Quote:
Originally Posted by b0ned0me
Dick Francis is my favourite potboiler. His modus is pretty much:
Hunt out some moderately obscure occupation
Do a bit of research on it, enough to impress a layman
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Actually, this part used to be done by his wife. After she died, Mr. Francis said he will not write anymore.
Quote:
Originally Posted by b0ned0me
Sketch out a reasonably complex but believable scenario using the research
Set it somewhere vaguely horsey
Populate scenario with some semi-cardboard characters
Write it up in competent english
Profit
In my opinion, he's a true professional - no literary pretensions, but very good at producing lots of straightforward thrillers. Dan Brown could learn a lot from him.
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I am a bookworm.
Very soon after starting to learn English I got an idea I would start reading in English in order to improve my understanding. So I went to the "foreign branch" of local library here in my town and started checking out "simplified editions", level 1. As my vocabulary and skills increased I was checking out more and more complex levels. I ate my way through entire collection of simplified editions (there were not THAT many) and took home the last and most difficult one - Call of the wild by Jack London. Oh boy! I couldn't understand half of it, even with a dictionary(*) in my hand. So I returned it and started browsing, hopelessly through those few hundred English books our "foreign branch" had available. My eyes fell on a book by Dick Francis and I said to myself: "What the heck! I am going to give it a try". So I took it home ... and ... read it in one sitting! This has literally changed my life! Only much, much later I realized I could not have picked up a better author as my "THE first ever English book to be read *and* enjoyed". After I finished all the English books by Dick Francis, I started checking out other stuff. I was only able to read a small fraction of them initially, and if it was not for Dick Francis and his beautiful straightforward English combined with great suspense writing I would have given up reading English books for quite a few years.
Later on I have read my way through the entire English collection(**) in our English branch and discovered e-books. But that is another story ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by b0ned0me
David Gemmel is his equivalent in the fantasy genre - you know what you're going to get, and you know it won't be earthshakingly original, but it will be put together very well.
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I will definitely have a look at his books.
(*) That was my first and also the last attempt to read a book with a dictionary ;-)
(**) if you leave out classics printed in Soviet Union, romances and books for young boys and girls there were not more than 1000 books there.