egafd.com

It pissed me off too----until I read the books and saw past the hype. And look at it this way, she's tuned the computer games and DVD generation into readers. Some of them will move on to Jacqueline Wilson or Phillip Pulman or discover C. S. Lewis or Mervyn Peake.

I took to sci-fi due to the writing of the least sci-fi writer of them all, Ray Bradbury. As the Michael Palin character in GBH says, "Why not broaden your mind and read another book?" More ideas, maybe contradictory ideas, but that helps the reasoning process, and allows you to think for yourself.

The Mail is targeted at middle England. It evokes a world that never existed, and much of its "news" stories reflect the concerns of middle England: royalty, house prices, disease, and a distrust of foreign types. A look at the front page most days during the week will show at least one of those popping up on a regular basis.

Ahh, OK then. Snobbery types.

Not necessarily. It knows its readership, and panders to it; and its reader seem to appreciate being told what to think by the headlines.

Virtually all the nationals have their own agenda and their own comfort zone.

Worth bearing in mind, too, given the talk about Wodehouse, that the Mail in the 1930s published a main headline "Hoorah for the blackshirts!"

but hype/marketing is the nature of the beast is it not?

which is why I choose not to be influenced by advertising

I've never read any of the HP books because there are so many other authors writing to the same formula but pitching their books at an older audience

Keith... dear dear dear.. you are so narrow minded on some things its actually hard to imagine what you are like it real life.

Why shouldn't JK rowling, whose middle class, write about what she knows - surely you would be complaing just as much if the "middle class JK Rowling" had written a succesful series of books about a poor inner city school where theres fights, drug abuse and bullying and all such things that aren't condusive to making a best selling childrens book

Nothing perverse about my non-decision to not read it at the MOMENT

At the time the HP phenomenon started I was getting sick to death of all the books I read suddenly morphing into 5/7/10/15 volume sagas

Not to mention my boredom of the Good v Evil Fantasy genre

So I've deliberately gone back to reading 1/2/3 volume stories
of various genres,even non-fiction on occasions

cheers
B....OZ