Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Questions (not edit requests)
>
A question about the 'Characters' field.
date
newest »
newest »
Totally agree. A character is a feature of fiction, not nonfiction. The usage you describe is nonsensical. It should be deleted from those records.
What about biography? Why couldn't you use characters to list the subject?
Eric wrote: "Greetings,I was curious what the correct usage was for the 'characters' part of a book's details. One example I'll look at is Nietzsche. Now, he's listed as a character for The Basic Writings, wh..."
I thought the same, but when I asked a long time ago I was told it's fine
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Hello Betsy,
In my opinion, using a classifier like 'character' to describe the subject of a biography is a bit strange. I certainly approve of the idea of having all the secondary literature of a major figure available just as one could find all the works by a given author - I just don't think that grouping this literature under the category 'character' makes much sense.
But as Moloch has kindly linked to an earlier discussion of this very topic, I see that this is probably not something that will be changed. I suppose, then, that I'll forgo making any edits to Nietzsche's character page.
In my opinion, using a classifier like 'character' to describe the subject of a biography is a bit strange. I certainly approve of the idea of having all the secondary literature of a major figure available just as one could find all the works by a given author - I just don't think that grouping this literature under the category 'character' makes much sense.
But as Moloch has kindly linked to an earlier discussion of this very topic, I see that this is probably not something that will be changed. I suppose, then, that I'll forgo making any edits to Nietzsche's character page.
I was curious what the correct usage was for the 'characters' part of a book's details. One example I'll look at is Nietzsche. Now, he's listed as a character for The Basic Writings, which is a translation of his own works. He's also listed as a character for many non-fiction scholarly works where his philosophy is the subject at hand. In my opinion, none of these are appropriate since in the former he's the author and the latter he (or his work) is simply the topic under consideration. But he's not a 'character' in the book in any sense of the word. The only book, I think, where this would be appropriate would be the novel When Nietzsche Wept where he most definitely is the character of a story.
But before I started making any changes I just wanted to first see if my interpretation of the 'characters' selection was correct.