You know how you always hear about the thousands of manuscripts that never get beyond the publisher's desk (or somewhere like that) because they are so dire?

[shandyleer]

Well, please someone explain to me how this one slipped through? My neighbour bought me "Twelve Days of Christmas" by Trisha Ashley for my birthday. If you read the blurb you can imagine it will be a bit of a Jilly Cooper "Harriet" type book, but its just awful. Have resisted the urge to throw it across the room several times, and have now abandoned it totally. Has anyone else read this and felt the same way - or is it just me?

Not read it but do sympathise - I used to sit at the next desk to the literary editor of an newspaper and the absolute bilge that got sent in was eye-opening. I also helped a neighbour who specialises in selling non-Western art books put together his catalogue and there would be several titles on, I am not kidding, Hair Combs of the Pygmy Tribes of the Lower Congo. Who could possibly devote several hundred pages to this stuff?

I can't help but think at the moment that "Hair Combs of the Pygmy Tribes of the Lower Congo" would most likely be better than "Twelve Days of Christmas"! Crikey, they must have an awful lot of combs for someone to write several hundred pages about them, I'm actually quite intrigued!

Yoruba Beadwork of the mid-18th century, Sudanese Birthing Stools: A History - treat yourself .

Actually, I don't think they were badly written or anything but just soooo specialised I wondered how anyone could make a living selling them. Mind you, my MIL was wildly excited to find out about a book of photographs on Irish government buildings so there is always an audience.

Hmm, yes I can see that some of those titles would have what you might call limited appeal! You just never know what turns a body on do you?

Ahem

Well,
Japanese Buddhist Temple Roof Architecture
Limewood sculpture of Renaissance Germany
Malay shadow puppets, a study.
Japanese boxwood netsuke carvings of the eighteenth and nineteenth century

and

Yoruba masks, stools and beadwork.

So there is a market for that sort of literature, honestly.

Ha, ha, you must be keeping my ex-neighbour in business (he's a very nice man and my son's godfather so I'm very glad that you are ).

Goblin, I think your bookshelf sounds fascinating - truly. And I think books which people have obviously spent a lot of time, energy, passion and love researching and writing are fantastic, far better than the tripe which inspired this thread. Actually, maybe the author of "Twelve Days of Christmas" spent lots of energy, passion etc researching her book too though I doubt it so I shouldn't rubbish people's efforts like that. At least she has written a book and got it published somehow