If you ever doubt...

[NottyImp]

... your ability to write, go and pick up some genre nonsense from a bookshop and be re-assured. I think I've mentioned elsehwhere I'm reading a light-weight historical mystery novel set in Rome - called "The Silver Pigs" - by Lindsey Davies, and it really is atrocious. It might be a first novel, but even so...

I might post up some of the dialogue for your edification later.

[Colyngbourne]

Hasn't Davies written a whole series of these 'detective' novels in ancient Rome? I'm not going anywhere near them. My own most cringe-making genre book is 'Prospero's Children' by Jan Siegel (and hell on a stick, she's written a trilogy of it :shock: ) This fatuous snippet made me throw the book on the floor belatedly she began to appreciate how much she had always relied on her father, not perhaps on his strength but on the strength of his position, on the certainties that accompany fatherhood and maturity.
It's derivative fantasy drivel - a stomach-turning ripped-off blend of The Railway Children (I'm not kidding), Narnia's The Last Battle, LotR, Silverhawke, Alan Garner and stock fantasy memes. For one, I've never noticed any 'certainties' that accompany fatherhood and maturity.

[NottyImp]

Hasn't Davies written a whole series of these 'detective' novels in ancient Rome?

She has, 14(!) of them to date. I picked up the first one as I'm a fan of well-crafted historical fiction (Patrick O'brian, for example), and am approaching the end of Stephen Saylor's series of Roman novels, which I really like. She's clearly proud of the fact that she has an Eng. Lit. degree, but some of the writing is frankly sub-GCSE standard. I won't be reading any more... and I've put a suitably cutting review on Amazon. The dreadful thing still rates 4 stars, though.

For one, I've never noticed any 'certainties' that accompany fatherhood and maturity.

I wonder how old the central character is - if she's anything like my teenaged step-daughter, her certainties would far out-strip mine :wink:

[Colyngbourne]

Shes meant to be just over sixteen in the first book, I think - called Fern(anda) :oops: (trying not to be ill at the mention of all this)
It's meant to be set in the present day but she is described as 'not being a typical 16 yr old' (why not, for hell’s sake!) – all intelligent and knowing and ready to pass from a child’s world into the adult world – like a chrysalis … (quoting vomitous bits from the book there, you can tell). She reads like a swottish teenager from the late seventies/early eighties (I know, I was there) and the whole book is riven with cliches: a housekeeper type from the Yorkshire village down the road who comes and makes tea and biscuits; a well-meaning vicar who believes there are more things in heaven and earth... and has the time to spend an afternoon with Fern on the N.York Moors (innocently of course because this vicar clearly hasn't heard of Diocesan Safety Guidelines). Oh it is too terrible to contemplate. There's even a Dobby-U-Like house-elf creature.

What are your Lindsey Davies awful quotes? ( I always thought it was a man...)

[NottyImp]

What are your Lindsey Davies awful quotes? ( I always thought it was a man...)

Do you know, it could be a man, that never occured to me. Would it be "Lindsey" = male, "Lindsay" = female? Now I'll have to go and check...

Just checked - definitely female.

Can't quote from the book at the moment as I'm at work and the book isn't.

[Colyngbourne]

Crikey, just checked out her website and the BBC are planning a series of Falco at some point. It'll be just as terrible as that Cadfael series a while back. Which reminds me of a second genre horror I read this year, 'Death in Holy Order' by PD James (and the BBC are showing that this autumn, I think) - what a crock of cliche and useless plot was that! One of the few books I would willingly trash.

[gil]

I'm not above reading genre books. I read a very great deal of science fiction, spy novels and detective novels. There's good and there's bad, as you'd expect.

Lindsey Davies' Falco books are a cut above the Cadfael ones IMHO. I've read a few of each, because I have a friend who's keen on them. The hero, Falco, is suitably disreputable, at any rate. But quite a few in the Falco series are very lame indeed, I agree, while all the Cadfael ones give me a pain.

Speaking of such books, I picked up a book called The Athenian Murders by José Carlos Somoza. As experimental as a leather bicycle. Too clever by half. Too boring by one and a half. Actually, the author had a good idea. Tell one story, about Ancient Greece, in the main text, and another, related to a modern translator, in the footnotes. If either of the stories had been up to standard, it might even have worked. The atmosphere was poor, the scene-setting straight from the cardboard cut-out department. I was disappointed, and, despite the air of erudition the jacket attempted to imply, I found it very shallow indeed.

The queen of all these formulaic books is Sue Grafton, who writes about a female Californian Private Eye. She names them alphabetically - A is for Alibi; B is for Burglary; C is for Carjacking... or whatever. She's currently working on Q is for something or other. But it's like a soap opera. Once you start to read them, you get hooked. Publishers LOVE them, of course.

Doing these things on tv is the kiss of death, though. Remember Hornblower? And they're threatening to make a movie of O'Brian's Master and Commander. Groan...

[amner]

I'm afraid that they are making the O'Brian movie, gil. In fact, I believe it's all but finished.

You and Notty will no doubt be delighted to know that Russell Crowe will be playing Jack Aubrey.

Nice quote I found:

"Fans of author Patrick O'Brien are fuming at the news Hollywood is to change history for the purposes of movie-making in new film The Far Side of the World. In the Napoleonic-era book, Cpt. Jack Aubrey sets sail to stop an American frigate that is trying to sink as many British ships as it can. However, in the movie adaptation, the enemy frigate turns out to be French ...

8)
.

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, I've spotted pics of him looking rugged on a boat 8)
Never read the 'proper' story though.

[NottyImp]

You and Notty will no doubt be delighted to know that Russell Crowe will be playing Jack Aubrey.

Oh god help us all.

"Fans of author Patrick O'Brien are fuming at the news Hollywood is to change history"

Hollywood changing history? Well I never! (You will never, ever, never find me watching U-571 under any circumstances whatsoever. Ever)

Actually, I'd be hard pressed to name an actor for Aubrey (Maturin would be much easier - Alan Rickman with a firm directorial hand would do). What do you reckon, Gil?

And Gil, if you like genre novels, try Saylor's "Sub Rosa" series. Very good IMO.

[NottyImp]

Right, Davis at her glorious best. The context is Falco has hooked up with Helena, the whole relationship being a poor imitation of Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet - but clevery reversed!

"I don't believe," she said in a much smaller voice, "Atius Pertinax is capable of murder."

"If you say so."

"I do say so! Be cynical if you must. Perhaps people never really know anybody else. Yet we must try. In your work you must trust your own judgement -"

"I trust yours," I admitted simply, since the compliment was true.

"Yet you don't trust me!"

Lawdy-lawks! And so it goes on, and on...

[John Self]

Speaking of such books, I picked up a book called The Athenian Murders by José Carlos Somoza. As experimental as a leather bicycle. Too clever by half. Too boring by one and a half. Actually, the author had a good idea. Tell one story, about Ancient Greece, in the main text, and another, related to a modern translator, in the footnotes. If either of the stories had been up to standard, it might even have worked. The atmosphere was poor, the scene-setting straight from the cardboard cut-out department. I was disappointed, and, despite the air of erudition the jacket attempted to imply, I found it very shallow indeed.

Oh dear, I bought this today without checking Palimpsest. Actually it appealed to me in a Pale Fire way (which consists of a (mad) commentator writing footnotes on a poem), but I am prepared for disappointment... Still, "as experimental as a leather bicycle." :lol:

[Maggie]

It is unfortunate that genre fiction has the reputation it does. Publishing standards are pretty low when it comes to this area and I think that often, some pretty good writing is over looked.

But then, it is the audience who sets the pace. If readers would demand more, publishers would be forced to produce a better product.

The same holds true for films and T.V.

Could it be that most people really don't want to have to think too hard ? or feel too much for that matter.

The wishy washy mysteries and romances that hit the best seller list's, in this country, suggest that most readers are content with something without substance.

I just finished "if on a winter's night a traveler". Wow...it is a "read more than once" book. A book such as this would have a snow ball's chance in hell, getting on any best sellers list in the U.S.

Maggie

[kumquat]

This week's grimaceworthy line for me was; "...he pondered thoughtfully." from a book by a 'local' author and I mean that in the least charming manner. The cover appears to have been photocopied from something indistinguishable and the opening half page uses the words 'ice' and 'snow' so many times you can see nothing through the blizzard except perhaps a 'writer' trying far too hard. He approached me in the shop the other day and asked if I was looking for his book to give to a customer. I wasn't. Uncanny. His oeuvre goes as fiction and I was in the crime section but he was undaunted in his optimism. I think the irony of looking for his book in the crime section had passed him by.

[John Self]

Oh go on kumquat - name and shame. Take it he is self-published? Could there possibly be a worse writer than Sean Wright??

[Maggie]

I read a book a while ago titled "A Choir of Ill Children" by Tom Piccirilli.
This book was highly recommended by members of another group I belonged to. The first chapter gave me a headache, by the end of the second chapter I was nauseous and after reading the third chapter I threw the book across the room.

The man used the word spasm to describe everything from the way some one walked or talked to well...you can imagine. I counted 32 "spasms" before I was half way through. Which is as far as I got into the book.

I was stymied as to how anything the likes of that book got published.

Piccirilli, it turns out is quite a popular author in these parts.

Maggie

[Digger]

Well, genre books... As a devotee of detective yarns one and all (as well as a moderate dose of sci-fi/fantasy) I have read bits of almost everything.

Particular low points for me were reading the first two books in the Shannara series by Terry Brooks. Oh my goodness what a load of twaddle. Mostly I was enraged at how he thought he'd ever get away with plagarising Middle Earth to such a ludicrous degree! I got angry just from the start as I perused the 'map' in the fly leaves. He never managed the sense of space that Tolkien achieves, the maps of Middle Earth, and the narrative within the book make a years traverse realistic, Shannara despite being this enormous land of seemingly endless epic scenary takes, I think, about two weeks to walk across (for small elves, dwarves and some small manlike creature that isn't a Hobbit but might as well be!)...

Also while studying for MA in York and going through the collected dross that people had left beind in our house I found three truly awful books about some magical Mason/Templar type who travelled through the ages solving dark and mysterious crimes on the physical and spirit planes.

They were awful enough that I have clearly wiped them completely from my memory as I havn't got the foggiest what they were called or who they were by. Otherwise I would have recommended them for a laugh!

[pandop]

However did I miss this thread until now?

1: I too hated Prospero's Children - which is unfortunate as someone saw fit to give me the hardback edition. I have not bothered with the second or third though

2: I like Lindsay Davies' books - and she is a very nice person too!

3: I also like Cadfael, both the books and the TV adaptations, to the extent I watch the 6 I have recorded fairly often.

Feel free to look down on my on the big day out - this won't be hard, as I suspect most of you will be taller than me!

Hazel

[Maggie]

Hazel,

I just heard something about Lindsay Davies' recently. I can't, for the life of me, remember where I heard it or what it was about. She may have a new book out ? I've not read anything by her either but whatever it was I heard lately caught my interest.

Maggie

[pandop]

See Delphi and Die is due out in June (it was mentioned in The Bookseller a couple of weeks ago)

I will get round to reading/buying it eventally, but starting next week my pleasure reading time is going to plummet, and I have a massive to be read pile (not to mention no money for hardbacks)

Hazel

[John Self]

A friend of mine devours books by Elizabeth Peters, which are Ancient Egyptian murder mysteries. Presumably the confessions are recorded in hieroglyphics. Last time I visited her I also saw a bizarre book called The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0515095826/qid=1112451789/sr=1-32/ref=sr_1_32/104-9206268-4951102?v=glance&s=books) by Lilian Jackson Braun. This is one of an (apparently endless) series of moggy detective books with unlikely titles which you will see if you click the author's name in the Amazon page I've linked to. The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, The Cat Who Moved a Mountain, The Cat Who Went into the Closet, The Cat Who Molested Danni Minogue. All human - I mean feline - life is there. I think my friend may have a fetish problem.

[kumquat]

Oh go on kumquat - name and shame.

OK, the book is called The Immanuel Papers by Peter Adams. Just awful!

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0755200853.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

[amner]

gil and pandop might be interested to know that Lindsey Davies's Shadows in Bronze (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/whatson/prog_parse.cgi?FILENAME=20080101/20080101_0930_18112_60492_30&tmp=bbc7/whatson/programme.tmpl) is currently being dramatised (well, repeated) by BBC7.