ThursdayNext : www.jasperfforde.com
A discussion of all things Thursday !
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: Ali (---.uq.net.au)
Date: November 11, 2002 11:34PM
<HTML>i would like to vote for the Dr Seuss books being the scariest children's books esp. the cat in the hat. as a child i was terrified into good behaviour with the promise that if i misbehaved i would have to listen to that excruciating book (lol). i would like to second the nomination of mr darcy as the best male romantic lead and humbly suggest Anne Elliot from Persuasion as most troubled female romantic lead. I also vote Emma from Emma as the most irritating romantic female lead...and yes i do read books other than jane austin. oh and for 'best' mother of a female romantic lead it is a tie between mrs bennett and lulu from bubbles unbound - another chick-lit</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: Freddie New (---.in-addr.btopenworld.com)
Date: November 13, 2002 02:10PM
<HTML>
I don't suppose Oedipus and Jocasta could win a paired "Best troubled male and female romantic leads" award? It is a little twisted...Despite my enormous fondness for Hamlet, one is tempted to ask him to get a life, preferably Claudius', but were he to take any notice early on in the play things might go disastrously for the plot.</HTML>
I don't suppose Oedipus and Jocasta could win a paired "Best troubled male and female romantic leads" award? It is a little twisted...Despite my enormous fondness for Hamlet, one is tempted to ask him to get a life, preferably Claudius', but were he to take any notice early on in the play things might go disastrously for the plot.</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: Lesley Weston (---.vancouverbc.net)
Date: November 13, 2002 08:02PM
<HTML>Best female romantic lead: Thusday Next might work, given the context.</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: sue gedge (---.proxy.aol.com)
Date: November 13, 2002 08:58PM
<HTML>How about some more categories:
Best clinically depressed character in fiction?
(My vote goes to Eeyore the old grey donkey.)
Or best performance on a Victorian deathbed? (Dickens is full of them!)
Most tormented murderer? (Raskolnikov again---but Jonas Chuzzlewit and Richard III are close runners up.)
Worst poem by respectable author? (Won by Wordsworth, for the appalling lines in The Thorn, describing the pond in which an unmarried mother reputedly drowned her infant---"I've measured it from side to side,
'Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
Most convoluted prose style?----Henry James, closely followed by George Meredith.</HTML>
Best clinically depressed character in fiction?
(My vote goes to Eeyore the old grey donkey.)
Or best performance on a Victorian deathbed? (Dickens is full of them!)
Most tormented murderer? (Raskolnikov again---but Jonas Chuzzlewit and Richard III are close runners up.)
Worst poem by respectable author? (Won by Wordsworth, for the appalling lines in The Thorn, describing the pond in which an unmarried mother reputedly drowned her infant---"I've measured it from side to side,
'Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
Most convoluted prose style?----Henry James, closely followed by George Meredith.</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: Anne (---.dc1-cache2.syd.dav.net.au)
Date: November 13, 2002 11:42PM
<HTML>For convoluted prose you can't go past E.M. Forster!</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: Karen (---.syd.ops.aspac.uu.net)
Date: November 14, 2002 07:42AM
<HTML>* Most troubled romantic lead (male) - Jay Gatsby (also Heathcliff, why not again, he is the master?)
* Character you'd most like to shake and tell to get a life - Scarlett O’Hara
also agree with Carla's vote re “heroines” of chic-lit
* Most incomprehensible plot - Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson).<I liked it but I didn’t understand it much, like most of his!?> also runners-up are Ulysses (James Joyce) and Slaughterhouse 5 (Kurt Vonnegut)
* Best opening paragraph - It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife (Jane Austen). TIED WITH It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (Charles Dickens)
* Best closing paragraph - (says Jack). “On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I’ve now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.” (Oscar Wilde)
* Best Line of Dialogue - ever - 6 impossible things before breakfast line (red Queen is it?) Lewis Carroll. TIED WITH (says Cecily), “I never travel without my diary; one should always have something sensational to read on the train” (Oscar Wilde)
* Worst Poet Ever - Pam Eyres
* Dopiest Shakesperean Character - Romeo (Shakespeare)
* Most impossible scientific invention in an SF novel - “the lack” (a human-made void) in Jonathan Lethem’s “As she climbed across the table”
(the book is GREAT though and has many award-potential quotes in it too)
* Most implausible premise in any genre - the premise that no matter what he says (I am not interested, I am a grumpy loner) or does (ignores her, shakes her, yells at her, dates other women) that the hero does indeed have a heart of gold, does love her and does want to get married to her. (Mills and Boon)</HTML>
* Character you'd most like to shake and tell to get a life - Scarlett O’Hara
also agree with Carla's vote re “heroines” of chic-lit
* Most incomprehensible plot - Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson).<I liked it but I didn’t understand it much, like most of his!?> also runners-up are Ulysses (James Joyce) and Slaughterhouse 5 (Kurt Vonnegut)
* Best opening paragraph - It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife (Jane Austen). TIED WITH It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (Charles Dickens)
* Best closing paragraph - (says Jack). “On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I’ve now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.” (Oscar Wilde)
* Best Line of Dialogue - ever - 6 impossible things before breakfast line (red Queen is it?) Lewis Carroll. TIED WITH (says Cecily), “I never travel without my diary; one should always have something sensational to read on the train” (Oscar Wilde)
* Worst Poet Ever - Pam Eyres
* Dopiest Shakesperean Character - Romeo (Shakespeare)
* Most impossible scientific invention in an SF novel - “the lack” (a human-made void) in Jonathan Lethem’s “As she climbed across the table”
(the book is GREAT though and has many award-potential quotes in it too)
* Most implausible premise in any genre - the premise that no matter what he says (I am not interested, I am a grumpy loner) or does (ignores her, shakes her, yells at her, dates other women) that the hero does indeed have a heart of gold, does love her and does want to get married to her. (Mills and Boon)</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: ScarletBea (---.be.jnj.com)
Date: November 14, 2002 08:07AM
<HTML>oooh I like so many of the new additions!!!!</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: Ros (---.cache.pol.co.uk)
Date: November 14, 2002 05:07PM
<HTML>I'm not saying anyhthing new here, but I second, third, or whatever, a few of the motions .
Namely,
Best romantic lead (male): Mr Darcy
Best romantic lead (female): Eliza Bennett
Dopiest Shakesperian Character: Othello, (but it's a close call with Romeo. Just because your girlfriend is lying in a tomb, it doesn't necessarily mean she's dead!)
Character I'd most like to shake: Othello (Believe your wife, not that devious Iago. Weren't you listening to those asides?), or Bridget Jones - stop smoking, stop drinking, stop weighing yourself and get yourself a life girl!</HTML>
Namely,
Best romantic lead (male): Mr Darcy
Best romantic lead (female): Eliza Bennett
Dopiest Shakesperian Character: Othello, (but it's a close call with Romeo. Just because your girlfriend is lying in a tomb, it doesn't necessarily mean she's dead!)
Character I'd most like to shake: Othello (Believe your wife, not that devious Iago. Weren't you listening to those asides?), or Bridget Jones - stop smoking, stop drinking, stop weighing yourself and get yourself a life girl!</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: Karen (---.syd.ops.aspac.uu.net)
Date: November 15, 2002 07:38AM
<HTML>Forgo to add last post....
New Category - Most grotesque couple (or equally "descriptive passages that make you squirm")...Cynthia and Gordon from Praise by Andrew McGahon.
Can't remember which Fforum-er works in the bookshop right this second, but if you read this I imagine you got some pet/horror "grunge" or "dirty-realism" (or whatever it is called) contenders cos some of it is pretty depressing and squirmy isn't it? Dickens did squalor but these stories somehow seem more squalid -maybe cos of the degree of detail??</HTML>
New Category - Most grotesque couple (or equally "descriptive passages that make you squirm")...Cynthia and Gordon from Praise by Andrew McGahon.
Can't remember which Fforum-er works in the bookshop right this second, but if you read this I imagine you got some pet/horror "grunge" or "dirty-realism" (or whatever it is called) contenders cos some of it is pretty depressing and squirmy isn't it? Dickens did squalor but these stories somehow seem more squalid -maybe cos of the degree of detail??</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: Jasper Fforde (---.man.dial.ntli.net)
Date: November 20, 2002 08:14AM
<HTML>Hi everyone - thanks for that - I'm done on that chapter now, I think - as of 20th November we have 100,000 words on TN3, sadly, not quite in the right order, but we're working on it.
Thanks for the response - you've all been great!
JFf</HTML>
Thanks for the response - you've all been great!
JFf</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: slinkydiva (213.235.8.---)
Date: November 20, 2002 09:44AM
<HTML>Can I just add a late runner for
Worst Book Ever Written
English as She is Spoke
A 1883 book by Pedro Carolino. A Portuguese who did not particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary.
Do a web search and prepare to be amazed!</HTML>
Worst Book Ever Written
English as She is Spoke
A 1883 book by Pedro Carolino. A Portuguese who did not particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary.
Do a web search and prepare to be amazed!</HTML>
To craunch a marmoset
Posted by: poetscientistdrinker (---.rdg.ac.uk)
Date: November 20, 2002 11:53AM
<HTML>Heard about it before... Certainly a strong candidate for the worst 'factual' publication, although i have a feeling that "Thames Trains Timetable - Hereford/Worcester/Oxford/London Paddington" is even more misleading and inaccurate, although less amusing...</HTML>
Re: Request from the author...
Posted by: su (---.cableinet.co.uk)
Date: November 20, 2002 10:10PM
<HTML>Oh fantastic, the day I see this thread, you call a halt to it.... :-(
Still, congratulations on 100,000 words - can't wait to read them :-)
Su
PS - couldn't resist - Mr Darcy and Mr Rochester, both as romantic lead, as well as troubled romantic lead (with Mellors from Lady C as a close runner up).</HTML>
Still, congratulations on 100,000 words - can't wait to read them :-)
Su
PS - couldn't resist - Mr Darcy and Mr Rochester, both as romantic lead, as well as troubled romantic lead (with Mellors from Lady C as a close runner up).</HTML>
Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.