I refuse to be the one to dole out punishment, it's not creative, but I think you might lie down in a quiet dark room and hope that your inability to criticise Liz Hurley goes away.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing sprang to mind immediately on reading this thread, although I think it's the only book of that kind I've read. It was lauded by all sorts of eminent critics, but the narrator's self-obsessiveness nearly sent me into a decline, and although determined to find out what had prompted such fulsome praise I had trouble finishing the 500 or so pages. I never did understand.

I've just been to amazon to check the title - it was a long time ago that I read it - and the first review expresses exactly how I felt about it at the time. This book may be the reason I tend to avoid all highly-hyped novels these days. Life of Pi fell from my hand half way through, and I haven't felt inclined to pick it up since.

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Here's the link if anyone's interested:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060975903/102-8852583-2247317?v=glance

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Review by Magellan.

I thought Life of Pi was absolutely wonderful although the second half where he is actually on the boat is the better half. I thought it was beautifully written and felt that I was on the raft with him on his journey. I really loved the book! Shows how we are all different which is, after all, a good thing!

Now that's funny Sue, because I was intrigued up until that point. Maybe I just couldn't stand being on that damned lifeboat, but odd that I cared so little about what happened next that I couldn't even be bothered to turn to the end. As you said, we're all different.

I'm currently in the middle of writing a short story about a writer so I was a bit surprised when I saw this thread. I think it's like anything else though, you get good stories / books featuring writers and bad ones. I liked Misery but I wasn't mad about The Dalk Half, both are books by Mr King featuring writers. I'm not totally convinced Steven King even wrote The Dalk Half but that's another kettle of fish.

I think one distinction is that some books about writers have a certain see-through quality, that makes you think they're only writing this because they're struggling to come up with original ideas.

Pete

Watching a direct to video Liz Hurley film - The ULTIMATE form of punishment!

Or an excellent source of lonely home entertainment...

steady on!

Anna

A really good book, which puts a different spin on the subject is Percival Everetts "Erasure." The character Monk is an erudite but seldom read black author, who writes obscure literary papers and avante-garde fiction, rather than the ghetto prose thats in vogue. He writes a parody of the genre which he sends to his agent under a pseudonym and it becomes a runaway bestseller. Its a hilarious critque on the publishing world.

Cheers
Kenny