JANUARY BOOK OF THE MONTH - discussion night and author chat will take place here Thursday 31st Jan from 8pm

[TillyBookClub]

This the place to come for our January Bookclub discussion and to chat to our esteemed author Tim Dowling, author of The Giles Wareing Haters Club.

If you can't make it on Thursday then do post a question for Tim here and we'll make sure he gets to it. And if you are coming on Thursday but want to post an advance question then feel free - we'll email them to Tim and will kick off with the answers when he comes on.

Hope everyone can make it, see you Thursday...

Please not Tuesday won't be able to join in

Well sophiewd you've already told him he's worse than John O'Farrell. You'll probably be banned soon anyway.

OOOOHHHHH never ever thought I might post something that might mean I would be banned. How exciting

Oh and I read that book that Faramus wrote, very shocking in some places but also inconsistent reagarding details found in Agent Zigzag

I reckon you can ask non book-related questions as long as they're not tooo personal.

Am in a quandry about Tuesday v Thursday - maybe we'll have a vote on it?

Just finished reading the JonRonsongate thread. Blimey. Wonder if Tim's wife knows she'll have to fly to the rescue should sophiewd say anything more about preferring Jon O'Farrell...

Think I will bow out now gracefully. I did enjoy it just preffered the other one

Oh please direct me to the jonronsongate thread

And about Tuesdays my sister comes over most Tuesdays but having thought about can always put her off if it clashes

JonRonsongate

I recently bought John Farrell's latest in Poundland.

(It cost A Pound)

Thankyou very much. It's very long though, may take a while!

I am remebering the time I said to DH 'I miss the Jon Ronson column' just as he opened the Guardian Weekend magazine to see Tim Dowlings headline 'My wife has turned to this page and said I miss Jon Ronson'

(Or something like that)

RIGHT LET'S GO

I've got a bowlful of chili and two beers and I'm heavily opinionated

Hi Tim,
How close is Caroline in character to your own wife and did/ does she mind the comparison. Also you've got kids right? Are they old enought to read it and if so, have they and what did they think?

(Thanks for coming on.)

I thought he would be here at 8.30?

I thought WE were kicking off at 8 with our own thoughtful and intelligent consideration of the work

Where Tilly gone?

Can we talk about my question:

Are the sort of threads that are posted by the Giles Wareing Haters' Club fair criticism, or are they 'cyber bullying'?

yes, he's coming on at 8.30.

I have lots of opinions too. First off, did anyone else find it funny but also a desperately sad book? I didn't feel that Giles had sorted himself out at the end; once the baby news wore off he was bound to fall back into paranoid depressed self-absorbed behaviour, wasn't he?

I laughed at lots of things in it, but ultimately I think Giels was a terribly sad character.

Hmm yes @ sad. It was a pretty depressing picture of growing older and feeling irrelevant and useless. I think Giles needed some kind of counselling. And a new hobby. He should have taken up running or something Wholesome, and then I'd have felt more optimistic. I felt the novel was finished off a little bit too quickly without any convincing hope.

I think that a lot of what is posted online,and as mnetters you will have firsthand experience of this, is more a 'jumping on the hate bandwagon' response, rather than an intelligent well formed response.
People seem to find it easier to make snap criticisms than spend the time thinking and composing an opinion.
Many would have very diferent things to say in a 'real life' discuaaion.

yes, tilly - tragic! he has a lot going for him & makes the worst of it.

morningpaper.... you appear to have a very solid agenda here....you wouldn't happen to be TIM, would you? hmmmm?

I thought the relationship he had with his family was awfully sad and would agree with you that the future was probably bleak for them

Oh sorry! Well I liked it and quite liked Giles although had more sympathy with his Mrs, naturally. It did make me think about poor old John Ronson et al and how easy it is for us to brutalise talent on line from the comfort of our computer desks... did anyone feel a teensy weensy bit guilty reading it?

Perhaps's Tim's message was "once you are past 40, it's all over"

morningpaper, I reckon its a mix - comments range from fair criticism (his type of journalism can be 'cynical, lazy, second-rate') to pointless bullying (why doesn't he kill himself). I think that a journo who raids his private life for material woudl have to accept that people are going to get personal, but I can't see the point of slagging people off in cyberspace, really. Unless they are factually wrong, or harmful, or advocating something terrible then why spend so much time over them?

i think that's where I felt a million miles away from the characters in the story - I would never bother to get that vitriolic on a website. Or in general, actually. Who does it help and what's the point?

I agree with all of that, Tilly- thought he was going to top himself at one point. The thing about his father was never resolved was it? His relationship with his kids was sad, v distant even tho' he was the main carer. (Echoing his relationship with his own dad?)

Lucy Mangan's sentences are too long

I may have felt a twinge of guilt.

I don't think I would join a "hate" club.

Mind you being sued and everything sort of put me off too much personal criticism.

Some journo's do seem to attract a lot of negative emotion though - I mean people REALLY didn't like Ronson, did they? (not me, of course, I was ENORMOUS fan)