"The Butt" is quite fun (in a sort of Kafka-meets-Jonathan-Swift way), although it loses some momentum after the middle (when the main character needs to cross the desert, the story also gets kind of dry - which might be deliberate), and the ending is a bit predictable and cartoonish. The book is probably more enjoyable if you've travelled a bit across Australia or northern Africa.

"Walking to Hollywood" is also pretty good, especially if you can get the references to films and the film industry, and enjoy books written by an "unreliable narrator" (think Wodehouse).

Don't expect very deep plots (although there's always plenty of subtext); Self is all about language tricks (that sometimes expose why we think about things the way we do) and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.

I think you're confusing the creation of a consistent and detailed fantasy universe with the introduction of new literary styles or social ideologies. Dr. Frankenstein wanting to create life is a social and philosophical issue (even more so when you consider that Frankenstein was a man and the book was written by a woman). Dracula having pointy canines (instead of Nosferatu's pointy incisors) is not. Tolkien's influence in fantasy writing was of the latter kind. He took a lot of different concepts of elves, orcs, and so on, and created such a consistent world that most writers coming after him simply accepted his definitions. But none of his books raises particularly deep issues, nor are they written in a particularly distinctive or innovative style.

Tolkien's real achievement is not The Lord of the Rings, it's Middle Earth.

I found Night Watch (and most Vimes books written since) a bit too preachy, too full of clichés, and a bit low on jokes and metaphors (still very well written, unlike his latest ones, but a bit too black-and-white for my taste). IMO Pratchett's peak was Small Gods (which is very much Literature, with a capital L, probably in goldish).

I don't know, can you? Or is that question mark at the end meant to be a full stop?

And, if you can find multiple Maurice Bourguignon violins for less than $3000, doesn't that reinforce my point that it's highly unlikely that "eBay destroyed a $20k violin"...? Also, where did I say anything about "a low quality instrument", or indeed anything about the quality of any instrument?

I'd say that, at the very least, you are missing the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature are different things. You are also missing a user name.

I wonder if you've even read any of the authors you mention in that post. Or maybe you tried reading one, found it too complex, and went back to Harry Potter and Dan Brown...?

Being a neurologist doesn't mean you'll have a lot of creative ideas. Being a linguist doesn't make you a stylish writer.

I read LotR three times (first time when I was 9 or 10) and I loved the epic story and the consistent universe, but the language is rather bland. Tolkien was certainly very meticulous, but anyone who praises him for writing style probably hasn't read anything else. Terry Pratchett or Will Self (to name only two) can often get more out of a sentence than Tolkien managed to get out of a whole chapter.

The films are boring. And nonsensical, because they mangled several sub-plots (they should either have kept them or removed them completely; as it is, several scenes in the films make no sense at all to people who haven't read the books). Also not very well directed or acted, as often happens when the special effects become more important than the storytelling.

I think part of the problem people have with LotR is that they didn't read The Hobbit, which is really the first chapter of the story.

Regarding TFA, Tolkien is indeed not Nobel prize material; he didn't really change the literary or social landscape of his day (which is what the Nobel committee usually looks for), although he somewhat "crystallised" fantasy writing and was able to transmit a sense of scale that few authors manage.

Congratulations on stating the obvious.

But you do understand that eBay lets you set a starting price, right...? So, if this violin had been valued at $20k (as the GGP suggests), do you really think the seller wouldn't have started the auction at a significantly higher value than $2k? So, either the "they destroyed a $20k violin" claim is nonsense (and they destroyed, at most, a ~$3k violin, which is quite low by violin standards) or the fact that "a $20k violin" was being sold for $2500 is, in itself, rather suspicious.

Funniest thing I've read in ages!

Then please, oh wise Anonymous Coward, tell us which ones those are so we may label them properly.

Then why would the seller be flogging it on eBay for 1/10th of that? Unless, of course, it was a fake...

"Please become a legal adult. You have 20 second to comply."

"You now have 15 seconds to comply."

"You are in direct violation of Dessert Code 1.13, Section 9. You have 5 seconds to comply."

"I am now authorized to use physical force."

(machine-gun fire)

Firefox (and Chrome, and IE, and Safari) copied pretty much everything from Opera. Tabbed browsing, searching from the address bar, mouse gestures, pop-up blocking, etc., etc., all that was in Opera first (sometimes several years before the others).

It's fitting that he has a polish name, but surely all this (and more) was discovered ages ago by Professor A. Donda...