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Even Harry Potter - I had to chuckle when JKR quoted "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death". I wonder how many people who may find that so profound realise its source? :)

Not backwards at all...our 'Big Brother' TV show (and other similar crap) is the real-life modern-day equivalent of the anodyne pap that is served up to keep the proles happy in Orwell's novel.

I knew you were going to ask that...it's an awful admission, but I can't remember! Suffice to say that the story involved a disfunctional teenager killing homeless people for 'kicks'. It may have had some deep philosophical message, but (a) we didn't think so and (b) a bunch of 13 year old boys...

Simple. The right to express my opinion (within the laws of decency, slander, etc.), in public, without fear of reprisal.

What, so that's it? No reason why? (the OP did ask WHY as well as WHAT). So if your 9 or 10 year old who never showed any interest in reading before came to you wanting to read HP, and you said no and they went away and carried on flatly refusing to read anything else, that would be a 'good...

oops - double posted there!

Hallelujah! Some common sense. Now all we need to do is clone you and apply the same process in every other school :) My son's English teacher was a bit taken aback (in a nice way) when I challenged one of the books that she was considering as a class reader. I and my wife had read/skimmed...

Sob :( ...you just reminded me how sad the ending of that story is!

I know what you mean - even as a native British English speaker, I struggled with some of the dialect writing in 'The Mill on the Floss' when I first tried to read it, many years ago. I found it much less of a problem with 'Silas Marner', but I'm not sure whether that's because there is less of...

May I ask why? And do you still hate it? I've read 'The Mill on the Floss' too, and although I enjoyed it, I enjoyed 'Silas Marner' more; it's one of my favourite books and I'm always curious to know why people who don't like it feel that way.

Numbers for the UK national lottery. If I win a shedload of money with those six numbers I owe you a slice of it!

Read 'The Gulag Archipelago' by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It will astound you. The full version can be a bit daunting but there is an abridged single-volume translation that was fully approved by the author. If you read it and you still thought Stalin, Beria et al were 'OK guys' (assuming you...

Not at all. And if you DO happen to have those magic six numbers as well...:D

Watch your language. There is no need for profanity on this site.

She should give up and just count her money. If I had been JKR there is NO WAY I would have sanctioned all the spin-off crap that Harry Potter has generated; all the made in China crappy plastic toys and games, etc. "Warner Brothers want to buy the film rights for my books? Yeah, OK, you can...

"There are" , to quote Ben Franklin, "only two things certain in life - death, and taxes". To which I would add a third - I will never read an e-book. They are an abomination, a perfect example of 'Why? Because we can' technology. IMHO.

If you are so sure of this, please give me six random numbers between 1 and 49.

'Lady Chatterley's Lover' in 1960 maybe? For completely different reasons of course!

Be warned though...it's a 'laugh out loud' book. Don't read it in a public place if you mind people staring at you as if you are mad!

'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist' - great concept, boring prose (IMHO). 'Chocolat' - great film (set in the 1950s), silly book (set in the 1980s or 90s - when surely many of the social mores that are part of the story would no longer have been relevant?) Probably loads of others too -...