Numero Uno
Say what you will, but having the top underrated book of the year according to Prospect is pretty good fun. Also a little surprising. We’ve tended to think of it more from the other direction. Not that it was overrated! No no – don’t run away with that idea. But that we were (modest to a fault as we are) rather surprised that it got such good reviews. So good that it wasn’t like trying to find an eyelash on a football pitch to pick out extracts for quoting in advertisements. We had spares. We had more than enough. And that was a surprise. (Why? I don’t know, exactly. Maybe partly just because it’s hard to tell how a book one has written oneself comes off.) So we think of it, or at least I do, as kind of heaped with praise, rather than underrated. And as doing pretty well – it’s in its third printing. But if people want to say No, it’s even better than that, it should get even more good reviews and be read by even more people and go into even further printing – well far be it from me to disagree. Far, far, far, far, far. Miles be it. A day’s walk. A long way off.
William Skidelsky’s little dig is funny (he’s one of those men who are more funny than women, probably).
We thought we could detect one or two schools of thought at work – Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom’s anti-postmodernism polemic Why Truth Matters struck a chord with liberal neocons such as Johann Hari and Oliver Kamm.
Liberal neocons; cool. You got your Blitcons and your liberal neocons. Liberal neocons go with bipedal quadrupeds and red bluebirds and vanilla chocolate and sour sugar. But whatever. I didn’t even know Oliver Kamm had read the dang book, much less that he thought it should be more widely known.
I’m slightly bemused as to how the same group of people managed to vote you most underrated and Dawkins as most overrated.
Liked the comment, ‘Overrated not because it isn’t a powerful argument for rejecting religion (it is), but because critics have responded as if these arguments are news.’
And one of the others simply said ‘Obviously’. Which sort of characterises his approach.
Come on, ‘Most Underrated’ is a hell of a title to win. And I am uniquely responding to even close friends who ask ‘Can I borrow that?’ with, ‘No, buy you own bloody copy.’
I know! I’m frilled. And love you to pieces for telling even close friends to buy own copy.
Congratulations.
Your work matters.
Well done.
I think, perhaps I should get a copy.
Though I have always thought that truth matters …..
Those who claim Dawkins book is overrated have either deliberately misinterpreted it, or are displeased by the howls of outrage form the poor sensitive religious bullies.
Congrats OB and JS.
Yes, congratulations. I’m sure you couldn’t have been more pleased if you had set out to write an underrated book.
Well it certainly isn’t underrated by me, I can tell you.
Thanks, all!
Congratulations. Well done!
I will putting in a plug for WTM in EC Commissioner Wallstrom’s website as soon as she posts a new entry (since we’re down to posting 84 on the ongoing one and people have probably stopped reading it). The moderator claims that Wallstrom”s website has 15 000 readers … so get ready to publish the next edition as they all swoop down on you.
On the other hand, my views on certain sensitive gender-related issues have prompted Commissioner Wallstrom to brand me as a ‘dinosaur, unaffected by natural selection’. So it is possible that my plug might actually have an adverse effect on sales of WTM.
Perhaps I’d better use a pseudonym.
You could call yourself Copal Cathland. That would fool ’em.
Thanks for cunning plan!