On Paths Unknown discussion
The Anything Goes chit-chat thread (subject to tiny fine-print rules)
Sumant wrote: "Here is my review of Blade of tyshalle 2nd book in Acts of caine. Really hated this book and stopped reading it after 75%."Arggh! I hate when that happens. I don't like to give up on a book, but there are one or two that I got almost all the way through before I convinced myself that it was stupid to continue reading something you can't stand.
Traveller wrote: "More likely than not, Simmons just had an off-moment. We all get those... "Yeah, and I am willing to give most people a break for that sort of thing. We're in the middle of a national election campaign, and at least one candidate—of Arabic decent—has been booted by her party for a couple of heated remarks made to Jewish trolls on social media sites, years ago when she was a teenager. While the things she said were unacceptable, I'd say she had an off moment.
Simmons, otoh, seems to be having an off decade. There's nobody stopping the rants on his website's forum, and Flashback is widely criticized as anti-Islamic.
It leaves me uninterested in reading anything else by him.
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Ugh, that's such a pity. Nevertheless, I still want to finish my half-done reading of Drood. I highly doubt that he would have managed to slip in anything anti-Islamic on a book about Victorian writers. You never know, but I'll take the chance... ;)
Also, now I'm actually curious to read Flashback.
Traveller wrote: "Nell wrote: "Oh, I'm just laughing. Came across an open thread re Purity. I don't care if it's good or bad; once I take to a contemporary writer, I'm interested in her/his develop..."
I'm familiar with the essays. I simply am not interested in being a PC reader.
If I were a blogger, and this isn't directed at you, Traveller, I just think this Goodreads is a hoax, and if I were a blogger, I would write: I read everything. I don't shelve books I can't read, don't feel entitled to write reviews on books that obviously were targeted for someone other than me (wish everyone felt the same -- I sound like I'm patting myself on the back, but what the heck's wrong with saying, Gee, I'm not the target market for another big-family saga set in the third world book, not another one, so I'm not even going to say I put it aside.) Because guess what? Families are families. What varies from culture to culture, and becomes more apparent as the borders of world literature expand, is the range of tortures available for one family member to use on another. We don't stone or drown daughters here in the West, for instance. Oh, we don't? Oh... Okay, if you say so. I don't fawn over any writer. But I'd rather read each book they come out with and judge their body of work. I think this reviewing and star system (**, or ***?) is deadly. I think we should refuse to participate in Amazon's marketing system, which is what our comments and stars are feeding. So nullify this stultifying bulwark of first-world capitalism, which has turned literature into a commodity, and rate everything 5 stars so authors can eat. What's wrong with that?
Of course, I don't belong here anyway. But if I were a blogger, that's what I'd say.
I'm familiar with the essays. I simply am not interested in being a PC reader.
If I were a blogger, and this isn't directed at you, Traveller, I just think this Goodreads is a hoax, and if I were a blogger, I would write: I read everything. I don't shelve books I can't read, don't feel entitled to write reviews on books that obviously were targeted for someone other than me (wish everyone felt the same -- I sound like I'm patting myself on the back, but what the heck's wrong with saying, Gee, I'm not the target market for another big-family saga set in the third world book, not another one, so I'm not even going to say I put it aside.) Because guess what? Families are families. What varies from culture to culture, and becomes more apparent as the borders of world literature expand, is the range of tortures available for one family member to use on another. We don't stone or drown daughters here in the West, for instance. Oh, we don't? Oh... Okay, if you say so. I don't fawn over any writer. But I'd rather read each book they come out with and judge their body of work. I think this reviewing and star system (**, or ***?) is deadly. I think we should refuse to participate in Amazon's marketing system, which is what our comments and stars are feeding. So nullify this stultifying bulwark of first-world capitalism, which has turned literature into a commodity, and rate everything 5 stars so authors can eat. What's wrong with that?
Of course, I don't belong here anyway. But if I were a blogger, that's what I'd say.
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Okay, let me clear something up... it's not about being PC. It's just that I, as a person, dislike Jonathan Franzen as a person. If he stood in front of me now, I would probably not give him the time of day. That does not mean that I would not read his books or even that I would let my personal dislike interfere with how I read his work.
The fact that Mozart might have acted like an idiot in his personal life, does not change the way I perceive his music. I might not personally like Sarah Brightman, but if I did not, that would not change the fact that I think she has one helluva voice and can sing beautifully. In fact, most great artists were actually dickheads in their personal lives. I still greatly admire their works though.
Does that make any sense ?
Personally I would spit in Jonathan's eye for saying that Edith Wharton was ugly - and in any case, I think she was not. As if he is such a handsome chap. He obviously thinks he is, but he's not to me, and that is just a personal opinion, and has nothing whatsoever to do with his work, just the same way as what Edith Wharton looked like, has absolutely zero to do with -her- work. Well, that's just my opinion, anyway.
There were a few other things said in essays as well, as well as some sexist writing in Freedom that just rubbed me up the wrong way, and again - that is something subjective and personal to myself. That does not mean I am not prepared to give his other work a chance. ;)
Oh, I understand completely. He's said some really reprehensible things. And seriously, I wasn't talking to you or about you. I'm just, well, you know. It's too bad all writers aren't dead, you know? Seriously. Well, in a joking sense. It is disconcerting, and embarrassing, to have spoken well of a book, a writer, and then find out they've said or done something really, really utterly stupid. I think in some ways, some of them might be idiot savants. Maybe they can write a book, but can't live in the world? I don't understand it, myself.
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I know exactly what you mean! Sometimes you wonder if it was really the same person who wrote the book you just read. It's a bit easier when it comes to music or painting or sculpture, because arts other than writing don't as clearly carry opinions with them.
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Sad to see you go, Nell. I hope you'll be back sometime. :|
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You know, that exact same thing has happened to me - many times. It actually hurts to see the writer of something you loved, attacked, doesn't it? I'm wondering if we perhaps don't set too high standards for our writers. They're just human, after all.
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Dickens was my first big literary love (after Alice in Wonderland in anyway) so Bleak House, hell yes! I do have The Moonstone since Wilkie Collins is in one of my favourite genres - 18th century gothic fiction so I would love to get to that as well. So far I've read Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. I read TOTC when I was much younger and had to reread from my adult brains :p I love that novel. It's one of my all time favs. I remember reading Oliver Twist a long time ago also but don't remember much about it. At some point I will read that and I want to get through his whole oeuvre. Dickens has been an immense influence on my reading life as well. I will always have a soft spot for him ;)
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Slightly less depressed now, thank you, Yolande! :)
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deleted user wrote: " I just think this Goodreads is a hoax, and if I were a blogger, I would write: I read everything. I don't shelve books I can't read, don't feel entitled to write reviews on books that obviously were targeted for someone other than me (wish everyone felt the same -- I sound like I'm patting myself on the back ..."
Well, way back, almost 10 years ago when GR started off, it was cool - it really was a place for readers and booklovers to convene. It's only when we were sold out to our capitalist masters that it became facereads, and we became just so many more workers in Amazon's sweatshops.
So, I agree with many of your sentiments - the only problem being that I for one, did make a break from GR and tried to find other similar sites, but there unfortunately is nothing like this out there, and some of them are even more commercialized than this is... so.... basically they have us by the tender nether parts, to use your own terminology.... :(
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Traveller wrote: "Oh gosh, time flies - it'll be halloween in less than a month... we should have done a spooky book for halloween . Let's put up a poll for a short story/novella at least!"Will there be a thread for suggestions?
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Will t..."
Here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Traveller wrote: "Yolande wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Oh gosh, time flies - it'll be halloween in less than a month... we should have done a spooky book for halloween . Let's put up a poll for a short story/novella a..."Thanks :)
Traveller wrote: "it'll be halloween in less than a month... we should have done a spooky book for halloween"Count me out for that one. I have no more time. It's now official, I'm moving back to the UK and starting a job in Plymouth on November 2nd.
Good for you Derek! ! I hope it is a good move for you.
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I hope you'll still have time for GR and reading? ...Although I assume things will be rather busy for you now until you get settled on the other side.
I think I'm going to have a great couple of years, and plenty of time for GR once I find a place to live. One that allows dogs... My wife's staying in Canada (at least for a couple of years), but the dog's coming with me! This'll be the third time we've done the long-distance relationship business; it's old-hat by now.
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I figure it's how we've stayed married for nearly 30 years. :-)
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I mean, if one just knows things like that, you can save a lot of water damage to your property. Ugh. :(
Don't tell me I was supposed to know that. I know zero zilch about plumbing... that's why plumbers get paid so much. :P
Traveller wrote: "Why don't home-insurance companies tell homeowners that there's a little tap-thing connected to the pipe that leads to your water-heater"Because there may not be? Even in Canada, that's not a given: it would be required in a modern home, but there were lots of places that were built before such standards, and Britain has places built before anybody even THOUGHT about standards.
Rule #1, if you have a leak, turn off anything that even looks like it may help...
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Only later, when the panic subsides somewhat, do you (ok, I) think to look for that tap thingie that switches off your general water supply. But then of course, you sit entirely w/out water.
Luckily we found a 24-hour plumber service who was prepared to come out immediately once we found them - quite a few who advertised as 24-hour, had taken the weekend off, apparently... <_<
...and only afterward did we realize we could have called the insurance emergency number. Somehow I'm not one of those people who tend to walk around planning my potential course of action in the event of pipes or heaters bursting.... #_#
Ah, yes, the insurance emergency number! We came home a couple of years ago to discover our heating oil tank had sprung a leak. If it had been a water leak, I might not have thought of phoning the insurance number first, but oil leaks get a lot of press around here, so we called them, and they had the cleanup crew dispatched in minutes. Total cost of cleanup was something over $100,000—amazingly the insurance company didn't even try to weasel out of it.
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Yes, it was a shocking amount, but they ended up digging right under my foundation to get out the contaminated soil.
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My day was pretty crazy enough, and a bunch of things in it made me mad! :P
HOW Mad Hatter Day STARTED
I love this one:
Yolande wrote: "Dickens was my first big literary love (after Alice in Wonderland in anyway) so Bleak House, hell yes! I do have The Moonstone since Wilkie Collins is in one of my favourite genres - 18th century ..."Same for me, Yolande! I read sooo much Dickens when I was a teen!
Linda wrote: "Same for me, Yolande! I read sooo much Dickens when I was a teen! ":D
I didn't know there was a Mad Hatter Day. I will remember it for next year :)
I love this: "If Book Lovers Ruled the World"https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/5...
These are my favourites :) (it was difficult to narrow them down)
2. "We would measure life by chapters, not minutes. Example: I'll be there after a cup of coffee and two chapters."
4. "We would get a free ebook version when buying a hardcover or paperback book."
9. "Book groups would replace political parties."
12. "Everyone—no matter their gender, nationality, level of poverty, etc.—would be able to learn to read and have access to reading materials."
15. "We'd be too busy reading for wars."
16. "Libraries would be open 24 hours a day."
19. "Reading would be an actual job! Paid to read!"
20. "A tree would be planted for every book published."
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Imagine, no more: "Dingingdingdingding! This library will close in 15 minutes." Don't you just hate hearing that?
Traveller wrote: "I really like no's. 4, 12, 16 and no. 20.Imagine, no more: "Dingingdingdingding! This library will close in 15 minutes." Don't you just hate hearing that?"
Yes!
Yolande wrote: "I love this: "If Book Lovers Ruled the World"https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/5...
These are my favourites :) (it was difficult to na..."
Hell, yeah!
I love these. Especially no. 4--I hate paying for something if I don't have something tangible to show for it. E-books, for me, are like taxes and tolls that way. I know, I know, my tax dollars work, but yeesh.
I would love to have them open 24/7 (imagine the jobs that we could provide), but we'd have to fix our whole social system first, so that the libraries wouldn't become a place for people to "Camp out" simply because it's warm...
Linda wrote: "I hate paying for something if I don't have something tangible to show for it. E-books, for me, are like taxes and tolls that way. "But you do! You have a book. People ask me if I've read "X", and I have a tendency to whip out my e-reader, check the listings, and say "No, but I own a copy..." :-) Expecting a book to be a paper codex is just bigotry, imo.
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Yes, I like having books on my "actual" shelves, but it's the ebooks that actually get read. They're just so much more convenient in so many immeasurable ways, not to mention much easier to search, sort and keep track of.
I have to do a lot of things for work on screen, so my eyes are done and protesting. I don´t hate the Kindle as much as I thought I would when it was gifted to me, but I still prefer paper books, if i´m going to pay for them. My money, my preference.
I just don't read the books on my eReader. I will use it when I travel. But not so much at home.
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The screen is nice and stable, I can make the text of whatever I'm reading into nice small comfortable columns in the reader that I use, I can make notes, highlights and bookmarks in the reader that I use, and I can copy and paste quotes.
In addition, I can file my books according to author and subject and effortlessly find them again - no risk of a book going missing. In addition, my kindle and kobo are much easier to carry with me in my handbag if i want to go out, much easier and lighter to hold when i stand in a queue, and i need only one hand because i don't need to try and force the books to stay open.
When i want to read in bed, i don't need to leave the light on, or even the lamp on, since my kobo is backlighted; so i can literally finish reading, close the cover and go to sleep. Also, if i want to read from my device at a table or desk, it has a convenient prop, so i can read with my hands free. Also, i don't have to keep turning pages. I can just click or tap instead to have the next page instantly. Also, my e-readers keep my place for me, so I don't need physical bookmarks, or worse, dog-ears. Also, with treebook bookmarks, you have to search where you were - with e-readers, you can just highlight your last word.
Oh, and i can eat and drink while i read electronically without fear of ruining the book. Not to mention - a screen doesn't have a spine! :P
And last but definitely not least - reading electronically prevents neck and shoulder pain and strain !
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Linda, it sounds as if you suffer from dry eyes, which can be a result of aircon and/or staring at a screen without blinking enough.
You can alleviate sore eyes by teaching yourself to blink more. Look away from your screen every now and then. And also, close your eyes with your hands cupped lightly over them and sort of blink and squeeze them shut a little while moving your eyes around a bit.
Lastly, I personally use a commercial eye moisturizer which works wonders! You usually find them at pharmacies in the same dept as where they keep eyedrops and products for contact lenses. (Don't get the type that makes your eyes look white - those are actually bad for your eyes. All you need is an eye lubricant.
Traveller wrote: "I do work and leisure on a PC sometimes up to 16 hours a day. I find the lighter background not just better and less strain on my eyes, but more convenient for me to read after dark. I have a Kindl..."Just in case it's one I haven't used yet, what kind of reader programme do you like using for your PC? I like trying out different ones.
I don't read paper books in bed either because of the convenience of having the light off from the start.
Yes, I have struggled with trying to keep a book open with one hand in the past :)
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LOL, Yolande, I've been adding to that post - don't know if you got the final list in my little gush there. XD
I use Mobipocket. Sadly, I think you cannot find it anymore, but since it was a free product to start with, I can maybe send it to you. Unfortunately, when my PC broke about 2 weeks ago, I lost all the settings, such as bookmarks and notes, because I had to re-install Windows and all my software, otherwise I would have taken a screenshot to show you how I optimise it. I have some free time tomorrow and will do something like that then.
You might already know Calibre, which is useful in many ways, especially if you like to convert PDF, epub mobi, rtf. etc back and forth.
I used to also like the MS reader that made use of .lit formats, but that is also not supported anymore. ...but yeah, I find mobipocket to be a fantastic product - notes and highlights appear in a column to the right which you can hide or show at will - so, let's say you are reading a book with 'bird' symbology in mind, you can simply highlight every mention of birds, and then whenever you want to go back to one of the bird quotes, you click on the link to it in that right-hand column, and viola - you are on the page with the word highlighted! One can also add notes to those if you like.
I've tried Sumatra, but it doesn't have any of those useful editing/proofreading features that Mobipocket has.
Which ones have you tried?
I used to do epub in Firefox browser - but no special features to it. The Kindle desktop reader was okay, but it would always say "kindle edition" if you copied and pasted from it, and it became irritating with Amazon exerting such tight control over it in various ways.
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The editing capablities are also rather nice-ish.
Foxit doesn't convert, but if you are reading lots of books at a time for some project, you can have them all open at the same time and refer back and forth - it does tabs like a browser.
On Paths Unknown
Books mentioned in this topic
Infinite Jest (other topics)Infinite Jest (other topics)
The Tell-Tale Heart (other topics)
First Person Singular: Stories (other topics)
Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Bruno Schulz (other topics)Fyodor Dostoevsky (other topics)
Umberto Eco (other topics)
Dan Simmons (other topics)
Anthony Doerr (other topics)
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Ugh, then I shouldn't have said it. I have a friend(s) who act like the anti-Islam police, and they do tend to exaggerate things, so let's just pretend we never heard about that.
More likely than not, Simmons just had an off-moment. We all get those...