The Next Best Book Club discussion
Non-Book Related Banter
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Need to rant?
2 things:1) Lately I've been getting tons of friends request here on GR and I mean really - if you have 2 books listed and over 2000 friends then HELL YES I am going to ignore you *sigh*
2) Why oh why do people write in exercise books from libraries? The books are BORROWED and others will want and need to use them too! How hard exactly is it to get paper and pen and write on the side? It's so tedious erase everything :(
phew. Got that out :)
You don't have to have a set answer? :D That's great! I thought one needed to have a set answer. Thank you Fiona for the advice :)
Leila, good to hear you had this too. The last two weeks I got so many friend requests and deleted llike nine on ten. This huy yesterday, he started with..thanks for sharing your book list....well it is nothing special, almsot everybody does it...and then he has almsot no books and so many friends....delete. Or all thos authors, that I didn't even knew they were authors till I went to their profile....delete.
I've put in a challege question, AND told people I will ignore them if they leave it blank, but they do it anyways.*sighs*
I do feel for you Fiona, am the same. Completely other interests than many other people, not a family person, straight forward...good luck.
haha, in Belgium they say something about going to church or so when you leave the door open....You know what I hate most about family? The pretending, even if it makes it worse for the people dear to you. I just can't and actually won't.
I love the challenge question... I used to get tons of requests from random people, and then I'd look at their profile and they'd have 4 books listed and nothing in common with me, and 3987 friends. Or, they'd have 20 books, 2 in common, a gajillion friends and act like I should be honored that they wanted to include me, like their friend list is a premier guest list to a hip new club. I try to politely turn people down if I don't think they'd make a good friend, but this one guy... Oh man. He was a member of (seriously) like 250 groups, had nearly 4,000 friends, and 13 books. ONE of which we had in common. I rejected his request, and even sent him a message saying why, and then he messaged me a couple times telling me why I should be friends with him.
He had a sense of humor, so I gave in... I caved and friended him, and then EVERY SINGLE UPDATE from him was either that he joined ANOTHER group or that he made ANOTHER friend.
Not even on my friend list for 24 hours and already there were another 20 friends added after me and 5 more groups.
Delete.
I have been curious about what other people feel about this "friends" thing too. I typically will accept people who have a lot of books in common with because when I look at my update feed there are a lot of books that mark to read that I will probably enjoy. I have when my update feed is full of a bunch of books I know I will not be interested in. I currently have seven friends requests that I have not accepted yet because most of them do not read the same books as me. I automatically delete anyone that is a goodreads author who has more friends than books. I also delete people who have almost no books on their shelves, but I do look to see when they have joined GR because that could be why their selves are so empty... whew I guess a lot of thought goes into accepting a friend :)
Yep, there is a lot of thought that goes into it. I also will normally look at someone's update feed on their profile to see what kind of updates I can expect.
I do that too Fiona. Typically, I stand it, but my teeth are grinding while I do it.
"Also judge on their use of English grammar. Any use of bad text language is an instant no no."Yes! Thank you! I HATE "txt spk". Everyone's keyboard comes will all 26 letters, and you only have to press each one once for the letter to pop up, unlike using a cell-phone, so there is no need to make others have to decipher your code.
I was a teenager once, and not that long ago either, but I'm fairly certain that even then I could use full sentences that would make sense to the majority of adults. This new trend in skipping vowels and purposefully misspelling words makes me fear for the future.
For example, here is a quote that was recently removed from the site:
"..my heart,it feels lyk my chest can barely cntain it,lyk it doesnt belong 2me anymor,it belongs 2u & f u want it id wish 4nothing n xchange,no gifts,no guds,no dmonstrations or devotions..nothing but knowing u luv me 2,jst ur heart n xchange of myn" (Attributed to Yvaine from Gaiman's Stardust)
I think I'll see how far my wireless can reach, and maybe move to Pluto and start my own civilization where only people who use full sentences and have owned a dictionary and/or a thesaurus in their lives are permitted.
*nod* Who wants to come?
Fiona wrote: "Leila - set up a challenge question, you don't have to have a set answer you can just say something like 'tell me why you want to be my friend' and it does reduce the number of idiots knocking at y..."The challenge question works well for me too. I picked one that is not impossible to answer, but requires just a little work. My friend requests have gone down from 1-2 every few days to 1-2 every couple of weeks. And the people who manage to get through are actually quite compatible.
I can really put almost no thought in besides checking these things: more books than friends?
a big amount of books in common?
on TNBBC?
if there isn't even one yes on them I don't bother further and delete.
Hmm, I don't get too many friend requests... but one in particular really bothered me. It was by an author and his way of "selling" his books to me, was by criticizing what I read. Plus after I hit ignore about a month later he requested me again... ERRR!
Fiona, you can rest easy tonight. The quote has been destroyed. Painfully, I hope!I don't mind the abbreviations you listed either, although the "LOLZ!!1!! and OMGZ!1!!!1!!" things get on my everlasting nerves. Seriously, people, just stop it!
...Anyway, yes, people who write like the person who posted that quote should be banned from the internet. Forever.
God, okay, completely off the subject BUT:I just finished watching Lost in Austen, and I loved it until the ending, the stupid damned ending. It just might've ruined the entire book for me. Not because of spoilers but because of the big changes in the characters.
Gahhhh.
*bangs head against wall*I had to watch the god damned miniseries before I read the book. Well, it was the miniseries that made me want to read the book finally BUT....
*continues to bang head against the wall*
I felt kind of bad not accepting friends' requests except when they were plain silly like authors collecting friends or people saying we had a lot of books in common and we didn't because they hadn't even listed 20! So now I accept all friends requests and delete them a while later. Passive aggressive.
Hmm...New to GR. How do I go about finding some friends? I have probably missed something and will discover this was a rather embarrassing question to have asked.
Mark and don't forget what we really like is that in a friend request, you add a message..
Petra X wrote: "I felt kind of bad not accepting friends' requests except when they were plain silly like authors collecting friends or people saying we had a lot of books in common and we didn't because they hadn..."lol, Petra! I recently did some "housecleaning" and weeded out 60 or so friends from my list. Most were authors and others I had absolutely no interaction with, or others I've accepted too hastily and discovered later we really had nothing in common.
I just discovered a new GR feature!
If you look at someone's profile, just click on "compare books." On the upper right, click on "book compatibility test" and find how well you compare by genre. Very cool!
Mod
Ha!
Why did I go and check that test????????????
That test is so addicting, it will surely get me fired one of these days!
I'm TRYING to get over it...I can picture Lizzie properly, but Mr Darcy is very hard. I always picture him as the guy from Lost in Austen, but because of the ending, I feel like I can't picture him like that. GAHHH.
Fiona, you can get the other episodes on Youtube if you want to watch the rest.
Yeah, that feature is fantastic, I always use it when someone asks me to be their friend with no message. 
Fiona wrote: "I got some guy saying "we have many books in common!" We had NONE.I did have one author who came up to me and said she was a newly published author, she had just found GR and wanted to make some ..."
Hey Fiona,
Somehow, I think you would like the Constant Reader Group. Check it out.
I definitely agree Beth. I first accepted all friend requests too, I thought it was a really big compliment, but then I got some strange invitations from people who didn't even have any books. I started deleted them. I usually accept anyone who takes the time to tell me why they want to be friends with me, it's the ones that don't give me a message that I hit the ignore button on.
Beth (Shmack) wrote: "But after a week or two, if they are constantly bogging up the update page with non-book related spam (adding friends like it’s going out of style or if they’re obnoxiously active in groups AND they never seem to be making any progress on reading books), I remove them with no guilt..."Beth, I have a number of friends who are very active in groups that I've removed from my "top friends". This way I can still get their book updates by e-mail while not being subject to their group activity on my update feed.
Since this is so irritating to me, I set my options so my own group activity doesn't appear on my friends' update feed.
Mod
I only accept people from TNBBC, since I know we have stuff in common (!) and thats about it. I dont need a large amount of friends.... and I even went through and cleaned up the ones I had that are no longer active.
I did set up a challenge question now, so hopefully it makes people think a bit before they request to be added....
But I feel no guilt at all at ignoring a request.
Sometimes I just accept the friend request because they have similar/interesting taste in books but normally I ask why.What amazes me is the huffy answers I get - "I only asked to be your friend.''If you don't want to be want to be friends that is your choice.' "Well if you are the type of person who only wants friends with the same taste in books.' etc
For heavens sake you are a total stranger. It is not unreasonable to want to know a little more about you.
I tend to clean up my friends a lot, because one day I'll be all:"Well, we have some books in common." And add them, then the next day I'll be annoyed because they keep on inviting me to groups and I keep on getting updates, so I'll delete them.
Beth (Shmack) wrote: "After reading this thread, I think I’m going to take the advice given and add a challenge question because in the past week, I have gotten a flood of friend requests from strange men who have thous..."LOL...I had the same problem and felt creeped out about it. I put a message on my profile on how to friend me, but from time to time I still get random requests. I just delete them. Unless, you're on TNBBC or have at least 75% similarity rates I don't want to hear it.
1)Fiona, Emma, Becky: I'm going back to some earlier postings but I also agree that bad grammar and the use of "text grammar" are a very big turn off. I refuse to get caught up in that which can be irritating to my friends who get super long texts, but I hate it. 2) As far as friends go, I am new to this site (I only joined a few days ago) so I assume it will take a while to meet people and develop friendships. I agree Esther that it makes complete sense to want to know why people are sending you a request. I love to read so that's why I'm here and this group seemed to discuss many of the books that I am interested in.
I don’t mind group activity on my update page. I’ve found groups that were interesting to me based on friends leaving comments. Plus, I also enjoy reading some of the comments my friends leave in groups—it helps me get to know them and their style, which is one of my favorite things about this site. Conversely, I had one ex-friend in particular who was a wanton abuser of the groups, in my opinion, and was obnoxiously active in them all. According to her profile, this person was a teenager, belonged to more than 30 groups and frequently left ridiculously short comments that said things like:
“heyyyyy girl, <3 ya”
“heeeeyyyyy!!!!!”
“hiiiiiii!!! I agree!!!”
“I love that band too.”
“sry, but your taste in music is bad.”
“Twilight sucks.”
“I hate Twilight.”
“I love youuuuuuu!!!!!”
“Cheese pizza is my favorite.”
Since her comments were so short, she was fully capable of posting about 25 comments in less than 10 minutes and it was driving me bonkers. On top of that, she never seemed to be reading anything. Obviously she got axed from my friends list pretty quickly. But otherwise, I really don’t mind the group activity, so long as it’s not the ONLY thing the person is involved in.
I agree with you, Beth. I've also found new groups and friends from activity on my update page. It depends on the quality of posts, the number of groups and type of group. If I think my group postings may be of interest to others, I'll certainly let them show up in my friends' updates, but many of my postings are short or one-word answers because I'm involved in several games.
You know, I thought that would be annoying and usually I unclick add to my update feed, so my friends don't have to see everything I write on my groups. Some of them are from the groups I am in and may be more interested, but I also have a lot that I knew before goodreads and they are just more interested in the books.
I am freezing cold. It was zero degrees in Dublin this morning. Where I live in Belgium -6 degrees celcius. I think we might have never had that before in that place or almost never. Where my boyfriend lives in Italy it is snowing and for now already 20cms of snow...it will be looking like a fairy tale there...one morning it made me think about Narnia when the kids go through the wardrobe. It looked wonderful.
Oh and a part south west of England will be flooded permantly.....I read that when living in London...
I am enjoying P and P very much right now. I forgive Lost in Austen, now I can picture Mr Darcy as I want him to be, so it is all right.God, I want to talk in Old English now!!!!
I had one friend who kept on complaining that I never talked to her, but not one time did she attempt to message me, so I deleted her.
Fiona, is that the latest's P&P movie to come out? If so it is a very good movie.
No I haven't, but I'm planning to see it very soon.I think I might have an Austen party, just me, myself, and cookie dough ice cream! :D
If I’ve said it once, I’ve thought it a million times: I’d very much like to watch Colin Firth take a shower.
Oh I love Colin Firth's P & P. That movie made me fall in love with the story and want to read the book. It's great. It's long but I still watch it over and over again.
Was it a miniseries or a movie? I forget.
I liked the movie, it wasn't too bad. I don't remember very well though, I saw it about two years ago.I'm really enjoying the book, I think the Austen world might have another fan on their hands!!!
Oh, the Keira Knightly one is the one I thought you were talking about. I thought it was good. "Darcy as an emo"....LOL
The Next Best Book Club
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