Sunday 14 June 2009

People's Book Prize and Grunters


Passed this beautiful lady and her bashful foal on a walk the other day. Yes, those are buttercups and daisies beneath their hooves.
I heard of something called The People's Book Prize yesterday. The website is here. As far as I can tell it applies to the UK only but I could be wrong on that as I have not read all the small print. I would have copied it here, but I can no longer get the blog to accept chunks copied from other sites.

I must admit I am wary of any site that offers something dependent on The Public Vote because that is so obviously open to bias, bribery and corruption! If you have a big family with an army of cousins, or a big office or university department to vote for you, it must be a huge advantage over the shy, retiring author who lives alone. I may be cynical, but hoping that sheer merit will get you noticed seems a faint hope these days. And yet the impossible does happen. Either way, it will be interesting to watch and see what happens.
And yeah! Wimbledon has announced that it will cut down on grunters and moaners! Persistent grunters will forfeit points, games, even matches. There is a list of grunters and their decibel output here The women seem to grunt far louder than the men. Navratilova says it is done to cover the sound of the ball striking the ground, as that gives away a good deal of information about the amount of spin on the ball. So yes, in my view, that is a form of cheating. And my ears will be so pleased to have those wailing grunts assaulting them no longer

2 comments:

Glynis Peters said...

Ah the foal is so cute. I had to smile at your comment about an army of families turning out to vote. I know someone who paid out £100 to get 100 people to vote for him, it was for a £2,000 prize, sadly he didn't win, but 100 people were £1 better off!
As for the grunters, I always thought it was when they expelled air...I am so naive!! I will not miss that or the spitting some had taken to doing...yuk

Linda Banche said...

From another cynic here, merit will get you only so far. In writing, as in the day job, you have to do the work well enough. But you also have to get up there and tell everyone how good you are or they'll take you for granted. And even worse, if you slack up even a little, they'll yell at you. The moral is, work hard, but make sure you get the credit for it.

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