrable, while the Silmarillion I found straightforward.
Haven't read any Austen but I have read War and Peace twice.
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Poor Mrs. Zap99 - sorry to hear she's taken a tumble. Hope she didn't do any serious damage.
I grew up in a house with brothers 10 and 12 years older than me; I read a lot of things I wasn't supposed to. Lady Chatterley's Lover, which always fell open at the interesting bits, pretty much completed my sex education but left me with a few odd ideas about the uses of flowers.
I have never felt the least temptation to read it, although of course I have read other books and watched documentaries about the camps as an adult, but I am relieved that I never read it when I was younger. Sometimes Mothers are right.
* Edward Russell, 2nd Baron Russell of Liverpool
The first was a little underwhelming, I think because I had been led to think it was gonna be about a BDSM relationship, but it was more about someone making the decision to enter into a BDSM relationship, and the movie ends pretty much right after the decision is made.
The second I remember as being the spiciest of the trio, but I don't recall much of the details, except that it involved Kim Basinger as some sort of pedophiliac femme fatale come back to haunt Christian.
The last one I remember as being just a sorta garden-variety kidnapping movie. As with the first, whatever kinky sex scenes there were didn't make a lasting impression.
Always nice to see movies shot against the beautiful backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, but other than that, meh.
I feel kinda bad for the guys who wrote Holy Blood Holy Grail, because by billing their work as non-fiction, they inadvertantly allowed Brown to duck their lawsuit by arguing that he was just using their book for historical research, rather than ripping off someone else's story to write his own.
Not that the Holy Blood guys are in the poorhouse, but when you look at the profits they made, compared to what Brown made, it's gotta hurt.
Yes, I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, too. Ridiculous Tosh, but, as you say, entertaining...
Some books in this category are sequels I've read. Years ago I read an appalling sequel to Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" and I really wished I hadn't. I spent a long time trying to forget it and am pleased to say I have been successful.
I've also read "Scarlett" by Alexandra Ripley, the sequel to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind" which was moderately OK but I certainly could have lived without it.
What I haven't read is Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea", the prequel to Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre", which I have heard is good and might make a guest appearance in February's book group discussion in Heaven.
Has Ms Paton Walsh written any other Wimsey-related stuff?
In a way, I suppose this is inevitable with sequels by other authors. However good a writer she may be, Jill Paton Walsh is (obviously) not Dorothy L Sayers!
BTW, the titles I mentioned have both names on the covers, so perhaps both were derived from ideas or notes of Miss Sayers.
I remember being vastly disappointed by Tolkien's The Silmarillion - I actually bought my copy on the very day it was published! - as it seemed much more like a rather dry and academic historical treatise than the epic adventure saga of Lord of the Rings...
I felt the same way about "The Wind Done Gone" by Alice Randall.
I agree with Sarasa - it’s poorly written and it got donated to the church fair as soon as possible!
I quite like autobiographies. I bought Kaffe Facett’s book some years ago. The photos of his work were gorgeous, but I found that I didn’t like him very much, so that also went to a church fete.
Billy Connolly’s autobiography might go the same way for the same reason.
I belong to that weird subset of Tolkien fans who like the Silmarillion more then tLotR...
Don't get me wrong - The Silmarillion is a brilliant work, but I had to grow into it IYSWIM. It does have a rather more lofty tone than LOTR, but that may be due to the lack of Hobbits...
I also recall a time in my life when I had read Les Miserables, and LATER read The Prophet, and thought that they were both profound pieces of writing. (The Prophet is generally considered schmaltz, though I will still say that it's better-than-average, as far as schmaltz goes.)
And I think I was in high-school before I ever encountered the idea that the articles in Reader's Digest are anything but top-notch journalism.
I have read the Da Vinci Code. A work colleague exhorted me to do so because she was adamant that as a religious person, I'd be interested in it. I wasn't. Any other use of my time would have been better.
I've a sort of memory from a few years ago hearing that the bearded man and his hirsute lady in The Joy of Sex either are or were until recently still alive and still together. I also seem to recall hearing that she was originally German and hence the armpits.
Another book I've read and thought was abnormally bad is one probably no other shipmate has encountered. I only have because it was someone else's choice in a book group. It is Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Unless for some reason you have to read it, don't. It's badly written. The language is hyperinflated to such an extent that the story is difficult to follow. And when you've managed to follow it, the story isn't interesting. Unless you're very keen on long distance running, the people you meet in the book are obsessives you'd go out of your way to avoid at parties. The one bit that could have been interesting in a different book was a group of rural Mexicans with quite an unusual culture. Alas, having introduced them, he drops them again to treat them merely as background furniture for his obsessive joggers.
I'm afraid that I sniggered when the author died and the comment in the obituary was "...following a number of strokes". I couldn't help thinking that a phrase less open to misconstruance would have helped.
Yes, same here. IIRC, there was a series of such books, and many of the stories were realistically, yet casually, horrible, IYSWIM. Never again.
OTOH, I enjoy H P Lovecraft and his heirs and successors, partly perhaps because the stories are so improbable...
They've got that artificial flavoring taste. It's overwhelming.
Re. the Silmarillion: I found most of that a bit of a slog, but I loved the creation story.
Doublethink, Admin
Yeah, I liked the Silmarillion, too. 'cause it has a lot more "this is why this is happening" and a lot less "let me just spend 300 pages describing this footpath."
I have read the Silmarillion once and it was hard work.
Like Pure Sunshine I always loved the creation story, even the first time I read it (and the Downfall of Numenor too).
Funny thing is I've heard this from people who've read Dickens and Austen and Tolstoy, all of whom I find impenetrable, while the Silmarillion I found straightforward.
Yes, but there's an overarching narrative - the loss and hopeless war for recovery of the Silmarils. It's the story of Arda Marred over and over. The same theme occurs in LotR; whatever the outcome of the War of the Ring, Elrond loses everything in Middle Earth. Frodo saves the Shire but not for himself; even Sam has to leave in the end.
Haven't read any Austen but I have read War and Peace twice.