Thread 26 : To feel disappointed - and disgusted and vindicated now too - after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL

Please see the OP of Thread 25 for all the links to The Observer's reporting and podcast series, our threads one to 24 and so on.

After 25,000 posts there are still new things to discuss:
BBC Sounds - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available Episodes
If you are posting about a podcast, please start your post with the episode number you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so.

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer exposé items before posting. The Observer's excellent podcast series The Walkers (link in Thread 25) covers most things.
To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea: please do not engage with drive-by scolders who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. For over 8 months we have done amazingly well together for 25 very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

As ever, as we embark on our 26th thread riding the community charabanc, keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5485730-thread-25-to-feel-disappointed-and-disgusted-and-vindicated-now-too-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

DEATH IS A WONDERFUL CHARACTER AS IS HIS GRAND DAUGHTER SUSAN...

Try some completely non-nature-adjacent non fiction; I'm currently deep into the Plantagenets by Dan Snow and anything by Greg Jenner. Sal has put me off nature a bit...

@ThisQuirkyRaven : "My partner encouraged me to try fantasy books. I can't say it's a bad thing," Maybe try Tales of The Dying Earth by Jack Vance - I think it's in the fantasy genre and quite funny. He also has an exceptional vocabulary.

Thanks for the reading suggestions all 😊

There's a recent short video on The Observer's Intstagram feed about HNTDDD. It seems more of a promo for the podcast but sharing with the charabanc in any case. I can't seem to find a way to get the link so someone else might do better.

@ThisQuirkyRaven has posted a link - it's the last entry on page 19. IIRC, it's a link to Instagram but when you click on it you have the option to "continue on web" (or words to that effect), so you can watch it without being an InstaPerson.

Ah, thanks. I missed that.

You might also like the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. I am three quarters of the way through at the moment and I'm loving the humour as well as the fantasy.

I want to take Sal by the scruff and shove her into some good books and say 'this is how you write humour!' The book market (well, that part driven by Book Tok, which seems to be entirely peopled by twenty year olds who want to read fairies having sex) seems to be filled with some pretty ham fisted attempts at writing at the moment. I hate to say it, but up against some of it, Sal looks positively lyrical, so I can see how non-readers got sucked in.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat : "The book market (well, that part driven by Book Tok, which seems to be entirely peopled by twenty year olds who want to read fairies having sex)"

Maybe the suspected rewrite will be about fairies doing it on Winter Hill.

DO NOT give her ideas!

Obviously Moth getting it on with Peaseblossom, Cobweb and Mustardseed. Ugh.

(Does that make SW Titania? Double ugh.)

Bottom.

Oh I learned the hard way about book recommendations on booktok. I've never been on booktok, but was aware the book I was reading was recommended on there. Needless to say, a five year old could have done a better job.

My agent keeps telling me I should get a BookTok account, but whenever I look on there it's always women wearing really massive amounts of make up squealing about how sexy the hero is in the 'paint by numbers' romantasy that they are reading. All the books seem to be about teeny tiny little women falling for men so big that they can't get through doorways.

Which is not at all what I write, so I stay clear.

I’ve never heard of BookTok and I’m probably not its demographic. It sounds awful! I wonder if Sal’s on there gushing about a high school romance “novel” in the tone of Jilly Cooper and featuring Mars bars, frilly cravats and romps on hillsides in plastic bags.
I discovered that Nuts in May is on bbc iPlayer at the moment, in the archives. I do think Sal has imitated Candice Marie’s speech impediment.
Books I’m currently reading are The Sword in the Stone, Trelawny’s Cornwall and Vincent Van Gogh’s For Art, For Life. I haven’t read the Discworld series yet, but my son enjoyed them so they come highly recommended.

@HatStickBoots I think BookTok is 'books for the influencer generation'. My agent does a bit on there but I have yet to see my books 'go viral' (I secretly think it's because they have long words in and no sex).

No doorway-blocking Regency hunks in your novels, @Vroomfondleswaistcoat ? Tsk.

Maybe SW would let you borrow that famous ‘man-mountain’ Big Dave?

As I understand Booktok, it’s so a certain kind of reader can ensure that they never need to venture outside whatever their preferred set of tropes inside their particular genre is. It’s reading re-envisaged for people who are simultaneously on their phones.

😄 ‘Man Mountain’ Big Dave
I immediately envisage something Tolkien-esque thundering around before stooping to scoop up Sal and Julie on his enormous palms to coo at them and blow their hair backwards.

To read some of the current Romantasy hits, this is EXACTLY how the men are written. Us itty-bitty ladies need a Big Thtwong Man, don't you know. At least Sal and Moth reverse the stereotypes (until he starts planking away to show off his Admirable Core).

I secretly think it's because they have long words in and no sex

Come on Vroomie, please write in a character dipping a FOF in a flagon of cider just for your charabanc mates?!

I had never heard of BookTok which I take to be A Good Sign.

Thank you for going there so the rest of us don't have to?

I confess I'm not entirely sure what Romantasy actually involves, other than a vague idea that it involves characters who think and speak exactly as if they're in a 21st-century high-school romance but are really 400-year old sorceresses avowed to defend the secret domain of the High Princess of Fae and who have an arsenal of age-old spells at their disposal to fight the direwolves and rescue kittens from the Dread Monsters of Doom Or something.

In fairness, I could get behind Bree the 400-year-old Sorceress and her magical staff if she used it to zap Moth when planking on a trig point rather than holding off the Ophirions from the Castle of Dragon Woo.

I listen to the Rest is Entertainment podcast. It was a bit of an eye-opener to hear recently that one of the most popular romantasy genres involved having sex with dragons.

Have there been any sightings of the Raymoths recently?

Speaking of fantasy, if Mumsnet HQ got both Tim and Sally on to do a live AMA what one question would you ask ?

I'd like to see the Line of Duty bunch have a pop first.