When an email of fairly spammy nature (I think probably to members of a mailing list I'm on) promoting somebody's self-published novel -

Is not only almost entirely written in SCREAMER CAPS, some of them in colour -

but describes the plot as

LIGHT AND DARK SKINNED TWINS,WITH DIFFERENT FATHERS!!!!!!!*

(and that's all, folks).

And

going to one of the ( Read more... )

I meant to post my thoughts about this before but got distracted:
David Mitchell in The Observer last Sunday:
Why a Michelin star can only be a recipe for disappointment.

While over-hype can be a recipe for disappointment - how many things in a range of fields are good of their kind or modestly successful without being TOTES BEST IN SHOW 4EVAH, and ( Read more... )

Came across this whilst perusing a stack of elderly Times Highers whilst ensuring that the readers had the items they had requested and were not busily engaged in destroying or stealing them:
An English-language journal has recently been launched in Germany that focuses on "failed" research. That is, it publishes material rejected by mainstream ( Read more... )

The waste remains, the waste remains and kills:

Two reviews of Rose George's The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste, which sounds like an excellent study of a neglected subject (except in the form of jokey titles like Flushed with Pride). But shouldn't the Science Editor of the Observer be a bit more aware of the history of ( Read more... )

Thinking about the discussion riffing off in various directions from fannishly's post on Tam Lin, and without going into the question of self-indulgence, I realise that I possibly judge The Secret History more harshly than I might have done had it (and Tartt) not been so massively hyped everywhere at the time of publication. It was okay (with various ( Read more... )