I just found this story on yahoo and thought I'd share. Please try not to laugh too loudly as I have headache.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rowling wins Book of the Year award
Reuters Wednesday March 29, 09:27 PM

LONDON (Reuters) - JK Rowling's latest teenage wizard tale -- "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" -- was named Book of the Year on Wednesday at the British Book Awards.

Rowling, who has sold more than 300 million copies world-wide, was able to reassure young readers around the globe that the final book in the Potter saga was on target.

"I am enjoying writing the last book in the series and it's coming along nicely," she said.

Rowling fought off an eclectic band of authors to land the prize -- they included Sharon Osbourne for her autobiography and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver for his book on Italian cooking.

 

Well in company like that who else did you think would win?

= uke:

--bornagainpenguin

 

Eh, its well known that the British people are illiterate.


I believe that this has occured due to eating too many fish and chips. You know, the mercury levels have probably addled their brains. I challenge anyone here to name ONE great English author!!!

 

Ok, lol

William Shakespeare.

Charles Dickens

There... I named two

Do I get a medal? Or just a specual slashy night with you Chuck?
*snickers*


As for Half Baked Plot winning book of the year... Da Vinci Crap won it as well... Often times, popular books are not literary masterpieces... Whereas amazing books like Grendel live only in High School English classes... But not mine, because the teacher is an incompetant knob-gobbling retarded man whore.

 

JR Tolkien? So what do I win? A fabulous NO PRIZE?

--bornagainpenguin (who thinks some fish and chips sound really good right now....and may head off to this place for some soon.)

 

winning the book of the year award is alittle insulting

 

Not an author, a playwright...and a boring one at that.

 

This... this is humor no?

--bornagainpenguin (who very much enjoyed 'Much Ado About Nothing')

 

I can't agree with Chuck there...England has produced some excellent authors.

Sure, Shakespeare is playwright, but his work is absolutely fantastic. Can you imagine how ahrd it is to write a story in rhyming couplets, throwing in iambic pentameter through the whole thing?

Tolkien: excellent

Dickens: great...but some irritating hurt/comfort...Great Expectations my ass.

And how can you forget JK????? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Agatha Christie, CS Lewis, Virginia Woolfe, James Joyce, HG Wells, Kipling, Yeats, Austen...theres tons of them.

 

A playwright IS a type of author, DUMBASS!

Good God. Did you fail middle school English?

 

Did you mean JKR? Oh wait... I see it now--you meant JKR but were J/K! Right? :lol:

--bornagainpenguin (who likes most of your list)

 

That's great!

From now on, instead of calling her Rowling, JK, JKR or anything else, we should call her J/K!

penguin: yeah...joyce and woolfe are good, but somewhat boring.

I don't remember...who wrote the Great Train Robbery? I know it isn't Christie, but her name keeps popping up in my mind.

 

I can't agree with you about Woolfe, simply because I happen to like the stream of consciousness style of writing.

But Dickens bored the shit out of me, as well as the other realism oriented writers. Entirely to much detail, no emotion at all, and just... Lets just leave it as "Giovanni doesn't like the way he chose to go with social commentary."

 

Dickens just depressed me at times...Oliver Twist and Great Expectatoins just made me feel like nothing ever went right for the protagonist.

They find someone to care about (romantic or otherwise), and the person dies.

However, i guess the reason i appreciated it was the excellent representation of England at the time...from the rich to the filthy poor and everything in between was done excellently.

 

Err... If that's sarcasm, lol. If you were serious, lighten up a bit. There's much worse on this site to pick on.

 

I think book seven would be great if it started with the words 'just kidding.'

 

Dickens... his writing was good. His stories were so-so plot-wise. I thought it was boring though. What with all of modern society growing more blood thirsty by the minute :lol:

Tolkien, he's a given. C.S. Lewis as well, although their style is the kind of style that discourages me from reading through it like a maniac. Again, modern society's standards are interfering again. Bah.

-goes off to read Anne Rice-

-resists urge to hide cheeky grin-

 

I strongly hold the belief that old English authors are leaps and bounds better then old American authors…Mark Twain being the only exception I even care to try and remember…But for new fantasy and sci-fi literature, American authors are loads better than English ones. Maybe I’m just ignorant (which is possible I don’t deny) But almost every Sci-fi/Fantasy book I’ve ever read has been from an American Author. (HP and LoTR being the only exception I can think of.)

We don’t even know if JK is that great of an author. There is no denying that she struck gold with the whole HP idea, but do you call that skill or do you call that luck? The real test of her skills will be to see if she can produce more good stories after she has left the HP universe behind her.

In the music industry it happens all the time, they are called one hit wonders.

 

Yeah, but when was the last one hit billionaire you encountererd? She COULD be a one hitter, but she REALLY marketed this world VERY shrewdly. For that, you have to commend her. She's really milked this thing. And I say that with honest respect and admiration for her business savy.