i agree with the article, life's to short to make yourself read something you are not enjoying - but i do feel awful guilty for some odd reason when i decide not to finish a book.

Ian McEwan, i apologise, i can see what you were aiming for in Chesil Beach, but the asides to the reader about things being different then and the minutiae of the scene just didn't work for me.

I've heard it said that once an author hits the bigtime, editors can become wary of doing their jobs. I remember the final Anne Rice novel - we all waited with baited breath for it to come out, and it was so bad that her main fan site went offline as a protest. It was featured on Radio 4's Front Row, and the comment was that if an editor had done his/her job, it would never have hit the shelves. It seems that the bigger the name, the more scope there is to produce bad writing without being checked at the pre-publishing stage. A shame.
JR

Stop the sketch - it's too silly

I read Bitten, Stolen, Dime Store Magic and Industrial Magic. About sexy werewolves and witches.

But Haunted is so bad I couldn't finish it. Or even really get far into it. I've got Broken on my shelf, but Haunted has put me off completely.

Stephen King put me off with Insomnia (and to a lesser extent Rose Madder).

"...the likes of NickP can rant on if they like"

I occasionally rant on at http://amonsterinthemirror.blogspot.com/

Someone mentioned Ian McEwan. With Ian McEwan I buy the audio tapes for long boring journeys. In print, I find him pretentious and stuffed up (On Chesil Beach), often a great start ends in utter silliness (Enduring Love).

I buy the audio books because Ian McEwan clearly writes to read to audiences (MS Sutton is probably a fan). I have a faint suspition that this is because he likes the sound of his own voice, but have no way to be certain. What is certain is that they need a carefully edited reading to get the best out of them. I am too impatient for that, so I pay for someone else to do it.

The only two books I have really enjoyed were The Cement Garden and Saturday. Regarding the rest, I take my cue from the author of An Uncommon Reader (I think a few people may have heard of him, someone called Alan Bennett):

In An Uncommon Reader, the Queen, on a reading binge, drops an Ian McEwan on the floor. The corgis pounce.

Now that is what I call a review!

No apologies, Ian.

Andrew

I seem to remember that said alcoholic was bemused by the lack of acclaim. So decided to restructure the book. Not sure if he did and if he did which version you are reading.

I was reading it years ago, and managed to lose the book along with some papers belonging to someone I was working with on how engineering students (don't) understand basic physics.

Since doing that research, I have completely lost my head for heights when on buildings built by engineers.

The experiment was very simple: 2nd year engineering students were asked a simple questions:

Explain in plain English what is happening in Galileo's inclined plane experiment.

The answers were somewhere between a horror story and slapstick comedy.

Like I say, I didn't find it funny.

Andrew

Like a computer, the problem with standard deviation is all in how it is used. I understand that Ted has not been exactly forthcoming on this. The gods have their reasons and they do not share them with mortals.

A crude cosmological approximation would be to find the average score for each item, ie, Plot, dialogue, etc, and estimate your chart count by not counting any scores that are 2 stars or more below the average.

However, I note that crude cosmological approximations have also resulted in the diameter of the Universe being estimated at less than 1 metre, which is an embarrassing result for any cosmologist. In consequence, said approximations are to be taken with a pinch of salty scepticism.

To effectively read the mind of YWO, you would need to know all the ratings and chart positions of at least 5 books. I only have 4 online at the moment, and two of the them have less than 4 reviews, so my theory is incomplete and remains untested.

If a bunch of volunteers were willing to send spreadsheets (I would supply the empty format) with their ratings and their chart positions on a given day, we would have a non zero probability of reading the mind of God, Ted and the YWO developers, all in one glorious strike.

Again a word of caution: I note that there is also a non zero probability that at any one time (a relative concept at best) the Universe may suddenly go FWAP! and disappear, leaving all of us in a much greater pickle than was ever dreamt of on YWO.

And if I take this any further, there is a distinct possibility, as opposed to a finite probability, that this idle speculation will turn into the next Lord of the Rings quest, roughly as follows:

I see Ted, standing astride the abyss. He is a tall gaunt figure in a white robe, his white beard flailing behind him, blown by the winds of Hell. He is striking the bridge with his staff and glowering at the hordes of self obsessed, egotistic and fame starved yowers, who frothing at the mouth eye the other side of the abyss as all sense of decency crumbles to dust in their mind. A redness takes them over from within and shines out through their eyes.

"Only five shall pass!" shouts Ted, his eyes the eyes of a wrathful god of hidden wisdom and standard deviations (actually, that sounds a bit harsh). The volcano erupts in the background and the yower hordes cower.

I stand at the front, debating whether to pitch self preservation against stupid, dumb odds. To attach the reading credit or not to attach the reading credit, that is the quesiton. The trolls and smuttons salver and hiccup and belch and shriek with the agony of their festering apetites as the herd inches closer to the abyss. With petit moi at the front. Why me? Because you are top of the chart you blithering idiot!

A huge krubb leaps above the parapet of the abyss edge, her eyes wild with hunger and her slobbering jaws slam shut inches from my ego. The krubb falls back howling with frustration.

I take another step. The seven days are up, I must commit another reading credit. It is early in the month and I am in the ignominous and all too obvious position of topping the chart. I have been here before and I have bounced way back (I am AKA ZeBeDee) from pages 2 and 3 only to face the horrifying gore of my own dismemberment yet again. The krubb reappears, flapping its tiny flippers frantically, stretching its thick, blubbery neck to get a teeny weeeny longer glimpse of me. Oooh, it thinks (it is allowed one thought at a time in its tiny brain), this is a plump one! Slobba, slobba, slobba! Chuka GaLuck! A shoal of flying Smuttons join it briefly. They cackle and howl with joy, they have seen me too, ah, what a feast it will be! They fall back into the abyss, but they will be back, I know it. I have been here before.

I hesitate. The only way is down (a Smuttons throat) now, but there is no way back: behind me are the desolate steppes of the WAIKI (World As I Know It), where I am but a half baked IT consultant. And even if I chose to turn back, I could not: the yowers heave me forwards, pushing me to the very edge.

"We are right behind, you" they cry.

So be it. Into the breach my friends, once more, yet again. I have been here before and I will be back. I am no hero, it is just that I have no choice. I step out over the abyss, mustering the last shreds of my faith and self confidence.

As I step forwards, I look across, to the other side of the abyss, and do you know what I see? I just see the barren WAIKI there too. Even if I pass over, nothing will change. It is all the pointless pain of being alive.

The Smutton leaps, jostling the krubb into the walls of the abyss where it burst with a pop into a flower of pink sentimentality. The Smutton rears up, unchecked now, a certain certainty as it strikes upwards. I look down, just in time to see a silver blur rising beneath me...

Goodbye, I am the weakest link.

Andrew

Andrew, that wasn't gentlemanly behaviour. I think you should apologise to Krobb.