Has anyone else been spammed by someone calling himself “Kenneth J Harvey”, with an email message pimping his latest novel, accompanied by laudatory squibs from J.M. Coetzee, Alistair MacLeod, and Joe O’Connor?

Mr Harvey, I don’t know you, and I have no great love for people who send me unsolicited emails advertising commercial products; indeed I was responsible for a successful campaign to get the European Parliament to legislate against such activities on this side of the Atlantic.

If you want me to review your book on this livejournal or on my website, then you can send me a copy, and I’ll consider it. But we have not got off to a good start.

, it was on your reading list back in January (although it is now being pimped as a “new novel”); did you ever get around to it? , you seem to have enjoyed reading it some time last year as well. Meanwhile I note both negative and positive reviews elsewhere on lj.