periodic repost and a question
For new readers -- my own Vorkosigan reading order recs can be found right here on Goodreads.
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Feel free to pass the link along.
So -- what does it mean to be "following (a person's) reviews"? I get a steady stream of notes that people are doing so to mine, but I'm not sure what they are doing, why, and what they are getting from their ends.
Ta, L.
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Feel free to pass the link along.
So -- what does it mean to be "following (a person's) reviews"? I get a steady stream of notes that people are doing so to mine, but I'm not sure what they are doing, why, and what they are getting from their ends.
Ta, L.
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Sctechsorceress
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Dec 27, 2014 10:38AM
I can say that I read the Vorkosigan books as I found them, which was neither chronological order or publication order. If my memory is correct, I started with "Weatherman" in a magazine. So I can say with assurance, that they do work as stand alones!
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People who follow your reviews see all posts you make - like this one - in their timeline - a bit like Facebook, I suspect ^^. If you have certain options enabled in your own account (like posting to your own timeline when you make a comment on someone else's review or when you post a short status update) then the people who follow you get notified of that also.The "friend" option has more possibilities of contact, like private messaging via Goodreads or someone posting a comment on your own Goodreads page and people being able to recommend books to you via Goodreads directly, but the "followers" basically just want to know what you're up to - a bit like a feed? Or the LJ Friends page?
Following your reviews just means people enjoy reading your book reviews. Your audience extends beyond your original SF and Fantasy novels - your perspective on everything else is interesting and valuable to read as well!
I follow your reviews because I can find interesting books depending on who gave them glowing reviews. I am currently reading Ben Arronovich's Midnight Riot because of reviews by yourself and Patrick Rothfuss, two authors who I love to read.
Lyssa wrote: "I follow your reviews because I can find interesting books depending on who gave them glowing reviews. I am currently reading Ben Arronovich's Midnight Riot because of reviews by yourself and Patri..."I have two reasons for puffing off Rivers of London. First is that I find the books' voice and worldview immensely congenial -- Peter feels about the media much as I do, ferex -- and second, that the series ran into issues in its US publication very reminiscent of the ones that helped to sink my career in Britain. I was dismayed by the notion that such intelligent books wouldn't get a fair shake in the marketplace due to factors beyond the author's control. Happily, they seem to be doing OK now, at least well enough to keep them coming. (Speaking from self-interest as a reader.)
Well, and Nightingale, of course... :-)
Ta, L.
I am not familiar with the phrase "following (a person's) reviews" but I suppose that could describe what I have been doing. Especially with reviews of Komarr. I have read more than 2 dozen reviews of that work and most say nothing whatsoever about how scientifically you treat the physics of your "fantasy" wormholes.Since we do not know, at this time, whether or not wormholes actually exist they are merely mathematical delusions of physics. But if they are used in some sci-fi universe as a means of FTL then their method of operation should be treated as "real physics" within that fictional universe. I think you did a great job of this with Komarr, but as far as I can tell most readers and reviewers don't give a damn and only care about the bad marriage and Miles getting involved with Ekaterin. The physics is trivial window dressing to them, even though it is the central driving concept of the entire story.
If you think about it your story communicates the same idea as Tom Godwin's The Cold Equations. However your story is not as stark and single-minded.
Karl wrote: "I am not familiar with the phrase "following (a person's) reviews" but I suppose that could describe what I have been doing. Especially with reviews of Komarr. I have read more than 2 dozen revie..."Ah, thank you for noticing.
I'd like to see more science, fictional or otherwise, in science fiction, and less war and politics. I grant that political argument has been a function of the genre since wayback, and humans never seem to run out of enthusiasm for tales of Guys Hitting Each Other, but at the moment they seem like kudzu, covering everything.
However, since the arrival of high-quality shows like the science stuff on PBS and the BBC, of way more good popular science writing, and of the internet with hundreds of fine sites devoted to real science, it does seem that good old Hugo Gernsback's concern about interesting young people (well, he said "boys", but it was the 1920s) in science has been superseded by an access to the real thing unimaginable in the 1920s or even the 1950s-1960s.
So is that outreach function of SF for science obsolete? If mainstream lit showed any signs whatsoever of noticing that science is, yes, a fundamental human endeavor worthy of as much attention as love and death (or, in genre fiction, sex and violence), maybe so. But except for Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (which, granted, also contains love & death), I'm not sure such notice has occurred.
Ta, L.
Lois wrote: " If mainstream lit showed any signs whatsoever of noticing that science is, yes, a fundamental human endeavor worthy of as much attention as love and death (or, in genre fiction, sex and violence), maybe so. But except for Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (which, granted, also contains love & death), I'm not sure such notice has occurred."Arcadia is a delight - by far my favorite Stoppard.
You might like to try Andrea Barrett. I enjoyed her Archangel
- both for the stories themselves, but also for the way scientific thinking and discovery was material for story.
Lois wrote: "...humans never seem to run out of enthusiasm for tales of Guys Hitting Each Other,..."Now the gals are hitting the guys and other gals.
LOL
It's called EQUALITY!
Lois wrote: "So is that outreach function of SF for science obsolete? If mainstream lit showed any signs whatsoever of noticing that science is, yes, a fundamental human endeavor worthy of as much attention as love and death (or, in genre fiction, sex and violence), maybe so. But except for Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (which, granted, also contains love & death), I'm not sure such notice has occurred."I consider this one of the weirdest ironies of modern life. This is from the 50s:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10...
I think science fiction with good science should be required reading in grade school. For me it made science more interesting than the science teachers that I finally got in high school made it. There it becomes cook book science not imaginative science. Grade school is about killing curiosity and making good competitive conformists.
We now have lots of sci-fi technology but not many sci-fi thinkers. Shouldn't everyone figure out that we are getting Planned Obsolescence in computer software by now?
Here is the other version of following someone's reviews.But I’m Vor: Lois McMaster Bujold’s Komarr
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/04/but-...
I have started reading Jo Walton's reviews, especially since I read where she said she did not like Phillip K. Dick's works. It ain't just me. LOL
Happy New Year!!!
There's a button that lets you "become a fan" of a particular author on Goodreads, which lists their name in your profile as a favorite author. When you do that, Goodreads asks if you also want to follow their reviews. There's also another button that lets you follow someone's reviews without becoming a fan, but a lot of the people following your reviews are probably doing so because they added you as a fan and didn't uncheck the "also follow this author's reviews" box. (Some people will also use the "follow reviews" option if they're interested in reading an author's updates but sending a friend request feels too presumptuous - or at least I do this.) As others have said, following someone's reviews means that their book reviews, status updates, books marked read or currently-reading, and so on will show up in their news feed when they visit the front page of the site.
My son and I are also reading the Aaronovitch books because of your review. It is very hard to find good books to read and I appreciate finding a new author that I enjoy!
Another thank you for the Rivers of London series recommendation, consumed in one giant holiday gulp.And if it's not too impertinent a request, would you be willing to let us know -your- next project?
Lm wrote: "Another thank you for the Rivers of London series recommendation, consumed in one giant holiday gulp.And if it's not too impertinent a request, would you be willing to let us know -your- next pro..."
Not impertinent at all, but I'm afraid I can only give you the same answer as before (over in my newly activated "Ask the Author" section, this has been the question-most-frequent): nothing to report at this time.
(And if you've run out of Rivers of London, may I also rec Megan Whalen Turner's series starting with The Thief. It's marketed as YA, if you are looking in a bookstore, tho' online stores shouldn't harbor such confusions.)
bests, Lois.
Thank you, both for your good humoured willingness to answer the same question yet again (sorry about that, hadn't found the "Ask the Author" section), and also the recommendation, which I've similarly much enjoyed.
It should have.Baen no longer has the e-license to a number of my backlist books, and so any explicit or tacit permissions people may think they gave back when for distributing them free over the net are long void.
There are, at present, no authorized free copies of any of my works on the net. True, whenever I do an ego-sweep, most of the first screen is always assorted bit-torrent and other sites offering pirate copies, about which I can, of course, do nothing. My silence about such things represents exhaustion, not assent.
Information may want to be free, but artists want to be paid. Have you priced a garret lately?
L.
Karl wrote: "I thought this disappeared from the net in 2012:
http://baencd.freedoors.org/Iso/Baen%..."
Lois wrote: "Information may want to be free, but artists want to be paid. Have you priced a garret lately?"Ironic question. A peculiar thought occurred to me a month ago. I was wondering how much land the US had in National Parks. I bet with myself that the amount was bigger than England. So I Wikeed it and they call it RESERVED LAND.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecte...
The reserved land is 10 times the size of England. What aren't garrets dirt cheap in the US? Who is in control here anyway?
It is more like TEN TIMES the size of the UK. How much is a garret in England?
