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There's a book I need to order off Amazon.com (textbook specifically) that is out of stock. If I place the order, will they charge me before the book comes back in stock? I am thinking that I'd want to place the order now so I can get it when it first comes available, but if it isn't in stock for awhile I'll have to shop elsewhere since the class is starting in 2 weeks.
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# ? Jun 21, 2011 21:41 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 23:44 |
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They won't bill you until they are ready to ship the book.
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# ? Jun 21, 2011 21:43 |
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Does anyone know any cool twitter accounts that link to a couple of short stories a day? Like @longreads and @aldaily do for articles. That'd be tits.
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# ? Jun 22, 2011 22:09 |
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Anybody doing a big summer read? I'm thinking when I get some time, I'm going to finally start on Fielding's Tom Jones.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 03:15 |
barkingclam posted:Anybody doing a big summer read? I'm thinking when I get some time, I'm going to finally start on Fielding's Tom Jones. A friend bet me I couldn't read all of the Gor books (or rather, the first 26) before Dragon*Con, so there's that for me. I am not particularly proud of it. Err...I actually posted about that on the last page... Ornamented Death fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jun 23, 2011 |
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 03:18 |
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barkingclam posted:Anybody doing a big summer read? I'm thinking when I get some time, I'm going to finally start on Fielding's Tom Jones.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 04:20 |
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Nice! Jest is a great read, it's not as hard as you'd think once you get into it.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 04:31 |
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Ornamented Death posted:A friend bet me I couldn't read all of the Gor books (or rather, the first 26) before Dragon*Con, so there's that for me. I am not particularly proud of it. I had no idea there were so many of those loving things. Who buys that poo poo? Other than you, of course.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 05:01 |
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Popular Human posted:Who buys that poo poo? It's HUGE amongst the bdsm set.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 13:56 |
Popular Human posted:I had no idea there were so many of those loving things. Who buys that poo poo? Other than you, of course. That's not even all of them, just the ones you can find without the naked woman on the cover (just look up one of the titles on Amazon to see what I mean). I think the biggest crime with this poo poo is that Norman is actually a pretty good writer; he has a ton of great ideas and is incredibly descriptive. He just lets that get buried in increasingly long diatribes that have absolutely no bearing on the plot and are full of crazy. From what I can gather, if you ignore the crazy, you go from skipping a handful paragraphs in the first few books to hundreds and hundreds of pages (per book) by the end of the series.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 14:00 |
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LooseChanj posted:It's HUGE amongst the bdsm set. Hey now, it's only huge among the ones who always come off as really creepy people. Most come off as normal and not creepy.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 17:18 |
Hey guys did you know that a woman can only truly be a woman when she is mastered by a man? Only 20 more books to go!
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 17:41 |
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Well, I've made it final, I'm going to teach Angels in America next year! This will either be glorious or I will be hanged by parents. Can't wait! (I teach IB English A programmes at a secondary school in Europe)
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 21:51 |
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Does anyone know where in the world I can get an English translation of this novel? I've searched high and low but can only find it in French. Wikipedia says it was translated into a variety of languages so there must be an English one out there still.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 22:16 |
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Jive One posted:Does anyone know where in the world I can get an English translation of this novel? I've searched high and low but can only find it in French. Wikipedia says it was translated into a variety of languages so there must be an English one out there still. It probably depends on what sort of translation you want. If you have access to databases, particularly Early English Books (eebo.chadwyck.com) you can probably find something. (In fact, you will -- I just checked, there's a three volume translation published 1657-58. The downside is, of course, this is a 17th century translation, with all the issues that implies.) I've poked around and am not finding a newer translation, strangely enough. If that's what you need, hopefully someone with a wider breadth than I for French lit can step in here.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 23:28 |
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H.P. Shivcraft posted:It probably depends on what sort of translation you want. If you have access to databases, particularly Early English Books (eebo.chadwyck.com) you can probably find something. (In fact, you will -- I just checked, there's a three volume translation published 1657-58. The downside is, of course, this is a 17th century translation, with all the issues that implies.) Unfortunately I don't have access. I tried googling the title and date and found further references to that translation, but no place that offered open public downloads.
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# ? Jun 23, 2011 23:52 |
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Ornamented Death posted:Hey guys did you know that a woman can only truly be a woman when she is mastered by a man? What are you getting if you win the bet? It'd better be something pretty nice.
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# ? Jun 24, 2011 05:18 |
Florida Betty posted:What are you getting if you win the bet? It'd better be something pretty nice. $175 ($100 bet + my half of the cost of the books back) and my friend has to prominently display the series in his living room for six months. It goes the other way if I lose. As you can see, I cannot allow myself to lose.
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# ? Jun 24, 2011 18:53 |
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How much would someone have to pay you to write a review for a book you just read? In exchange for getting the book for free? For $5? $10? $20? Screw that noise, you hate writing reviews? The reviews wouldn't have to be essays, perhaps a paragraph or two.
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# ? Jun 25, 2011 18:54 |
polyfractal posted:How much would someone have to pay you to write a review for a book you just read? In exchange for getting the book for free? For $5? $10? $20? Screw that noise, you hate writing reviews? Unless you're writing the review for a major publication, you shouldn't get anything for your review beyond, perhaps, the free review copy of the book.
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# ? Jun 25, 2011 19:52 |
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Sorry, I wasn't clear in my question. Imagine a hypothetical site that employs a limited, invite-only pool of people that read books (emphasis on eBooks/Indie/self-pub) and write reviews on those books. What kind of compensation would make it worth your time to participate in a site such as this?
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# ? Jun 25, 2011 21:04 |
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polyfractal posted:Sorry, I wasn't clear in my question. Literally no amount of money would convince me to do this.
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# ? Jun 25, 2011 22:02 |
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polyfractal posted:Sorry, I wasn't clear in my question. It seems like the only visitors to that site would be the authors themselves, or other prospective new authors, plus maybe a few hipsters that like it because it's not "major label". So you're reviewing something for a much smaller audience of people than say, the people that would've looked up this book on Amazon.com; I would say you probably couldn't afford compensation in the long term. Just make an Indie book blog, I'm sure you'd stand out from the thousands of other ones.
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# ? Jun 25, 2011 23:28 |
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Van Dis posted:Literally no amount of money would convince me to do this. Because of the indie/self-pub or the principle of receiving money for reviews? Quad posted:It seems like the only visitors to that site would be the authors themselves, or other prospective new authors, plus maybe a few hipsters that like it because it's not "major label". So you're reviewing something for a much smaller audience of people than say, the people that would've looked up this book on Amazon.com; I would say you probably couldn't afford compensation in the long term. Granted, most self-published ebooks are garbage. But the shift toward digital books is pretty apparent and I think the number of quality self-pub ebooks will continue to rise (along with an exponential increase in garbage). How are people going to sort through all of this? Quad posted:Just make an Indie book blog, I'm sure you'd stand out from the thousands of other ones.
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# ? Jun 25, 2011 23:41 |
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polyfractal posted:Because of the indie/self-pub or the principle of receiving money for reviews? quote:most self-published ebooks are garbage.
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# ? Jun 26, 2011 00:00 |
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Haha, ok My thoughts looked something like this:
Rather than:
The idea being that if you read a terrible ebook you likely won't leave a review on Amazon. If you read a good ebook, you still probably won't write a review. Most people just don't care enough to write reviews. But if you can write a review (positive or negative) about a book you independently read, and get some compensation for it, you increase the community knowledge about what is and isn't good. GoodReads kinda does this through social incentive, but it is still pretty weak. Perhaps this is all just a pipe dream because worst case you are out $0.99 and people can't be assed to write reviews or look up non-amazon reviews before mashing the buy button
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# ? Jun 26, 2011 00:09 |
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Amazon isn't trustworthy for reviews or ratings, especially for less popular books, because it's so full of spam reviews and authors can get negative reviews yanked. Goodreads is the only user-based review site I participate in or read reviews from. I don't think of it in any kind of "social incentive" terms though. I review there because I like their interface for keeping track of my reading. I guess it's nice if other users find my reviews helpful, but I write them for my own benefit, to help me remember what I read and to lead me to think more deeply about why I like or dislike something. I wouldn't join a site aimed at self-published books. There's too much garbage to wade through, and it's not like my to-read list isn't already stuffed with more mainstream, professionally-edited novels than I'll ever have time to read. But I'd also have trouble trusting a user-based review site, no matter what type of books they focused on, if I knew they were paying for reviews.
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# ? Jun 26, 2011 06:01 |
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When I finish up a book by a self published (even if it's kindle) author and it's good, I will leave a review on amazon for it. It's not hard to do, takes about 4 mins of my personal time, and helps the author out. That being said, holy hell finding a good self published book is like searching for gold nuggets in a river of poo poo.
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# ? Jun 26, 2011 13:18 |
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deety posted:Goodreads is the only user-based review site I participate in or read reviews from. I don't think of it in any kind of "social incentive" terms though. I review there because I like their interface for keeping track of my reading. I guess it's nice if other users find my reviews helpful, but I write them for my own benefit, to help me remember what I read and to lead me to think more deeply about why I like or dislike something. Ah yes, Goodreads, where books are rated on a scale of 3.5 to 4.0, with 3.5 being a beautiful classic and 4.0 being the Cliff Notes for that beautiful classic.
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# ? Jun 29, 2011 10:55 |
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Conduit for Sale! posted:Ah yes, Goodreads, where books are rated on a scale of 3.5 to 4.0, with 3.5 being a beautiful classic and 4.0 being the Cliff Notes for that beautiful classic.
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# ? Jun 29, 2011 17:59 |
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Goodreads owns, any site with identical lists called best books ever and worst books ever really knows how to recommend 'em.
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# ? Jun 29, 2011 18:40 |
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Meh, could be, I never pay attention to the average rating of a book on Goodreads (or on any other site for that matter). I stick with the ratings of the folks on my friends list, whose taste I already have a general sense of, and the text reviews. I use it mostly to evaluate stuff that's already caught my interest though, the last thing I need is more recommendations.
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# ? Jun 29, 2011 19:07 |
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Do any of you ever have trouble reading a book that's more than 400 pages long? For some reason, any time I try I end up losing all motivation around the 350-450 mark and can't push through. It makes me sad, because the books are usually good too! For instance, the one I'm stuck on right now is Robert Bolaņo's The Savage Detectives which is a drat shame cause that's one hell of a book. Maybe I'm trying to read the wrong books? Any tips or recommendations to get me into longer fiction?
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# ? Jul 1, 2011 01:40 |
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HORROR OF GEESE posted:Do any of you ever have trouble reading a book that's more than 400 pages long? For some reason, any time I try I end up losing all motivation around the 350-450 mark and can't push through. It makes me sad, because the books are usually good too! For instance, the one I'm stuck on right now is Robert Bolaņo's The Savage Detectives which is a drat shame cause that's one hell of a book. There's no law saying you have to be reading just one book at a time. When I'm reading something that's especially long or difficult for whatever reason, I tend to put it down every once in a while to switch over to something lighter or in a whole different genre. It helps to refresh me to get back in the mood for the original book.
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# ? Jul 1, 2011 03:48 |
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So I guess if you are a fan of the Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake, there will now be a fourth, written by his widow in the 1970's, based on notes he had left behind. The manuscript was discovered in the family's attic. http://www.amazon.com/Titus-Awakes-Novel-Mervyn-Peake/dp/159020428X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309627405&sr=8-1
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# ? Jul 2, 2011 18:23 |
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So I've been reading Death in Venice, and holy poo poo why did no one ever tell me how awesome Thomas Mann is? I'm reading that old 20's translation and it's fantastic. I'm seriously thinking about going straight to The Magic Mountain after this. He just goes off on the interesting tangents about the artistic process, beauty and life in general, and his allusions are pretty drat cool too. What do you all think about Mann? Also, I've been finding some amazing books at the Goodwill nearby, and more than half of my books are from thrift stores. I found Cloud Atlas and a book of Native American myths and legends there last week for a total of three bucks. You probably should give it a shot.
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# ? Jul 3, 2011 19:20 |
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Clutter redacted.
Kaptain K fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jul 9, 2011 |
# ? Jul 9, 2011 11:25 |
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Try here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2704537
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# ? Jul 9, 2011 16:59 |
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Thanks, somehow I figured if there'd be a "what book" thread it would be stickied.
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# ? Jul 9, 2011 21:47 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 23:44 |
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So I've never really been a big reader in general. Besides a bunch of Dan Brown books, I hadn't read anything except for text books for college/grad school. Then I watched HBO's Game of Thrones, and read through the first 4 books in the series in 8 weeks, and am now anxiously awaiting Dance with Dragons. This morning I called around to several books stores inquiring about a potential midnight releases, and they all gave me a 'wtf, why would we bother with that' response. I've seen all the news footage of midnight releases for Harry Potter, but their doesn't seem to be many for ADWD. I heard in another thread someone say that book releases are not like video games or movie releases and they don't always stick to a certain date, and some sellers will release them early. Is that true? Do I need to pre-order my copy, or should I just walk in? I've never tried to get a book on release day before. I'd love to get the book at midnight, but their don't seem to be any midnight releases in the northern D.C suburbs.
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# ? Jul 10, 2011 17:05 |