Miévillians discussion
General
>
Announcements and moderator feedback
message 51:
by
Derek, Miéville fan-boi
(new)
Sep 27, 2013 04:20PM
Huh? Why would it affect any particular genre?
reply
|
flag
Well, it doesn't for instance, affect academic books, or books about art or music, or travel books or "dead" authors (literature by pre-20th century authors),literary fiction or new weird or biographies, etc. etc., because the to-and-fro that has been taking place, has been mainly between authors of YA, romance and fantasy fiction and their readers. The biggest conflagration seems to have been in the YA genre, but other genres have been affected. With fantasy it would be especially where YA and fantasy intersect.
I mentioned the fantasy genre, because this group's interests lie in New Weird, SFF, Urban fantasy etc--everything that might be encompassed in the term "speculative fiction".
Yeah, but I don't see any sign that it IS affecting fantasy as such.
I meant from a point of view of contemporary fantasy being a "watched" genre on Goodreads, and vulnerable to shelf and review deletion.I very much doubt that a mudslinging match between author and reviewer would ensue, for instance, on shelves of readers who stick to authors who lived in the previous two or three centuries and aren't around anymore.
Listen up, Mievillains, I've been doing a lot of thinking about this group. We've had a lot of fun with good old CM, but we have more or less exhausted his oeuvre now, and I've been itching to have an environment that is less restrictive.For those who wanted me to start this group so that we can have CM in to come and actually speak to us - I promise you guys that I'll work towards arranging that for July 2015.
...but in the meantime, this group still bears his name and his likeness and he is a large part of what the group is about, and I want to break away now and move on.
Most of you have moved on already.
Be that as it may, I love these group discussions that we've been having around here, and I would love for it to continue, but perhaps in a freer format in a group environment where we are not restricted to a particular author or even a particular genre.
I was thinking that our only criteria should be that the material we read is thought-provoking and exploratory or unusual and/or speculative. You guys can even help me think up the criteria. I was thinking of using a name something like "Through the Looking-Glass." We would leave this group intact as is, and simply move over to the new group and in the new group we can maybe try a new format: We will have a group schedule thread, or folder, in which we will "book" discussions. Members can create their own discussion threads subject to certain rules, but the upshot will be that members can create buddy-reads as long as we have no more than four (or an amount that we'll work out as we go) discussions going at a time. What do you think?
An excellent idea, but personally, I've become bad at groups lately: staying on top of the updates from GR friends, and doing my own reading (plus work and family!) means I rarely monitor what's going on in groups to see if there's anything I want to join in with. I wish there was a way to prioritise group notifications. Anyway, sign me up, and maybe...:D
Cecily wrote: "An excellent idea, but personally, I've become bad at groups lately: staying on top of the updates from GR friends, and doing my own reading (plus work and family!) means I rarely monitor what's go..."The whole point of what i am trying to get to you guys, is more freedom - if YOU feel like reading a book, you create a thread, and start commenting (but it would be good to advertise first, so interested parties can get themselves organised ahead of time) -though i realize that that sounds like a lot of work. ..but see, if we have more freedom re author and genre, it shouldn't be too hard to get buddies, and if the admin aspect daunts you, i will do that part for you if you just say the word.
We can only try and experiment and see what works. :)
I think it'sa good idea, and a good name, too. It might be a bit chaotic at first, or people may not be too sure how far to push things, but I think it sounds like a recipe for success!
Chaos is good. I belong to a few groups that read stuff in my preferred genres, but the best groups are the ones with good people who drag me into things I may not have considered. This one has the right people :-)I actually do much better at "groups" than staying on top of friend updates.
Do we want to try to concentrate on the "New Weird", so at least staying in the same vicinity as Miéville, or is New Weird too vague to be useful, anyway? If we stick to New Weird, then maybe "Through the Looking Glass" is inappropriate (otoh, I haven't read it but the introduction to Ann & Jeff VanderMeer's The New Weird is titled "It's Alice", so maybe not).
Derek, I want the new group to be as all-inclusive as possible. I'm happy for you to come up with name suggestions, but i want the new group to include pretty much every genre that might embrace strangeness or newness beyond and besides the traditional SF & F.So yeah, SF, fantasy of all descriptions, speculative fiction, weird fiction, certain types of horror, (I have a particular dislike of zombies, though), but including Gothic weird like the works of Poe, for instance, and even magical realism. I want it to be far wider than just the 'weird' genre. It is to accommodate our varying tastes that i suggested something like 2 - 4 reads a month. I was thinking of planning them either via themes or via genres. For instance, one steampunk, one cyberpunk, one weird/horror, one dystopian, etc. - we could even do high fantasy, even though I'm personally not too much into that anymore, and there are lots of groups around who cater specifically just for that. :) Personally, i would like for us to include some po-mo works, such as the works of Calvino and Borges and so forth.
I know "Through the Looking Glass borrows from Lewis Carrol- but think for a moment what Alice found on the other side. ;)
PS, I own The New Weird book you mentioned and will have a look at the intro you referred to.
That sounds good. If you create it, I'll try to stay in touch and join in. Of all the groups I've been involved in, this has been in the top two.
I have a dislike of zombies, too. I vote for a zombie-free zone! 'course I'm partial to a po-mo-free zone, too, though I keep planning to try Borges :-)
Well, the thing is, that I have pretty wide interests, and I really don't feel like starting a different group for every interest, so i was thinking my friends might be similar, and we could maybe have group discussions next to one another. :P For instance, i can make a po-mo one while you make an... a Neal Stephenson one! Hahahaha...
You're treading dangerous ground, now :-)
I promise I won't invade your NS threads and leave my er.. mark in them. XD
I second (third?) Derek: fresh meat only! ;)
Okay guys, I've started it. I'll send all my friends requests, but of course, i am not friends with all Mievillians, so I'll post the link here in any case: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
Late to the party here - I'm like Cecily in that balancing my own reads, work, family seems like I'm just popping in out of groups. But I assure you this is the best online group, and lately the only one I go to. My eyes have been opened so much because of you all, and I never would've learned as much on my own. So, thanks, and sign me up!Hopefully, this will give us a chance for some VanderMeer? I've been salivating over reviews of his Southern Reach Trilogy. Plus, I just bought a Kindle version of Bradbury's Golden Apples of the Son collection, now called Sound of Thunder, I think...
Allen wrote: "Hopefully, this will give us a chance for some VanderMeer? I've been salivating over reviews of his Southern Reach Trilogy. Plus, I just bought a Kindle version of Bradbury's Golden Apples of the Son collection, now called Sound of Thunder, I think... .."Oh, definitely! I've been dying to do that Shriek trilogy. I've got a "New Weird" anthology up there for new, but more Vandermeer would definitely be nice, yes.
It's hard to pace oneself when there are just so many books to explore...
I have some Bradbury up, - everybody's read Fahrenheit, but it might be nice to actually discuss it?
Cecily wrote: "That sounds good. If you create it, I'll try to stay in touch and join in. Of all the groups I've been involved in, this has been in the top two."Good to know, and thanks, Cecily!
Hi guys! I was checking to see if i can resign as moderator, because previous experience told me that if you create a group, you cannot resign from it. Well, oops, seems I was wrong, so I have just resigned myself as moderator here.Well, it's all for the best - Derek and I have been talking a lot, and it turns out that he doesn't like the idea of my new group, but i was really starting to find Mievillians onerous - you know, i don't want to be obliged to have to lead interminable discussions on books i didn't want to read in the first place.
Derek seems to feel that - and correct me if I'm wrong, Derek, a person -should- be obliged to lead discussions about books they never wanted to read in the first place, as some kind of public service, but sadly, i just don't have enough time in my life to do that, and the frustration has been mounting for me, because I just never get the time to read what i want to read if i have to do that.
So, we have come to some sort of agreement that (since Nataliya has also been very busy with work), Derek will be the new main man here, and I will rather continue in a much freer environment/scope over at On Paths Unknown.
Hey, I will still do my best to pop in here from time to time, because, you know - you guys have become like family to me.
I sincerely hope that at least some of you will like the new scope at On paths Unknown and will come and take part in discussions where we don't have to justify whatever we read according to the Bible of Mieville. :)
Traveller wrote: "Well, it's all for the best - Derek and I have been talking a lot, and it turns out that he doesn't like the idea of a new group, and i was really starting to find Mievillians onerous - you know, i don't want to be obliged to have to lead interminable discussions on books i didn't want to read in the first place.Derek seems to feel that - and correct me if I'm wrong, Derek, a person -should- be obliged to lead discussions about books they never wanted to read in the first place, as some kind of public service, "
Wrong on all counts. I definitely never even suggested that somebody should be required to lead discussions of books they don't want to read. In fact, I was hoping to encourage people to create desire for discussions that they would lead themselves, but you only want that to happen for "side reads". Certainly the chief proponents of any particular book should be leading the discussion.
And I also do like the idea of a new group, just not moderating the Traveller-picks-a-book group.
Derek - the reason for that is plainly evident in this group - just go and look in the folders how many failed discussions there are, because the people, (and here I include myself- in the case of Kraken) who promised to lead, ran out of steam. The point is that if i create a group and lend my name and my time and my effort to it, why should i invest all my time and effort and group space in hosting books that i will never be interested in reading, when i can rather dedicate that space to books that I -do- want to read - do you see the logic there?
In other words, why should i devote an entire month's space to hosting a discussion of, say, Kraken, when i desperately have 2000 other books on my TBR screaming to be read? Surely, i can find somebody somewhere, who would be willing to discuss one out of that 2000 books with me? If they don't want to, in that month, discuss any of the 2000 books on my TBR with me, well, then maybe they're on the wrong group? ...but i KNOW that there are people who want to discuss the same books than I want to, because they told me so, and if i cannot do so on a group i myself created, then.... well, what is the point of creating a group in the first place then? I mean, you're not going to join a chess club, and then get cross with the chess club management that they're not doing karate instead of chess, are you?
So, I'm not quite sure what is wrong with having a group where you would like to discuss books that a majority of your friends are interested in discussing with you.
You don't have to moderate the new group at all. I simply thought it would be polite to invite you, since you were already one here, and you had agreed that Mievillians seems to have run it's natural course what with CM being not prolific enough to sustain an ongoing discussion of his works.
Anybody that i already know well from here, who would be interested in moderating, is welcome to PM me, but I am fine with managing the workload on my own- there's really not all that much to do, honestly.
It is in the LEADING of the discussions that the big work lies - and that is why i am not prepared to be involved here anymore, because i feel terrible about the fact that i feel obliged to finish the Kraken discussion but .... it was kinda a book that was 2o20th on my TBR list.... :S
..and -that- is why i said that Ruth is quite welcome to start a discussion of her Palanuik book, as long as she is prepared to do it as her own discussion, and does not expect -me- to be responsible for it.
The whole point of the 'sidereads' folder is to open discussions amongst members that are open discussions and less structured - because, yes, i do have at least some priority as far as authors and books go, and unfortunately, Palanuik, for example is not very high on that list. In other words - people are more than welcome to discuss -their- choices in that thread - but I don't see why -I- should be forced to be involved in discussions of books that I'm less interested in - i simply do not have the time. And that is why i resigned here now.
I do NOT want that responsibility anymore - i simply don't have the time - not to mention that it feels like torture to be forced into reading things that you don't want to read. Had to do enough of that at school and Uni - GR is for fun, not for work - sorry, but that is just the way that i see it.
Also, I feel bad about the obvious misunderstandings that took place, and I'd feel far too bad to resign you myself, Derek - but as I have demonstrated by resigning myself from Mievillians, it is actually quite easy to resign yourself, should you so wish. Click on "members" then go to yourself, then click "remove as moderator".So, I will leave it completely up to you to resign yourself from the new group, if you feel uncomfortable being a mod there.
But out of respect to you, i would really prefer you to do it yourself.
If you like, we can post about our reasons there as well, or you can simply say that you found you're too busy, or we can just say nothing at all, and leave the explanation here in this thread where we are posting now. Up to you. :)
I really do hope you would be interested in staying on as a member there, and that, given time, you might feel interested enough to join in discussions there, and maybe even act as a group discussion leader yourself, should you wish to do so.
I must admit that I'd feel sad to lose you, because you have been extremely valuable here on Mievillians; you've at least supported all of the discussions - in some cases even more than I myself have. :)
hold on here....i seem to be way out of the loop. before i add my 2 cents i have to agree that no one should be forced to read anything they are not willing. That said, traveller you can quit as moderator but you still belong to group???for wahat about our long awaited interview? i sftill have great faith in CM and am glad he doesnt just crank em out. We can ask him what he's working on and and and
Magdelanye wrote: "hold on here....i seem to be way out of the loop. before i add my 2 cents i have to agree that no one should be forced to read anything they are not willing. That said, traveller you can quit as m..."I did quit as moderator here, Magdelanye, but then asked Derek to put me back so that I can still arrange that interview with CM here on Mievillians.
But as i said, i wanted to create a new group like you did Flight Paths so that i can use it to find buddies who will read the kinds of books with me that I've got heaps and heaps of on my TBR and have been needing to get to more and more urgently as time goes by. And there had been a misunderstanding that that new group would be exactly the same thing as Mievillians but just under a new name. ...but then why not just continue with Mievillians - do you see my point?
But i can't see why Mievillians can't just continue with me having to lead discussions here, see? That's the thing that I don't want to be obliged to do on this group anymore, because I have a HUGE backlog of books to read that are not SF &F (Yeah, yeah, I know - and then the new group went straight back to SF & F again.... ) :P
Well, at least there we're not confined to ONLY SF & F.
Traveller wrote: "Magdelanye wrote: "hold on here.... before i add my 2 cents i have to agree that no one should be forced to read anything they are not willing. That said, travelle..."as a maverick type, I have never before been induced to go a group read before. Next time I will endeavour to be on the same page as everyone. It felt a bit lame when I got so excited about Kraken and everyone else seed to have drifted off/moved on. But if you have ever checked out my currently reading shelf, it is (too)full of quite a range of interests.
Having just moved back to the country and retrweived my stuff from almost 3 years storage, I am excited to be unpacking my own amazing collection, but I am also focused on finishing up with the library in Vancouver. I am very close to final draft of Kraken review.( I have more pictures and a new phone...how to post gdi???) and am very glad to have read Neverwhere again almost directly afterwards.
Now about the interview, whatever, I have some ideas. I think we should all begin gathering our shortlist of burning questions. I am willing to take some responsability for this,if it would relieve you in any way....imagine tho my big sigh of relief to read you are still up for arranging this.
Who knows, I might have finished Kraken before you finish your review! :DI don't mind arranging the interview, as long as you don't mind waiting 3 or 4 months- but yes, bring some ideas!
Sorry I moved off the Kraken discussion ... can't keep up right now.
IKR? Me too.... *hides head in shame*
oh my dear, this is a sorry state! Shame is only useful when contemplating vile acts. Isn't a common trait of us meivillians that we are quite shameless in our quest for authenticity and excellence?Now, find yourself a bottle of Kraken,in the rum section. Don't tell me that you never drink it. just don't drink too much!
You will find a new attitude changes everything.
Squid flavored liquor??? I like my kalamari, but that's a bit much...
um...you may be following the wrong clue...in fact, I could never bring myself to even taste it, even in Spain where they had quite a devoted following.No, we're talking spicy rum, maybe from Jamaica. Is it potent!
I'll ask my uncle, who is more of a liquoir expert if he can get me some :)
Magdelanye wrote: "um...you may be following the wrong clue...in fact, I could never bring myself to even taste it, even in Spain where they had quite a devoted following.No, we're talking spicy rum, maybe from Jama..."
It does have a squid on the label!
has anyone tried it yet?And is anyone but me still hot for interview?
I have my 4 most urgent questions.
If not a lot of people, we could meet in a bar and drink Kraken
yes summerand starting to prep now makes sense. I know groupies can be fickle but there may be some left that are also keen!
Yeah, I'm incredibly busy in RL right now, but I'll surface properly again by mid-May, and then we can look at it seriously, ok?
what is RL?re China, OK I will keep restraining myself.
Hi people, I thought you Mievillians might be interested in this: http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2015/07/...
Not much use to either you or me, I guess, since you're only allowed to reply "Yes" to "Are you a US resident"
Magdelanye wrote: "what is RL?re China, OK I will keep restraining myself."
Oops, sorry... RL = Real life as opposed to being online. (Or, as opposed to "on the internet")
have you noticed???GR is planning to interview HRH CM in January!!!
Magdelanye wrote: "have you noticed???GR is planning to interview HRH CM in January!!!"
Yes... and they never sent me a mail about it. :(
Have you perhaps got a link?
I just looked up my email, and it stipulated that questions must be submitted by Dec. 17. :(It goes on to say that the interview will be in the January GR Newsletter and Voice.
Thanks Candiss. I feel pretty miffed, because I've read almost all his novels and given at least 3 of them 5 stars and at least another 2 of them 4 stars. Apparently GR members who had given one or more of his works 4 or 5 stars received mails...
On which date did you guys receive your mail, and did it come through the same channel as usual GR mail?
whenever I'm on the bus or in a. WiFi zone I check in with GR and today I was feeling grumpy because a message i sent last week to trav bounced ( my bad, I hit reply while I was still in gmail, where I had read the message without entering GR) so I went to my GR message box and and lo! just as C said.
write her! immediately and tell her about the group
Traveller wrote: "Thanks Candiss. I feel pretty miffed, because I've read almost all his novels and given at least 3 of them 5 stars and at least another 2 of them 4 stars. Apparently GR members who had given one ..."
I got the email on Dec. 15. It came as a Goodreads message, and I then received an email telling me I had said message.
The GR editor who sent out the messages (and may be in charge of coordinating things for the interview, if someone wants to write to her as Magdelanye suggested above) is Hayley Igarashi.
