Ferd Burfle wrote: > Raymond Daley wrote: [...] >> You'll probably lap it up. Personally I think he's been going >> downhill since MR. Or concentrating too much on Tiffany Aching books.
> You certainly are a damned fool. Your spelling sucks and your reasoning > is pathological. Please go away. I suspect that the truth is that nobody > likes you, so you spew your contempt all over the newsgroups. With an > attitude like yours, I'll bet your family can't stand you and you have > no friends but a few clods like yourself with no lives. Even your > goldfish feels superior to you, with good reason. You would have to go > to a really good University for eight years in order to qualify as a > mediocre dipshit.
Just to add to this, Raymond; how the fuck do you expect people to respond to you slagging off a much-loved author in their fan group? Personally, I'm surprised at how polite people are being.
-- W . | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because \|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est ---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond Daley wrote: > What are you? Six? > The most offensive term I used towards you was "sheep", you don't know me > from Adam yet were gobbing off quite happily. > Pretty trollish really, you'll note I rose above every chance I had to swear > or use personal insults or jibes. > Though I doubt reason will mean anything to you as logic & cogitant > arguments certainly haven't.
> If my 1st statement offended you so much you could have killfiled me. > With all this talk of banishing yourself it sounds like a damn good idea. > Why not do it, save me the trouble of killfiling you.
Son, your posts are classic trolling. You should hardly be surprised if people call you on it. Indeed, I suspect that that was the whole point of your posts.
-- W . | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because \|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est ---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
>I just finished UA and thought it was well up to SirPt's usual > standard: highly re-readable.
> But he brought in so many earlier characters--only the witches > are absent, really--that it made me nervous lest it's a signal > that he plans to quit writing, or quit writing about the DW. > Admittedly many of chars brought back are in bit parts and in the > case of Oats offscreen altogether. But it's still worrying.
> Is SirPt already working on another, does anyone know? Am I > being silly for worrying? Anyone have any Views?
In alt.fan.pratchett Raymond Daley <raymond.da...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Ferd Burfle" <f...@moonwalking-on-water.com> wrote in message > news:hcMFm.44162$eF1.38758@newsfe24.iad... >> I like them all. I have always liked them all. Our Terry don't write no >> crap books. -Bird Ferfuffle
> Now I know your a liar and a troll. > Read Dark Side Of The Sun & Strata. > The Colour Of Magic is all that popular either. > "don't write no crap books". Awful double negative.
You write sentences like that and then complain about someone else's grammar?
In any case, I happen to love DSotS, Strata and TCoM. Great books. Less polished than his newer stuff, but full of great fantasy and SF references, and with some brilliant concepts. He's written books that are a lot worse than those three.
mcv. -- Science is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. It's a tool. A very powerful tool, but not the only tool. And if only that which could be verified scientifically was considered real, then nearly all of human experience would be not-real. -- Zachriel
In alt.fan.pratchett Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
> Curiously, _Making Money_ at first read felt to me a little bit like > going through the motions of a familiar recipe, doing it by the > numbers, but upon re-reading I find sparkling originality. Whatever > is going on there? Was I in a mood the first time around? I don't > recall being so!
I'm currently reading it, but after a couple of dozen pages, my main thought was: wait, when was this written? Did Pterry predict the credit crisis?
mcv. -- Science is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. It's a tool. A very powerful tool, but not the only tool. And if only that which could be verified scientifically was considered real, then nearly all of human experience would be not-real. -- Zachriel
In alt.fan.pratchett Raymond Daley <raymond.da...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "this isn't up to your usual standard, perhaps > hold off on printing until it is?"
That's not what you said, though. You said he should stop writing altogether. If you don't like his books anymore, a much better solution would be for you to stop reading them.
You say Pterry's books went downhill after MR. I think MR was one of his weaker books, but he followed it up with some of his best books.
Compare Pterry with other writers. The vast majority of them (even a lot of highly respected literary writers) only write a single masterpiece, and keep writing mediocre crap for the rest of their lives. Pterry wrote about 25 masterpieces. Can't you forgive the occasional lesser book? Even if UA is really his weakest book so far (I wouldn't know), it's quite possible his next book will be another masterpiece.
mcv. -- Science is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. It's a tool. A very powerful tool, but not the only tool. And if only that which could be verified scientifically was considered real, then nearly all of human experience would be not-real. -- Zachriel
Bob Larter wrote: > Anery wrote: > > BTW, I felt genuinely sorry for Shelob. Probably I won't find too much > > understanding here.
> I always wondered what Shelob ate between the (presumably) rare event of > stray orcs or hobbits wandering into her lair.
RW spiders are able to fast for a long time. A friend of mine, who was a great admirer of spiders for that ability, liked to misquote from John Crompton's excellent book "The Life of the Spider": "The average lifespan of spiders is one and half a year and they are able to fast for two years". (Actually, both statements could be found in the book, just in different places and for different species.)
Large creatures can generally cope without food considerably longer than small ones of related species.
These facts put together imply that Shelob might be a suitable candidate for a world champion in fasting. Still, presumably she was really hungry when the two hobbits entered her lair.
> In alt.fan.pratchett Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
> > Curiously, _Making Money_ at first read felt to me a little bit like > > going through the motions of a familiar recipe, doing it by the > > numbers, but upon re-reading I find sparkling originality. Whatever > > is going on there? Was I in a mood the first time around? I don't > > recall being so!
> I'm currently reading it, but after a couple of dozen pages, my main > thought was: wait, when was this written? Did Pterry predict the credit > crisis?
Apparently 2007, and maybe - ask his accountant. I think we were already in trouble then, though. Re U.A., did Pterry predict a major soccer tournament next year? ;-)
Wikipedia for MM apparently has a link to a good interview with Pterry. There's a good quote there, anyway.
But mainly MM is about older themes in economics, including real-world reform of banking for the nineteenth or early twentieth century - paper currency, no gold standard. (E.g., what if you have no gold?) Whereas the latest crisis is sort of about all the developments of banking since those days dying and shrivelling and dropping off. Leaving us roughly where we were a hundred years ago - including at war, but not quite so badly this time.
>ppint. at pplay <"v$af$ppint"@i-m-t.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>- somefan on rasff may be in contact with her, or someone >>on one of the sewing froups she frequented...
>I forwarded your message to her.
- two-way communication with a tamar interested in the free &/or cheap possibilities of access to use- net (text) groups, currently unable to access her usual post-box which has over-flowed with spam, has found trn (?) unable to cope with too great a load of news articles, and unable to configure thunder- bird to do aught useful, and is missing discussions on abp, rasfw [? and also on afp, rasff ?] terribly.
- air(&u), her late partner used to handle all things computer-geek-ish, and when she tried using google's usenet interface, she found it totally and clumsily incompatible with tamar :-(( offers of help from those skilled with distance-helldesking e.g. thunderbird or purging indigestible amounts from trn to dicconf at the domain, yahoo.com]
[* - follow-up again set to afp; if varying this, please drop any group to which the subject of your contribution is likely to be inappropriate. thanks.]
- many thanks, keith;
- love, ppint. [please drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email me] -- "There's something wrong with the world. I'm becoming a hazy memory." - C.Speed, the ultimate velocipractor, on alt.sex.reptiles 11/2/98 --------- ---------- ----------- ------------ "Earth occupies about one-half a degree in two dimensions." - trde on rec.arts.sf.fandom, 10/5/2005 (5/10/2005 for merkins)
> About a whole evil race or species, which is a concept that other > books sometimes wrestle with more, are there nice wasps?
Yes. there are many hundreds of species of wasps, many of them tiny and hence unworrying - to us, at least. And there are hundreds of species of figs, each of which has its own species of was which it needs to pollinate it. So without wasps, we would not have figs, of which I am quite fond.
> "A.Reader" wrote >>I just finished UA and thought it was well up to SirPt's usual >> standard: highly re-readable. But he brought in so many >> earlier characters--only the witches are absent, really--that >> it made me nervous lest it's a signal that he plans to quit >> writing, or <snip> > I'm not going to mince my words in this post and might say > some or a lot of things most of you won't like or agree with
<snip a whole pile of things I don't like or agree with>
I must say that the two of you really managed to put the wind up me. Especially when this thread turned into one of those thread-monsters with t'ousands and t'ousands of posts every day. I was imagining all of afp wrestling mightily with the question of declining quality, with the brutal honesty camp wrangling with the sentimental twaddle camp, with overstated cases and wrong-headedness all round.
Of course ... I forgot the book was about football.
So, once I had finished the book and so could read the thread, it meant that 90% of the thread was about football rules, styles, offshoots, corruptions and abominations. And I did learn something interesting about versions of games with balls that are played from village to village - amazing practice and not rare. Huh.
I had also forgotten that you, Raymond, haven't liked much of what Pratchett has done for a long time, so that your lack of approbation did not indicate anything except that the trend that you do not like has continued - which is a matter of personal preference, not authorial quality, so that's okay.
The novel might still have been a swan song, though, so that was a worry. The whole issue of "so many early characters" had me worried - but I don't see it myself. Nearly everybody who was there was there because they are in the city, and, especially in the City Watch, we're going to trip over somebody we've met before.
So, no, I don't hear the melodious notes of the Norwegian Blue's larger avian sibling's final ode.
It is a great book, and a lot of fun, and has so many potential story leads in it that if Pratchett did nothing else but follow up on those alone, he would have more than enough material to keep us in books until every last one of us reading afp is dead, dead, very dead.
I, for one, want to know more about the world of Madame and Pepe. :)
Great book. I barely gave my SOGP enough time to finish the book before I started it again. Yay PTerry, and all that.
On 09 Nov 2009, "April Goodwin-Smith" <agoodwinsm...@shaw.ca> wrote:
> The novel might still have been a swan song, though, so that > was a worry. The whole issue of "so many early characters" > had me worried - but I don't see it myself. Nearly everybody > who was there was there because they are in the city, and, > especially in the City Watch, we're going to trip over somebody > we've met before.
Yep. The original poster says "Only the witches are absent, really", but I've made a list of others:
Moist von Lipwig - If Pterry was really compiling a greatest hits collection, he'd be easy enough to fit in; the Mint is asked to make medals for the winning players, maybe. Susan Sto Helit, or any other "Death series" character except the anthropomorphic personification himself (who appears in *every* book except WFM, so his appearance here is hardly significant). Anyone from the standalone novels "Pyramids" and "Small Gods".
It's a wizards/Rincewind series novel set in Ankh-Morpork. And it's well established that *all* novels set in Ankh-Morpork will feature an appearance by the Watch, and probably someone from the Times. And Mossy Lawn and Igor have to appear as soon as someone gets injured.
Margolotta and Oats, meanwhile, are required for Mr Nutt's story; yes, Pterry could have invented an Uberwaldean noble with a slightly twisted desire to do the right thing, and an idealistic pastor in that area, but why, when they both already exist?
So yeah, it's a book that features a lot of pre-existing characters. But not really any more pre-existing characters than, say, Making Money.
-- Dave "All those with psychokinesis, raise my hand." The Room With No Doors, Kate Orman
On Nov 9, 1:44 pm, Daibhid Ceanaideach <daibhidchened...@aol.com> wrote:
> On 09 Nov 2009, "April Goodwin-Smith" <agoodwinsm...@shaw.ca> wrote: > > The novel might still have been a swan song, though, so that > > was a worry. The whole issue of "so many early characters" > > had me worried - but I don't see it myself. > Yep. The original poster says "Only the witches are absent, really", but > I've made a list of others:
> Moist von Lipwig - If Pterry was really compiling a greatest hits > collection, he'd be easy enough to fit in; the Mint is asked to make > medals for the winning players, maybe. > Susan Sto Helit, or any other "Death series" character except the > anthropomorphic personification himself (who appears in *every* book > except WFM, so his appearance here is hardly significant). > Anyone from the standalone novels "Pyramids" and "Small Gods".
> On Nov 9, 1:44 pm, Daibhid Ceanaideach <daibhidchened...@aol.com> > wrote: >> On 09 Nov 2009, "April Goodwin-Smith" <agoodwinsm...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>> > The novel might still have been a swan song, though, so that >> > was a worry. The whole issue of "so many early characters" >> > had me worried - but I don't see it myself.
>> Yep. The original poster says "Only the witches are absent, really", >> but I've made a list of others:
>> Moist von Lipwig - If Pterry was really compiling a greatest hits >> collection, he'd be easy enough to fit in; the Mint is asked to make >> medals for the winning players, maybe. >> Susan Sto Helit, or any other "Death series" character except the >> anthropomorphic personification himself (who appears in *every* book >> except WFM, so his appearance here is hardly significant). >> Anyone from the standalone novels "Pyramids" and "Small Gods".
> And Tiffany Aching. Thank goodness.
Well, I was counting the Tiffany books as witch books.
I should have included Amazing Maurice in my list of standalones, though.
-- Dave "All those with psychokinesis, raise my hand." The Room With No Doors, Kate Orman
Alec Cawley <a...@spamspam.co.uk> wrote: > Robert Carnegie wrote:
> > About a whole evil race or species, which is a concept that other > > books sometimes wrestle with more, are there nice wasps?
> Yes. there are many hundreds of species of wasps, many of them tiny and > hence unworrying - to us, at least. And there are hundreds of species of > figs, each of which has its own species of was which it needs to > pollinate it. So without wasps, we would not have figs, of which I am > quite fond.
Weeelll... yes, linguistically, you're correct. But fig wasps are no more closely related to what most people think of when you say "wasp" than they are to bees.
"Raymond Daley" <raymond.da...@ntlworld.com> wrote: > "Richard Bos" <ralt...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message > > Well done - this must be a record. People criticising a book they > > haven't read with a great deal of attention I've come across before. > > People writing a dust cover blurb without having read a book at all, > > that happens all the time. But criticising a book when you clearly > > haven't even read the single, double-sized, two-coloured explanatory > > sentence by the author printed on the back of the dust cover? That is > > probably a first. > > Do the rest of us a favour, Raymond, and start learning to read.
> Richard, the pertinant point was I'd read the whole of the INSIDE of the > book, the important bit.
> The line "it is not JUST about football" might appear to be very Zen to you
I don't think that that word means what you think it means. Neither do most Zen Buddhists.
> but it sounds like a hastily written excuse to me.
That may be because you have a limited attention span.
> Heres the thought process I see when I read that "Oh no, I just read the > book back and noted I only mentioned 1 real match. Best I cook up some > fancy sounding piece that sounds deep but is in fact my get out clause".
That's your thought process, though, not PTerry's. Which is obvious to anyone who's paid the slightest attention to what he's said about football in general, and this book in particular, for ages. He didn't just throw that quote on the back of the cover at the last moment.
> And who takes any notice of the back of a book when your too busy reading > the inside? > Front cover yes, inside blurb maybe.
Not with any attention, apparently.
Really. Complaining about the limited number of football matches in UA is _almost_ as stupid as complaining that there aren't enough axle configurations in "Trainspotting".
xander_d...@hotmail.com wrote: > On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:19:43 GMT, ralt...@xs4all.nl (Richard Bos)
> >Well done - this must be a record. People criticising a book they > >haven't read with a great deal of attention I've come across before. > >People writing a dust cover blurb without having read a book at all, > >that happens all the time. But criticising a book when you clearly > >haven't even read the single, double-sized, two-coloured explanatory > >sentence by the author printed on the back of the dust cover? That is > >probably a first.
> Could you please help me out? The US version does not include the
> "single, double-sized, two-coloured explanatory sentence by the > author printed on the back of the dust cover"
> What did it say?
"The thing about football - the /important/ thing about football - is that it is not just about football."
Which is quite true. For many people it is not even _mainly_ about football. And not all of those are hooligans from Hull or Den Haag.
Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote: > On Nov 3, 7:54=A0am, mcv <mcv...@xs4all.nl> wrote: > > In alt.fan.pratchett Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
> > > Curiously, _Making Money_ at first read felt to me a little bit like > > > going through the motions of a familiar recipe, doing it by the > > > numbers, but upon re-reading I find sparkling originality. =A0Whatever > > > is going on there? =A0Was I in a mood the first time around? =A0I don't > > > recall being so!
> > I'm currently reading it, but after a couple of dozen pages, my main > > thought was: wait, when was this written? Did Pterry predict the credit > > crisis?
> Apparently 2007, and maybe - ask his accountant. I think we were > already in trouble then, though.
Of course. Many people did predict that the credit crunch would come - would _have_ to come, even - months or years before MM was published. Even I was one of those, which is why I took the right financial decision in 200...5, I think. Since PTerry is quite a clever chappie and I don't know much about finance but merely needed to have my eyes open and my brain in gear to make that prediction, it would not at all surprise me if he were another, and on better grounds.
> But mainly MM is about older themes in economics, including real-world > reform of banking for the nineteenth or early twentieth century - > paper currency, no gold standard. (E.g., what if you have no gold?) > Whereas the latest crisis is sort of about all the developments of > banking since those days dying and shrivelling and dropping off.
Well... no. Not entirely. Both the fictional and the real crises were caused by the same underlying problem, i.e., too much greed and not enough control in the banking world, and too much greed and not enough self-control in the banking public. The outward trappings differ quite a bit, but the underlying mechanism is, in both cases, that of a pyramid scheme collapsing.
> Really. Complaining about the limited number of football matches in UA > is _almost_ as stupid as complaining that there aren't enough axle > configurations in "Trainspotting".
>> Really. Complaining about the limited number of football matches in UA >> is _almost_ as stupid as complaining that there aren't enough axle >> configurations in "Trainspotting".
> 4-4-2 in either case, possibly?
I'd swim the Atlantic for a number like that . . .
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