Don't make fun of Dan Brown

I see Michael Deacon is having some fun at the expense of author Dan Brown in the Telegraph. While I find Brown's writing excessively annoying, I still don't think it is fair or all that funny to attack someone in print in this way. I have to confess the only novel of Brown's I have actually read is The Da Vinci Code, but he managed to hit the target with so many readers that my carping little complaints don't matter at all. Would that every aspiring writer should have such success. Here's the link to the original:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10049454/Dont-make-fun-of-renowned-Dan-Brown.html

Deacon's piece is a shining example - if a trifle overdone - of overwriting, and for that alone it's worth taking a peek. It's a pity that today's world doesn't abide by the words my mother lived by - 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.' Today it seems no one takes heed of that advice. It is hard to avoid malicious gossip in one form or another, whether it is in the newspapers or on tv or radio. Innuendo and speculation have taken over from news.

Mind you, saying nothing at all doesn't win friends. They tend to take silence as condemnation anyway, so you're damned if you do say something and damned if you don't.  In that case, possibly better to be honest and say what you think? At least then if they won't speak to you ever again, you know why.

I think if I got to be as famous as Dan Brown or J K Rowling I'd ignore the critics, wouldn't read their reviews. After all, their invective is nothing more than journalists taking the easy option to fill a column. It has to be easy to mock something than say why a certain book is so good it deserves all the millions of dollars it has earned. That would take a little thought, but I'd much prefer it if they tried to analyse why certain books are so successful.

You might think the flowers in the pic are pretty - and they are; but if you filled your home with them you'd regret it. Garlic grows in abundance in the woods along with the bluebells.

Chick-lit under fire

There's a new journalistic attack on women writers, this time aimed at chick-lit - http://tinyurl.com/6eubzox - and it's annoying a lot of readers and writers. It isn't a genre I read, and nor do I write it, so I suppose I don't feel much pressure. But for those who do, it must be upsetting, so why do the journalists continue to put out these bitter little peices of journalistic crap?
Usually it's Romance that gets beaten with the sarcastic stick. Can it be that these journalists actually envy the writers who've made it to publishing a book? I expect they'll hide behind the 'my editor made me do it' line, and s/he'll say it's done because it sells newspapers.
It must be a desperate situation for many journalists these days. News is no longer confined to newspapers. Sometimes it isn't even part of newspapers. 24 hour rolling news on television, radio and all the other devices that impart information at the click of a button have made the old fashioned news journalist redundant. I suppose those who are left must feel the pressure to keep coming up with some gossip or pseudo news piece which they claim they claim the public ought to know about. Picking on women writers is easy. No one sues the journalist or the newspaper, and maybe it's time someone did. 

Is nothing sacred?

The lavender is in full scented bloom here, and walking in the meadows around the mill frequently brings up a smell of mint. Walnuts are fully formed on the trees, and this morning a red squirrel raced down the walnut tree near the bolly, bounced across a patch of tall grass and disappeared onto the lower patio only three yards from me. (A bolly, in case you are wondering, is the local word for a covered patio at the side of the house.)

The sun is blazing down from a blue sky, but tomorrow rain is forecast. We can't complain; evidently the Dordogne region has been suffering from a severe water shortage.

Back home, the row goes on about journalists hacking peoples' phones, a crime the profession seem to consider unimportant when in pursuit of a story. The News of the World, a salacious rag I remember from the days of my childhood, has bitten the dust as a result, and hopefully all Murdoch's papers will have to change their ways if they wish to survive. If a person cannot be sure of having a private phone call, what use are phones?

I read in the Daily Telegraph over the weekend that the Oxford or serial comma 'is entering that zombie half-life where all dying grammatical rules survive for a while - appreciated only by the prissy and the fussy. It's better to kill off the poor, awkward thing, rather than let it linger on, unhappily, between the covers of books published by Oxford University Press.' (In case you are curious, the Oxford or serial comma is the one inserted just before the "and" or "or" in the last item of a list of three or more items, as in the sentence 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' Without the Oxford comma, Churchill would have offered the British people just 'blood, toil, tears and sweat.')

Harry Mount, the Telegraph journalist, goes on to say that the Oxford comma is fiddly, correct but followed only by a clever minority and smacks of smug pedantry. he quotes H W Fowler, who said in 1926: "Pride of knowledge is a very unamiable characteristic, and the display of it should be sedously avoided."

So there we are. Note to self: check and see how many newspapers Rupert Murdoch actually owns. He might actually own the Daily Telegraph for all I know.