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All the very best, AquaBlue.

The Life & Loves of a She Devil by Fay Weldon Ruth is fat, ungainly and not pretty. Mary Fisher is all the things she is not. Ruth is timid and tries to live according to a litany of 'feminine' traits, including being a dutiful wife who endeavours to make life as comfortable as possible for...

Isn't masturbation still a cardinal sin in at least one branch of the Christian church? ;)

Silence is fine or background music (preferably not vocal music, though). The other half likes to have the telly on and read at the same time – he seems to be able to do this. It drives me nuts. I struggle to read a page.

At the moment, for various reasons, not being able to do any meaningful work. It's frustrating to say the least.

Lots of things – I'm a season ticket holder at Manchester City FC (although it's a long journey between London and Manchester, so I don't get up to every game). I love good food and cooking. I enjoy film and have a decent collection of foreign-language DVDs. I love music, from Bach to...

Couldn't agree more – it really is a superb collection; very moving in places.

Hi Kempas, Poetry and drama is here. Enjoy.

~~LOL~~ I've had that experience too – in my local boozer, one of the regulars decided, after some polysyllabic contribution to a conversation that I'd made, to announce that I was the pub's answer to Stephen Fry. It's one of the more complimentary things someone's said about me. :)

Welcome, LostRomanovFile. I hope that you enjoy the forum – it's a very welcoming one.

That's an excellent analysis – I hadn't quite thought of it that way. I really do love the books – yes, there's the 'noir' quality of them, but that, as you say, is not at the heart of what they're about. Mind, I particularly appreciated reading this because I was in Paris for a first proper...

I'd agree ... but that does raise the question of how much responsibility an author of fiction has for what they write. Should a writer sit down and think: 'oh, I can't write about X in such-and-such a way – it might be taken the wrong way/upset people/influence someone'? :)

Maigret and the Toy Village by Georges Simenon An elderly man is murdered in a new village just outside Paris. Only his strange – and very young – housekeeper seems to know anything about what happened, and she's not telling the police anything. But instead of spending his time in Paris...

I think I mentioned it elsewhere, but there have been criticisms from Christian groups of CS Lewis, since his Narnia novels, although Christian allegories, have characters such as witches. Such people have even criticised The Screwtape Letters because the characters are devils; yet this is a...

Hi PipPirrip, In essence, I was meaning new copies, particularly in context of things going out of print. I've got all the Penguin editions that were published three or so years ago; they did about a dozen, I think – they've just republished all those; why not publish some more stories...

I read some of Servant of the Bones some years ago and found the opening pretty memorable, but I've not really been tempted by any more of her books since. Why shouldn't a Christian write fiction about vampires, though? Or perhaps a Christian shouldn't write fiction at all ...

Perhaps it's all part of the same devious plan that has seen the newest MFI TV adverts explaining that the company has changed and become sophisticated? That would be a reinvention along the lines of Skoda making desirable cars – and as easy to believe.

I've never really sat down and read a series of books deliberately; for a long time, I read each new Pat Cornwell/Kay Scarpetta novel as it came out, though I eventually got tired of those. I've read almost all of Terry Pratchett's books, but not because they're a series. I suppose the...

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde "Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper." Quentin Crisp

Welcome to the forum, LostRomanovFile. Is it really the case that authors in the US were hindered by such a taboo? Was there really such a taboo? Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park was first published in 1981 – still four years before Gorbachev became the last president of the Soviet Union...