Random Chats

[Melaslithos]

The flight in itself is not long, only 2 hours. I actually spent more time in the plane waiting than in the air. That's not counting all the time spent at the airport.

[Melaslithos]

The flight in itself is not long, only 2 hours. I actually spent more time in the plane waiting than in the air. That's not counting all the time spent at the airport.

[Ana]

Oh you must have arrived to your destination by now then, hope everything went well in your trip. Good to be VIP :D

[Kandice]

Hope you arrived safely, Melas.

[[deleted user]]

Kandice wrote: "I'm wondering if anyone else here rereads a lot? I find myself rereading over and over. Some books I've read 15 or 20 times and others just 2 or 3.

I always get a bit irritated with myself just b..."

I re-read compulsively. My test of a good book is whether it stands up to re-reading. If it does I tend to go on re-reading until I think I understand. This can take a long time.

[Ana]

a lot of people feel that way and only give a book five stars if they feel it is reread material.

[Kandice]

I think that fully half of my "read" list any given year are actually re-reads.

[[deleted user]]

That's probably what I do. I'm reluctant to give five stars.

[Ana]

Me too, I don't remember ever reading a full 5 star book.

[[deleted user]]

I think most of my favourites are five stars. But that's still quite a small percentage.

[Kandice]

I give out a lot of five stars, but I am also fairly picky.

[[deleted user]]

Picky is good.

Picky is the new cool.

[Kandice]

Andrew wrote: "Picky is good.

Picky is the new cool."

Is that what the kids are callin' it these days? ;)

[[deleted user]]

Yup!

When the kids really like something they say: 'Man! that's really picky!'

[Ana]

Greetings, ladies and gents!
How are you all doing? Can you smell the weekend yet? :)

[Kandice]

Thursday is just a day to get through waiting for Friday!

Actually, today should be nice because I am working on getting my "new" office set up at work. "New" to me, only, it's really just a new location, but still, should be fun.

[Ana]

Awesome, that's fun indeed. It's great to catch a breather from the places we are stuck with.

Yaaaay weekend!! :D

[Anita]

Afternoon all, nothing particular to say except Happy Friday my fellow readers, I hope your weekend is awesome and amazing!

Be safe, be happy. =]

[Ana]

Same to you, Anita!
Hope you all manage get plenty of quality reading time :)

[Kandice]

My son won an NYA award for best actor in a musical and the awards are tonight. He has to give a speech of 1-3 minutes upon acceptance and he gave it to his grandfather last night. His granpa had a stroke and is paralyzed so can't attend. His speech was terrific and I am so excited to go!

[Sorobai]

That's great news Kandice! Congratulations!

[Kandice]

Thanks guys! It was terrific.

[Kandice]

Tomorrow night is my library movie/book club. This month we are doing The Great Gatsby and everyone is able to watch whatever version of the movie they want. I've seen them all, but am re-watching the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow version with my daughter tonight.

We always have food that has to do with the book. I'm bringing black iced tea with lemon and orange slices, lemon cakes with icing and daisies and cold fried chicken. I can't wait!

Next month is Ender's Game and I found a website that tells you how to make cubed food!

[Ana]

Wow that sounds like such a cool and creative thing to do! Hope you have fun :)

[Sorobai]

It always fascinated me such book clubs! Have fun!

[Kandice]

When we did One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest i bought assorted round, multi-colored candies and put them in small paper cups to look like meds in the hospital.

[Sorobai]

lol Kandice! that's michievous!

[Ana]

awesome :-D

[Ana]

Hmm... What is up with ARCs these days? Even Netgalley ones come all jumbled, just a huge block of text with extra space in the middle of sentences, no chapter division, no table of contents... Why do publishers and authors not bother formatting them any more?

Or am I the only one feeling this affects my reading experience immensily and makes it harder to focus and remember the story, not to mention navigating the book?

I was really looking forward to reading those, but now they have gone well down on my priority list.

[Melaslithos]

@Sean: Advance Reader Copy

@Ana: If it's all the ARC you are reading that have this problem, maybe it's from your reader and not the supplier of ARC?

Since they all come from different people, it would seem strange that they all suddenly decided not to pay attention to formating.

The last ARCs I got from Netgalley (10th July) are all perfectly fine.

[Kandice]

I've never read an ARC on my e-readers, only physical books. Any "mistakes" in the physical books are just part of the charm of an ARC, but it would certainly bother me to have all those formatting issues.

[Ana]

No, it's not all the ARC. I have bumped up other books that were further down my list because of it. Pretty much everything I read these days are ARC, hence bringing this up. It's a recent thing, but not all of them. Pretty sure there were at least 3 messed up like that, all from Netgalley.

[Ana]

A Thorn Amongst Lilies, Corridor and Every Last Word all have no table of content.

Maybe the spacing issue only occurs only when I try to convert a pdf to Mobi, I don't know. I have been postponing Probably Monsters forever because I cannot read the pdf on my kindle and the mobi version has that problem.

[Melaslithos]

Oh, .pdf documents seldom have interactive tables of contents (you can, but almost no one ever does it). And I never convert files because indeed, the layout gets all messed up. Can't you read .pdf on your Kindle? It's less interactive, but usually layout is better than is I convert it to .epub.

[Ana]

Yeah I wasn't expecting that from pdfs, table of content that is, I would be satisfied if the lines would appear normal.

Nope, I can't, the font is just too small. Not Probably Monsters anyway, I tried.

[Kandice]

I had signed up for Netgalley, but the idea of PDFs is part of why I just wasn't that interested. Authors here on GR also offer PDFs. Kind of a pain. I'd rather just wait.

[Kandice]

Ana, we were generically keeping you in our prayers a while back. Did everything turn out ok?

[Ana]

I agree but PDFs are seldom used in Netgalley. Actually, they're not pdfs per se, they are ACSM, that annoying format that has a ticking time bomb included - once you open the file, you only have 30 days available to read it.
It translates to pdf though and that is the file you end up reading.

I think it is used because of author rights protection or something of the sort. Luckily not many publishers use it, so most files are available in mobi format for my kindle, certainly epub as well.

I think I have gotten less than a handful of ACSM files in my roughly 100 books from Netgalley, just so you get an idea.

I was quite annoyed when I was unable to read a book or perhaps two I got from them because the file has expired. Now it will always be there waiting me for it to read it and I can't -.- So I will never get 100% read/request rate.

Meh. Not like I ever will; I keep requesting books when my pile is already huge.

Not anymore, though. Almost never anyway. Umm.. Sometimes. Ok, I'll stop now.

[Kandice]

I think the first three I chose were PDFs so that probably swayed me. I just assumed most of them were. Maybe I should look again.

Thanks!

[Ana]

Definitely worth a shot, but then again I am biased. I am a sucker for Netgalley. They have provided me with a ton of great titles (others not so much) for free in exchange for my thoughts on them. I don't have to deal directly with publishers or authors so there are no worries about hurting feelings and therefore I can be totally honest, and I can get to them whenever I am able to, as long as I don't forget to download the file immediately - some get archived and when that happens you can no longer download the file.

So yes, I am very happy with it :)

[Kandice]

There is an absolutely huge beetle flying around my house right now driving my dogs crazy! It's almost 100 degrees out so I have the french doors open. Down side is the insects, but this is hilarious! I've never seen one of these before and it's flying very low. My dogs are tiny so it is just out of their reach.

[Melaslithos]

@Ana: I can zoom on pdf on my e-reader.

As for books I couldn't read on Netgalley because of time limit or wrong format, I would just leave a note in the last field saying that I'm really sorry I couldn't read their book and why. I think it still counts as feedback given.

[Ana]

Hmm odd, I tried on mine and it didn't work...

Oh that's a great idea Melas, I might actually do that! Whenever I get a decent feedback rate anyway.

Eh that sounds like fun, Kandice :)

[Kandice]

I can zoom on a PDF on my ereader, but not increase font size which means moving the page around with my finger as I read. NOT ideal. Is that what you mean?

[Melaslithos]

That's what happens when there's a picture. But when it's only text, it's a zoom like with any other format and I don't need to move the page around.

[Kandice]

I am very irritated and just want to rant in a safe place for minute. I live in Southern California and because there was a zoning issue stating that no one corporation can have a monopoly on an area of business, many of our local stores, Vons and Albertson's, (owned by the same parent company, hence the monopoly) were forced to sell locations to a third party, Haggen's.

I don't like the stores and they've taken over most of those closest to me. That aside, they recently laid off all the developmentally disabled employees at their new locations. They've laid off others as well, but the disabled were a clean sweep. Vons and A's had an agreement with the local halfway house to employee their students. They've done it for decades and these kids were terrific! Now they have to find and learn a new job, which is incredibly hard for them and start from the bottom someplace new. Talk about stress!

My niece is mentally handicapped so I take it personally. I refuse to shop there anymore.

There is also an agreement between Haggen's and the other stores that they cannot rehire anyone Haggen's lets go for one full year. They are trying to fight it in the case of this disabled agreement, but who knows?

[Melaslithos]

That's a scandal! I hope a solution will be found soon, especially regarding the case of disabled people.

[Ana]

Wow, unbelievable, how easy it is to take something that looks so fair and turn it to something just plain evil. I hope people will protest and something will get done about it..

[Kandice]

There is now a class action lawsuit and Haggen's defense is that they did not intentionally lay off all disabled workers, but instead eliminated a no longer needed position - Clerk Helper. Unfortunately, that position had been invented by the companies they took over especially for the disabled. The fact that everyone that previously held that position is beside the point.

Aaargh! I get their side. They aren't getting the warm welcome they expected so are not making the profits they had hoped, but still...life is so seldom black and white.

[Kandice]

It's 104 degrees (40 Celsius) and I feel like I am going to melt. We don't have air conditioning but have every ceiling fan in the house in addition to box and desk fans. It's 7 pm. It should be cooling down!