Plan B Forum

The infamous and horribly violent story of Squish the Squirrel and his friends is now available on Kindle for a mere $2.99 and may even be free on that special "take a look for two weeks" program they have.

The print book came out in 2014 but it's taken me this long to wrassel the Kindle program into submission - it kept finding the word "Darker" and placing it at random locations in the text.

Whatever happened to Squish's hapless friend, Squashed... the unsafe chipmunk? The children aren't going to learn much from him. "Eww... what's that under the car tyre?"

And a cautionary "tail?" Really?

I’ve just been going through books getting ready to donate a bunch to the library and I found a copy of this and couldn’t figure out where it came from . . . now I know!

North & South is with my collection of gifted and/or author inscribed books; I will eventually get around to reading it, even!

I'm waiting for the movie.

Is there a podcast?

In descending or ascending order, depending:

Guin: no podcast I'm afraid. More of a broadcast for which the pictures are essential.

Big RR: also, no movie is available. More of a still life but you could flick the pages...

BSG: Not read? That accounts for the rave reviews on Amazon then. Please - donating 'Squish' to the library? Do you really want the responsibility of traumatizing so many innocent children?

RayThom: Squish began his (still) life participation in the experience of my 8 year old son as an inert natural speed bump in Ravenna road at the foot of our driveway in Twinsburg OH. "Where's Squish today, dad?" was my son's regular question and we'd go out to look. Over several days, we were fascinated to observe his progress along the street until he was some twelve feet further along (north-westerly). That was the last time we saw him. "Hitched a ride", said my son. Strange child. He was, for at least an hour, sorry that I never wrote the story I told him in the car on the way to D.C. (just us guys) about a vicious (truly evil) dog and an exit sign painted on a road in a car park. It ended up with is favorite punch-line (for that hour) which was, "Spot marks the X". He had been bitten in the face by a dog and still bears the scar. I wasn't looking after him that day.

Maybe....

Oh no, I kept Squish . . . haven’t read it yet. My niece likes weird stuff so I’ll pass it to her next.

I am now reading SNOOKS both North and South. I never got into Fraser's 'Flashman' series very much. They seemed to me to be a parody of some literary genre or convention that I did not know, and thus missed much of what I supposed it was all about.

snailgate

The first Flashman in particular was rather difficult to take. Fraser developed the character sufficiently that by the 3rd volume he was somewhat less cruel and by the 11th one could almost begin to like him. Mostly it's similar to how one feels a reluctant sympathy for Alex in A Clockwork Orange.

British imperial history; the aristocracy; political correctness are Fraser's targets. As a writer, he is witty in poking holes in various Victorian egos.

Snooks is not Flashman and I'm not of Fraser's calibre, more's the pity. The idea was to see if Fraser's Civil War references could be made into a moderately interesting/amusing narrative; and for Flashman fans to fill a gap. I'd be very interested in knowing your opinion and thanks for buying/stealing/Kindling.

I've only recently noticed this thread. Fraser said of Flashman that he "had no intention of describing Flashman's role in the American Civil War. In a 2002 interview he said, "to me, the American Civil War is a colossal bore. It was a rotten war, it's been done to death and I'm not terribly interested. An American wrote to me urging me to write it, saying it had to be the high point of Flashman's career. I wrote back saying: 'Son, it's a foreign sideshow. The Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, these were the important things in Flashman's life. Your civil war? He was so disinterested that he fought on both sides'." (Pulled from Wikipedia.). (And, BTW, note the proper use of the word 'disinterested.')

“I'm always asked why I haven't written about the American Civil War. One reason is that, by comparison, it's deadly dull”

George MacDonald Fraser
Interviewed by Saul David for The Telegraph 16 April 2006

That's one of two introductory quotes I use in the first book, Snooks, North and South.