That's a fallacy, of course; one good short story is worth more than a closet full of mediocre novels.

Lesser writers would have produces a good or mediocre novel, or three or four, over the years.

A remarkably consistent writer,' he goes on, 'who has never produced a mediocre novel .... He is devoid of either conventional piety or sentimentality ... always profoundly convincing.

But I'll settle for three great Twain novels over a dozen mediocre novels by someone else.

He takes a great deal of professional pride in his mediocre novels and does not even comprehend his friend Kostya's important distinction: "You and me?

Of course there is no denying the possible pleasure of holing up with a fat, slow-moving, mediocre novel; still, we all know that we can indulge ourselves in that fashion only so much.

In short, a pasty-faced nobody, past his prime at 44, abandoned by his lover, with only the manuscript of a mediocre novel to pin his hopes on.

Sukanya Verma for Rediff.com has given 4/5 stars and says Abhishek Kapoor's clarity of vision makes Kai Po Che, the adaptation of a mediocre novel, so irresistible.

The September 1789 issue of The English Review, however, was highly critical, deeming Zeluco a merely mediocre novel.

It was such a mediocre novel.