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I like Goodreads for the absolutely broke brain takes you can get on there. I got a review for my first novel (published 2015) accusing it of being absolutely insensitive to the politics of 2022, didn't I understand that I was endorsing the Republican narrative that Ilhan Omar was a traitor trying to bring America down from within?
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Aug 5, 2022 17:53
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General Battuta posted:I like Goodreads for the absolutely broke brain takes you can get on there. I got a review for my first novel (published 2015) accusing it of being absolutely insensitive to the politics of 2022, didn't I understand that I was endorsing the Republican narrative that Ilhan Omar was a traitor trying to bring America down from within? I'm holding you accountable for that.
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Aug 5, 2022 18:14
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lmao I wish Ilhan Omar was Baru Cormorant
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Aug 5, 2022 18:25
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Please utilize the Kindle auto-update function to push changes to stale political themes
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Aug 5, 2022 18:48
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I guess I'm a Goodreads power user (1400+ reviews, most of them pretty thorough), but it is an absolutely deranged social media platform, especially given the low stakes and the LiveJournal circa 2005 web design.
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Aug 5, 2022 18:50
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One of the few internet safaris I'll still let myself do from time to time is looking at those Goodreads "reviews" that are just 90% reaction gifs from reality tv shows. How and why people seem to find those useful and/or genuinely entertaining, I'll probably never understand.
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Aug 5, 2022 18:55
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zoux posted:Do you guys find goodreads useful at all? I only go there when I have absolutely nothing on deck to read and I always get recommended 4.5 (over)rated 17 volume supernatural romance series. The recommendations based on your read shelf are somewhat useful, but the popularity contest stuff that it surfaces by default is utter trash. Nothing competes with Amazon's recommendation system that they removed a couple years ago.
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Aug 5, 2022 18:55
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General Battuta posted:I like Goodreads for the absolutely broke brain takes you can get on there. I got a review for my first novel (published 2015) accusing it of being absolutely insensitive to the politics of 2022, didn't I understand that I was endorsing the Republican narrative that Ilhan Omar was a traitor trying to bring America down from within? I'm completely okay with being insensitive to the politics of 2022, since I think that the politics of 2022 are a toilet that needs to be flushed and then dynamited, but that's just me. Really, if you read America=Falcrest complete with indigenous exploitation, eugenics, predatory trade and horrific bigotry toward LGBTQ+ peoples, than at that point America deserves to be brought down because it sounds like the Trump-crazy GOP has already taken over. Which is still a possibility because we still need to recall that in 2020 despite the Border Wall bullshit, Ukraine and COVID, Donald J. Trump still got more votes than every other candidate who has ever run for the Presidency except Joe Biden.
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Aug 5, 2022 19:05
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Clark Nova posted:lmao I wish Ilhan Omar was Baru Cormorant Baru Cormorant's Daughter's Tweets
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Aug 5, 2022 19:19
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zoux posted:Do you guys find goodreads useful at all? I only go there when I have absolutely nothing on deck to read and I always get recommended 4.5 (over)rated 17 volume supernatural romance series. Mostly just to track reading and keep up with what others are reading, mostly to pad my reading list.
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Aug 5, 2022 21:33
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I literally only use Goodreads to maintain a pretty basic reading list because I have a bad habit of just forgetting what books I was intending to read next, and I do rate stuff but my rating standard is clearly a lot more discerning than the average Goodreads user. Other than that, I don't use it at all, I find the reviews to usually range from completely toothless to, as mentioned, totally deranged. Not that reviews need to be hyper-critical, but I basically dismiss every 4- and 5-star review out of hand. Occasionally 3-star reviews do a good job of articulating why they kept reading despite a book's shortcomings, or why they disliked an otherwise good book, but it's pretty rare. I don't ever write reviews because why would I, honestly? I'm just as much an idiot as everybody else on the site.
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Aug 5, 2022 22:17
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I mostly use Goodreads for books for the same reason I use Letterboxd for films: logging books I might want to read some day so that I can have an immense pile of things I've heard of and might have an interest in, rather than having to buy something as soon as I hear about it because otherwise I'll forget it. I have 581 books on my TBR list. It's also good for keeping track of what I've read across the year because I like to know how many books I've read, what genres, what publication year etc. There are some good high-profile reviewers on there and I do occasionally add a book to that TBR list from something they review, or from something a friend reads, but otherwise I just use Goodreads as a filing system and can't imagine why anyone would want an algorithm to recommend them something to read. That's what professional reviews/word of mouth/other social media/this very forum is for. DurianGray posted:One of the few internet safaris I'll still let myself do from time to time is looking at those Goodreads "reviews" that are just 90% reaction gifs from reality tv shows. How and why people seem to find those useful and/or genuinely entertaining, I'll probably never understand. Goodreads pushes reviews to the top based on how many likes they have, not how recent they are, and if you check the dates on the reviews that are 80% gifs and sparkly glitter they're often ten years old or more. A time capsule of a more Tumblresque internet.
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Aug 5, 2022 23:52
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I only ever used Goodreads as a way to track what I've been reading, now I've replaced it with Storygraph and I'm very glad to never have to look at it ever again.
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Aug 6, 2022 00:32
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I found that one can exhaust the goodreads algorithm really fast. Once you have rated a good many books, and have a respectable "to read" list the quality of suggestions drop really quickly, and once you say you're not interested in those it just becomes completely static.
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Aug 6, 2022 00:54
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I use librarything to manage my library and wishlist. https://www.librarything.com/ SA gives me enough reading recommendations for a lifetime, plus it helps me avoid the critical mass of uncritical readers on goodreads, etc.
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Aug 6, 2022 01:06
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I found a hundred or so accounts whose taste is interesting enough for them to be a useful source for finding new books.
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Aug 6, 2022 01:08
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The worst part about Goodreads is the reviews that go something like "I only like books that contain the following tropes [exhaustive and highly specific list], and because this book don't use them, it wasn't for me."
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Aug 6, 2022 02:07
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Fighting Trousers posted:The worst part about Goodreads is the reviews that go something like "I only like books that contain the following tropes [exhaustive and highly specific list], and because this book don't use them, it wasn't for me." I mean, that's at least slightly better than "I only like books that contain the following tropes [exhaustive and highly specific list], and because this book don't use them, it is terrible, one star"
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Aug 6, 2022 02:10
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Well, bought the Elric saga for the third time. A new comprehensive, chronological version was too much to pass up.
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Aug 6, 2022 02:29
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I see Goodreads as basically a personal checklist of books I want to read or have read. If I'm lucky it will toss out an interesting rec. But I see the number of stars and the content of the reviews attached to any rec as basically meaningless noise. That said, sometimes the best reviews it generates are the gushingly positive ones that don't resonate at all with me, because that at least tells me 'this is for someone, and that someone is not you'
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Aug 6, 2022 02:31
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Just finished Rendezvous with Rama. That was a good book.
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Aug 6, 2022 02:40
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Barnum Brown Shoes posted:Just finished Rendezvous with Rama. That was a good book. Stop right there! And don't continue the series.
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Aug 6, 2022 02:45
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Barnum Brown Shoes posted:Just finished Rendezvous with Rama. That was a good book. It's a pity that, like Highlander, there were no sequels.
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Aug 6, 2022 02:47
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When I finished Rendezvous with Rama, I had very little interest in continuing to begin with. It had some really cool ideas but I thought it explored them pretty well. The sequels sounds pointless.
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Aug 6, 2022 02:48
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I always wished there was a Rama style game where you just walked around and explored a mysterious alien location without understanding any of it
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Aug 6, 2022 02:55
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Well they did make a Rama video game
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Aug 6, 2022 03:02
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I just finished The Light Brigade by kameron hurley and while I enjoyed the conceit, and the general themes, I found the ending was just very meh? I felt like it didn't do anything that interesting? There was a moment where I thought we'd have a really clever "ah there are many possible futures, here's how I orchestrated everything" moment, but it never really hit. I found it kind of a let down despite having mostly enjoyed the rest of the book I also really really liked the murderbot series which I re-read recently, and I'm sad there isn't more for me to binge.
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Aug 6, 2022 03:29
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Gaius Marius posted:I always wished there was a Rama style game where you just walked around and explored a mysterious alien location without understanding any of it this is my favorite genre
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Aug 6, 2022 03:44
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Barnum Brown Shoes posted:Just finished Rendezvous with Rama. That was a good book. I need to re-read it, I can hardly remember anything about the actual plot of it, except that they had to leave in a hurry.
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Aug 6, 2022 04:11
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I post in this thread sometimes, somebody please send me Nona.
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Aug 6, 2022 04:19
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Sibling of TB posted:Stop right there! And don't continue the series. Plus they were so creepy horny.
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Aug 6, 2022 04:23
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Gaius Marius posted:I always wished there was a Rama style game where you just walked around and explored a mysterious alien location without understanding any of it This literal game exists and was my childhood? Except you do have to do adventure game bullshit too. Man the fuckin intro still gets me so hyped BA DOO DAH DOO DAHHH this mysterious intruder from the staaars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqeByIbCiUU&t=26s
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Aug 6, 2022 04:25
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I finished the Southern Reach trilogy over the last week. Annihilation is of course the best in the series. As good as the other two are, they probably would have benefited from being cut to the same lengths as Annihilation. I got mostly what was going on: shattered terraforming repair organism gets a piece lodged on Earth, it becomes the beacon, and activates in response to organic life. Then it copies them using the abstract concept of memories, not understanding the concept of dreams or wishes, so results may vary on what the copied thing becomes when it's allowed to fully process. Authority: I liked seeing the view from outside. Something about Southern Reach and Area-X reminded me of District 9, the way that there's this big mystery thing that almost everyone has shrugged and given up on understanding after assuming it's given all the answers it's going to give. In my opinion, both sequels could each be trimmed to the size of Annihilation without losing much. Cut all of "Control's" metaphors and you're probably at a lower page count. Acceptance: Multiple POV was an interesting change. And some second-person for a reason that I can't see. Again maybe a little too long; the Lighthouse Keeper and Director chapters sometimes felt like they were just treading water. I'm still fuzzy on how Control and his family were connected, and what Lowry's deal was. He was too much of an rear end to be an X-memory clone, or maybe since he went in with full personality he became that. I also thought the cellphone plot's resolution was great after being a mystery box for so long. I'm excited to see where the fourth book goes when it comes out sometime in the next year or so. I love weird fiction, mostly short stories, so sometimes I'm left wanting more. The Southern Reach trilogy is an amazing weird tale (Annihilation) and then an explanation in story form, and I appreciated that because more unending weirdness without explanation would have been frustrating.
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Aug 6, 2022 04:48
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Incidentally Rama is Denis Villeneuve's next project, which given his track record should be loving great
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Aug 6, 2022 06:20
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freebooter posted:Incidentally Rama is Denis Villeneuve's next project, which given his track record should be loving great is this before or after D2ne
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Aug 6, 2022 07:42
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Goodreads is pretty fun. I've got some most liked reviews for some books, so, that's neat. I've made one author very mad because of it which got me my own skirmish in the Internet Culture Wars. But some other authors have liked my reviews, so, hey.
Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 07:52
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tiniestacorn posted:is this before or after D2ne After D2ne: 2 Dune, 2 Duned
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Aug 6, 2022 11:20
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Well, bought the Elric saga for the third time. A new comprehensive, chronological version was too much to pass up. Elric owns. Moorcock owns. I think he's criminally under-represented in discussions of foundational fantasy online. Younger me must've read Elric and the History of The Runestaff novels tens of times.
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Aug 6, 2022 12:37
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Alright, I have finished both Iron Widow and The Poppy War, as well as Scholomance. And interestingly, I liked Iron Widow and Scholomance more than I liked The Poppy War, which is not what I expected.branedotorg posted:I read the first two TPW books and I'm not sure what all the fuss was about. Very grim, very self indulgent. The historical inspiration is a horrific bit of history and it captures the scale but I didn't think much of the pacing of the book (first half generic wizard school stuff but Asia) then straight into total war. So the historical aspects of it certainly came through, but in a very simplified way. If you know the events you can pretty much piece together which parts were inspired by what, and in many cases, not even inspired by, just straight up yanked in from real life. (And then recombined in ways that kind of make you go huh?) Where Kuang falls short for me is for her characters, and this ties into the pacing of the book. There's a lot of summarizing over time skips and there's a little of scenes that don't do much other than drop exposition. I lost count of how many times Rin's struggles were summarized instead of dramatized. In no particular order, here are the most significant bits skipped over in a sentence or two, or at most, a scene: - studying for the Keju exam - trying to learn martial arts from a book - hauling a pig up and down a mountain every day for 4 months - learning how to meditate - learning how to access the Pantheon It was the meditation/Pantheon skip that annoyed me the most, because it is the foundation for everything else that happens in the rest of the book. In short, for the first part of the book, very few of Rin's struggles felt visceral, and very few of the moments of victory feel like they were in doubt. We didn't really get enough time with many of the characters to really get attached to them. By the time Part II rolled around and a bunch of named characters died, I kind of just went, oh okay, I guess that's bad, and didn't feel much, if anything. The love interest and addiction stuff didn't work for me either as a result. SurreptitiousMuffin posted:The Poppy War is so tonally weird, man. Scorched Spitz posted:I mean, it begins with the lead character getting hooked on opium in order to pass the entrance exam. Wellllll technically the opium addiction came later. The beginning was self-mutilation with candle wax to stay awake in order to study. Honestly, I feel like the whole Sinegard sequence was mostly unnecessary back story on the page. It's the same complaint I had with Tané's arc in Priory of the Orange Tree. Real conflicts and the meat of the story starts when the war begins. I still don't know how I feel about the level of grimdark in the book. Mainly because I came away from it with the feeling that I was more affected by the shock factor of the graphic violence (and mostly because of my familiarity with the real historical events that were the basis of it) than because of the characters in the book. Like the Red Wedding was a big deal not just because of the shock factor of the violence, but because of what it meant for the characters. In The Poppy War, it just kind of happens, and there's only 3 named minor characters who were present when said horrors were occurring. And the other part, with the chimei fight. That should have been a scene full of tension and stakes, but it felt flat for me. None of the relationships had been developed enough, so I really didn't buy the emotions that were happening on the page. And now this is already a super long post so I'm gonna have to come back and drop thoughts on Iron Widow later when I'm not on my phone. Leng fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 12:44
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One of the guys on a non-book related podcast pronounced Elric's title as Elric of Melon bone. That was long before I listened to the audiobooks and it took a while to get that straight in my head.
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