Shit. Lads. I’ve just realised the copyright expires on our books in 11 years.
Fucking hell. That crept up. So in eleven years our cash cow is dead?
Looks like it. Any ideas?
Not really. Oh hang on. The Dahl lads played a blinder. Let’s create a woke controversy, play the public for the paranoid, gullible idiots they are, and laugh all the way to the bank.
Bingo.
Yup nail on head.
Reprints of those Dahl books weren’t selling now I bet both lots do. Same with these.
Anyhow posted this in the cricket section but it’s my latest read, so far so good but some interesting stuff about ODI that contradict the reason scoring was down to T20 alone.
The name’s Bond. James Bond. Pronouns are he/him.
Imagining James Bond making sure he has consent. 
I always thought Pussy Galore had another meaning than she owned lots of cats…
This should be of interest to any Pratchett fans:
She’s been recast. Pushy Formore. Wow, this could get out of hand quickly.
In the Fleming books he is an unapologetic rapist, who believes women secretly quite like it. And Bond himself is a thinly veiled fantasy for the kind of man Fleming wished he was, it’s all pretty grim stuff.
Although Thunderball has my favourite passage, one committed to memory.
Domino was a beautiful Arab Mare who would only allow herself to be ridden by a skilled horseman, with steel thighs and velvet hands.
In the films, at least the Connery ones, he pretty much was as well.
I loved the Bond books but he is one of the most unpleasant “heroes” in literature.
Or was giving the man he believed his readers wished to live vicariously through or probably both. And there are certainly ample stories of women enjoying being taken by force…written by women.
Are there? Even if so, there is a world of difference between a woman writing about a women who has that predilection, and a man asserting that all women secretly loved to be raped.
I don’t think there is a lot of contextualising to be done with the Fleming novels. Even in their own time they were deeply unpleasant. Fleming was a pretty unlikable character.
Tried to read a Bond novel once or twice but never could get through more than a few pages. Rather juvenile writing IMO. Le Carré was much better.
I love books. Study books, not so much. Not because they were boring. Just because I had to read them it took away that essential magic books have. Anyway, like I was saying, I love books. I don’t remember when this love started. I was probably around six or seven when I had my first proper books. I remember their names still, and I remember that I ditched them because they didn’t have pictures. It was possibly another couple of years when I finally read them, and boy oh boy, how I regretted not reading them earlier. But the love was sparked. I would jealously watch them in other’s hands, I would dreamily stare at them on the bookshelves & bookshops, I would actually dream about them, and of course, I would read them; whenever and wherever possible.
I hate bookworms. You know, those insects which eat away lines and pages of old books and keep you wondering what was in those lines and pages. It’s so frustrating, so many magic spells and secret codes are lost this way. Yes, I love old books. They give such a wonderful vibe of mystery and adventure. Every time I saw one, I would expect an old parchment-map to slip from its pages. A hand-drawn map with rivers and mountains from an unknown land, an unbound land where the monstrosity of civilization is yet to take hold. True, I haven’t found such a map yet, but that’s only because I haven’t read that many books either. Then there was the possibility of finding secret codes scribbled in tiny handwriting. I always checked the margins of the old books very carefully and sometimes even kept a magnifying-glass at hand too. What codes? How would I know, I haven’t found one, yet. They could be the alchemy to grow the silver blooms, they could be the date for a star that appears every thousand years, or they could be the direction to pass the snowy Tian Shan.
I love new books too. They are crisp and fresh. They look smart and suave in their sharp edges and neat bindings. What they lack in an enigma, they make up for it with convenience. No bookworms, to start with. Then there’s the convenience of availability. There’s this damn book, The Disturber of Peace, that I searched for 35 freaking years. Even better-known books like Tom Sawyer or Three Men in a Boat are hard to find these days while Syed Mujtaba Ali seems to be going out of fashion. Oh, the looks I get from the salespeople when I ask for some of my favorites. On the other hand, Stephan King or Terry Pratchett seem to be available at every corner-stores.
So I have this wild idea. I want to build a city for books. It will be all about books and reading; libraries, bookshops, reading areas, and whatever you need to enjoy reading. Yes, there will be living areas for people working in libraries, bookshops, and other places, and for people coming to read/buy books. Then there will be restaurants, hospitals and other stuff too. It will have all the books published in the history of mankind. Books in every language spoken by a human, from Arabic to Zulu. Khasi fairy tales will mingle with Romani poetry. There will be books in the most obscure languages and we will script tales that don’t even have alphabets.
Now the question is, how do we plan the neighborhoods? Should it be according to language? Then the city would be too fragmented because, thankfully, there are still many mainstream languages while the Amharic and the Oromo will be lost in the maze of high-streets and back-alleys. Maybe it should be according to genres; fantasy, biography etc. But the centrepiece will be a huge reading lounge with a retractable roof. At night the roof will be retracted and you can literally read under the stars. Imagine reading one of your favorite science-fictions and when you lean back you gaze at billions of luminaries across the galaxies.
This is a thread to discuss books @Iftikhar, not publish one of your own.
Just finished reading Alice Scroeder’s ‘Snowball’. Its a biography of Warren Buffett. Wasnt sure quite what to expect because although it was praised by many it came in for some criticism amongst buffetologists for sensationalising aspects of his family’s personal life. I thought it was an interesting read, though I still havent read the two big biographies - Lowensteins the making of an American capitalst and Kilpatrick’s of Permanant value which although older are supposed to be the two go to books on Buffett.
Read Ender’s Game, highly touted novel. It’s the number one sci-fi book on the Goodreads list. Didn’t live up to the hype for me. I’d put quite a few other sci-fi novels ahead of it. Readable, though. More of a young adult novel sci-fi story.
