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This is a question Books

We love books. Tell us about your favourite books and authors, and why they are so good. And while you're at it - having dined out for years on the time I threw Dan Brown out of a train window - tell us who to avoid.

(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 13:40)
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But... but...
It's a bit derivative, innit? I mean, the basic story could be Poe. The metaphor of the book is pretty off-the-shelf Borgesian. The typeface stuff - well, Sterne did that, as did Lewis Carroll. Even the pages with bits cut out had been done several decades before, by BS Johnson.

The difference is that people'll be reading Poe, Borges, Sterne, Carroll and Johnson in a century. I'm not convinced that the same is true of Danielewski. I'm prepared to be shown wrong, but I'll be dead by then, so yah boo sucks.
(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 19:39, 2 replies)
What's so awful about being derivative in an interesting way?
Snob.
(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 19:41, closed)
It's a pretty good haunted house story.
I did enjoy it - as you know. I'm not sure it warrants massive adulation, though. And there was too much wittering by the tattoo guy, no?
(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 21:51, closed)
But one person saying they love it on QOTW does not count as massive adulation.
Most people haven't even heard of it. Longevity doesn't make a book good. People are still reading Robinson Crusoe 300 years later and it's shite. Ah wait, that'll be subjectivity again. Besides, I liked Johnny Truant's wittering.
(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 22:04, closed)
As I say, I don't read a lot.
Catch 22 was good though
(, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 15:16, closed)

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