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My first reaction upon reading the news that the latest Harry Potter book had won the book of the year award was 'oh, please.' Then I read a bit further down the article and discovered that it was a publicly-voted win and thought 'oh, well that's alright then.'

It's not that I don't like Harry Potter. They're perfectly enjoyable and for the most part the story is pretty good, but there are things that just grate on me, particularly about the last few books in the series. Perhaps it's the success of the franchise that's done it (although if I remember correctly some of the problems were there from the beginning), but some of the faults with the stories are down to poor writing and, less forgivably, poor editing. I'm still at a loss to explain why someone armed with a blue pencil and a bit of a backbone didn't remove "'Snape!' Slughorn ejaculated" from Half Blood Prince. I wonder if Rowling has garnered the same status with editors that Tolkien had: Thou shalt not edit.

Or perhaps I'm just a bitter and twisted wannabe writer thinking 'I could do better than that.' Yes, that seems more likely. It doesn't help that the WordPress control panel seems to be running rather slowly this morning.

It's a little odd, being someone who occupies only a very, very small corner of the internets, to find that people that I haven't had to go out and tell about this blog have actually taken the trouble to leave comments on it. One of them is my very good friend of about eight hundred years Paul Bell (hello Paul), and another (but not the only other) is Tom Burke, who writes to say:

Hi there, Just to let you know it was me who designed and built the grouse on the ball thingamy. Check out how I made it here http://www.white-wabbit.co.uk/White-Wabbit%20Front%20Page.html Glad you enjoyed it!

So thanks Tom, both for responding and for having built such a great little piece of whimsy. I shall drink a glass of Grouse in your honour tonight.

In other news, I have today rediscovered the simple pleasure that can be gleaned from reading a book in public. I don't mean to suggest that I'd entirely forgotten how delightful this could be, but when you're writing a book - or at least when I'm writing a book - the inclination to read the works of other people diminishes more than somewhat. For one thing this is due to the plain and simple fact that you don't have the time, but for another (at least in my case) it's because you're afraid of cribbing other people's good ideas, which just isn't cricket, and besides, you wouldn't feel as good at the end of it if it was all copied. Anyway, today, having the right to a free Caffe Nero Hazelnut Latte, and having time on my hands and money in my pocket, I sat in said outlet of all things caffienated and read Neil Gaiman's very wonderful Neverwhere.

If you've never read Neverwhere then you're an idiot, as was I until I sat down and started reading it today. I may even spend the money and go back and do the same thing tomorrow.

Here's an annoying thing to round off with - GMail Chat is only offered in the US English version of GMail, which is why it had disappeared from my panel of options. Now this is all well and understandable in many respects, but you'd think that they'd at least warn you about this when you changed from US to UK English. What I don't understand at all, however, is the fact that the Delete button, that ever useful feature that GMail lacked for oh so long, is similarly not available in UK English. Perhaps the good people at the Googleplex thing that we across the pond treat the word Delete differently than our American counterparts. You say tomayto and all that.

And now, back to work. I have a sex scene to finish, and I'm going to have to stop thinking about the fact that, were I to get it published, my Grandmother would want to read it. That kind of thing can seriously put you off, let me tell you.

Scotland did beat Les bleus, and I was too busy watching that to do anything less important, okay? You know that that's a valid exuse really, don't you?

Ahem.

But, and I have to say that this wasn't the best highlight of the match for me, though it came damn close, I was delighted to see that the Scottish kicking-tee carrier hasn't been relegated to the scrapheap as had been rumoured. No, the Grouse is still running (radio controlled and on wheels, of course) for his native land. And I want one (if anyone at IWOOT is listening here I'd be happy to discuss design principles). Just for memorabilia purposes, you understand¹.

But to work now. Really to work. Oh, and you can now subscribe to this blog by email. Just put your email address in the form in the sidebar and off you go. Next job: fix all the bloody XHTML errors that are cropping up (though I think that some of those are because the templates are identifying themselves as being XHTML 1.1 compliant, which they aren't).

¹. I've been trying to find a picture of the little guy, but there doesn't seem to be one anywhere. Basically it's a radio-controlled cart with a ceramic white rugby ball on top of it, atop which is a model of The Famous Grouse. It's cool, if you like that sort of thing. You do find some odd porn links if you search for it on Google, though.

BBC New Magazine: Baby, I'm desperate

Wannabes queued up to conceive a baby with a stranger live on air for a £100,000 prize...

It started as a challenge - to come up with the ultimate tasteless reality TV show and test the boundaries of the format. But in just eight weeks, "Let's Make a Baby" came dangerously close to becoming a real show.

Itdoesn't surprise me in the slightest, frankly. Watching people talking about (or indeed watching) reality TV is like watching a car crash - or at least like watching people being in a car crash because they were watching a car crash... You get the picture. And yet the cycle doesn't end: Regardless of what people say about reality TV there will always be people who want to be in it. That's the price of the cult of celebrity.

It's no wonder they used to refer to television as the Idiot's Lantern. Give me a nice book any day.

Actually, that gives me and idea for a story...

Technorati Tags: Reality Television, Big Brother, Stupidity, BBC, The Idiot's Lantern

Apparently, according to the BBC at least, creative people are 'luckier in love'. That's nice, but I'm happily attached, and plan to remain that way, just in case you were wondering about my sexual proclivities. No? I'm disappointed.

There is, however, something of a caveat for those who are thinking "wow, creative types are up for anything, I've got to go and find myself a writer to experiment on now!":

"Some creative people, such as artists and writers, are solitary people. They are almost hermit-like. That's partly because they are so driven. Their art is all they want to do."

I should point out that this is quite true. It's also quite a bit of a bugger to discover this little truth after you've already settled down with a nice person and are ready to make a life together. Consider yourself warned.