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coyo7e posted:"These r sure the best fish n chips in the state!" "I added some chives n stuff from my garden to the omelette.". I'm not really pressing hard for it. I was just explaining. As I stated before, it's just an example of the sort of needless description of the series. Those just stuck out to me, the prose equivalent of the idiots that spend ten minutes taking photos of their food in restaurants instead of eating it. I admit I'm bringing personal baggage to it and it would be a silly overall criticism of the book if it was A) the only example I provided and B) framed as anything other than personal opinion. And I'm not upset at it, per se, I was just trying to adequately convey examples of the sort of prose that irritated me when reading it. And I'm not criticizing it nor people that really love it so much as saying it's against my personal taste. I've not read the Dresden books so I can't comment on that. In any case, I've kept reading through that distaste. It's a nice, easy read that I can read piecemeal on smoke breaks at work or when I'm idly sitting outside with the dogs. I ain't lookin' for literature. If I was actually scrutinizing the tests, I'm sure I'd provide more "sane" critiques, or at least feel motivated to scour the text in search of further examples.
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Jun 5, 2015 12:18
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andrew smash posted:Another audiobook plug but the same guy narrates all of the culture novels (Peter Kenny) and he's excellent. I got bogged down in the middle of Use of Weapons twice, and ended up trying the audio for it. Really enjoyed it and recommend it.
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Jun 5, 2015 13:13
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Really, if you've read a fair amount of fantasy especially ASOIAF or any of Redwall you sort of become inured to page(s) long food descriptions after a while. It's like the endless battlecruiser doctrine reiteration in The Lost Fleet. Although I can't say I recall the Iron Druid series being a particularly big offender on that score (though not without fault elsewhere).
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Jun 5, 2015 14:20
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Ornamented Death posted:A dearth of offending text has never been enough to stop people form bitching endlessly about the lolcats in book two, so honestly this is par for the course.  robotox posted:And I'm not upset at it, per se, I was just trying to adequately convey examples of the sort of prose that irritated me when reading it. And I'm not criticizing it nor people that really love it so much as saying it's against my personal taste. I've not read the Dresden books so I can't comment on that. In any case, I've kept reading through that distaste. It's a nice, easy read that I can read piecemeal on smoke breaks at work or when I'm idly sitting outside with the dogs. I ain't lookin' for literature. If I was actually scrutinizing the tests, I'm sure I'd provide more "sane" critiques, or at least feel motivated to scour the text in search of further examples. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Jun 6, 2015 |
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Jun 6, 2015 03:57
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Oh, joy. Just another author meltdown  https://www.goodreads.com/review/1299877698/comments This just... wow.
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Jun 6, 2015 17:23
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Oh, joy. Just another author meltdown This is amazing.
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Jun 6, 2015 17:49
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Oh, joy. Just another author meltdown This is why one of the golden rules of publishing is never to reply to reviews. You look stupid in the best of cases. I guess self-publishing adds the cutthroat nature of the market to "People are wrong on the Internet"-syndrome. The review isn't even bad, it's just "I didn't like it". Literally every book in the world has the same said about it. I've had books of mine reviewed one star because of coarse language. It happens.
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Jun 6, 2015 18:19
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Oh, joy. Just another author meltdown loving prime quote from the author: quote:I'm not embarrassed at all. And all of you who are taking Cait S's side, what you're doing in the bigger picture is waging war on the consciousness of humanity.
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Jun 6, 2015 18:24
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Oh, joy. Just another author meltdown gently caress. That dude is an rear end in a top hat. Or a schyzo, in a very bad need of medication. Wow
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Jun 6, 2015 18:27
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This is the brave new Tumblr world where if you can't say something 100% nice, then don't say anything at all - note the person in the middle of the conversation seriously arguing that if you don't like a book, you should not review it.
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Jun 6, 2015 18:29
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Prop Wash posted:This is the brave new Tumblr world where if you can't say something 100% nice, then don't say anything at all - note the person in the middle of the conversation seriously arguing that if you don't like a book, you should not review it. "Don't like it, don't read!" has been the battlecry of terrible fanfiction authors for decades. Now they've graduated to writing novels, and they take their review policy with them.
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Jun 6, 2015 19:14
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Prop Wash posted:This is the brave new Tumblr world where if you can't say something 100% nice, then don't say anything at all - note the person in the middle of the conversation seriously arguing that if you don't like a book, you should not review it. Pretty sure the person arguing that is the actual author.
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Jun 6, 2015 19:20
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Amberskin posted:gently caress. That dude is an rear end in a top hat. Or a schyzo, in a very bad need of medication. Yeah I definitely got a mental illness vibe from his second comment. So basically he's a fantasy author 
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Jun 6, 2015 19:31
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1258987648?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1 I like that review since it has two stars, not just one. As an aside, do you guys care whether you have omnibuses or individual books in a series on your ereaders? Omnibuses generally have all the final editings and stuff, right?
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Jun 6, 2015 19:47
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I prefer omnibuses since it can get a hassle when you read multiple longass series and your reader is full of those little 200-page books. And yeah, I think they've got another editing pass.
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Jun 6, 2015 20:36
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I prefer individual books because it's more satisfying to reach the 100% of book each time you finish one.
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Jun 6, 2015 20:42
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Oh, I forgot ereaders have achievements like videogames now, don't they?
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Jun 6, 2015 20:50
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Oh, joy. Just another author meltdown This is pretty incredible. Going through the author's website and social media, he is an Alex Jones Infowars conspiracy theorist and wrote this book to express what he thinks is going on in the world today. The book has got to be really weirdly written, if he actually gets into that all that much, unless he's an extremely good writer.
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Jun 6, 2015 20:50
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I like individual books because I think they tend to look better on the shelf, and they're easier to carry around. ... what?
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Jun 6, 2015 20:52
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ArchangeI posted:This is why one of the golden rules of publishing is never to reply to reviews. You look stupid in the best of cases. I guess self-publishing adds the cutthroat nature of the market to "People are wrong on the Internet"-syndrome. One of the major rules of community interaction is "it doesn't matter who's right, when you fight with your audience you're wrong" for a reason. If that guy spends 100 hours a week writing "so I don't have to be a slave" then him being insane isn't much of a shock really.
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Jun 6, 2015 20:57
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Selachian posted:I like individual books because I think they tend to look better on the shelf, and they're easier to carry around. 
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Jun 6, 2015 20:59
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Evil Fluffy posted:One of the major rules of community interaction is "it doesn't matter who's right, when you fight with your audience you're wrong" for a reason. Yeah, like any self-respecting slavemaster would give his chattel a hundred free hours to do anything. Honestly, the inability of authors to do even basic research on an ancient and noble industry... guh, makes you want to vomit. Or, y'know, have one of your slaves do it for you. Manual! Time to earn your keep!
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Jun 6, 2015 21:10
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Darth Walrus posted:Yeah, like any self-respecting slavemaster would give his chattel a hundred free hours to do anything. Honestly, the inability of authors to do even basic research on an ancient and noble industry... guh, makes you want to vomit. Or, y'know, have one of your slaves do it for you.  He tweets something like this about once a week. He also says stuff like the income tax makes him a slave owned by the government. It's all pretty standard stuff if you ever look into the crazy fringe Sovereign Citizen stuff, but he's a bit more out there than even most of them,as he's tweeted stuff that indicates he might be a flat-Earther and David Icke lizardman believer. But he used this sick burn while yelling at one of that reviewer's friends who also commented: "Good on you, Bail. Or is it Ba'al? Condemnation without investigation is the epitome of human ignorance." Bail? More like Ba'al. 
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Jun 6, 2015 21:22
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poo poo, he just got insulted by a god of agriculture.
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Jun 6, 2015 21:30
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Selachian posted:I like individual books because I think they tend to look better on the shelf, and they're easier to carry around. My question was for ereaders.
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Jun 6, 2015 21:32
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Drifter posted:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1258987648?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1 I prefer the omnibus editions because it keeps my directory neater to have trilogies and the like as one entry. Also, a lot of omnibus editions have extra stuff added. Short stories, author interviews, etc.
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Jun 6, 2015 21:58
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Drifter posted:Oh, I forgot ereaders have achievements like videogames now, don't they?
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Jun 6, 2015 23:57
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Rusty posted:I haven't seen anything like that in Kindle or iBooks. He was referring to the 100% comment. When viewing books in your list it shows how far you are in it, with Kindles anyway.
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Jun 7, 2015 01:27
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The audible app literally has cheevos.
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Jun 7, 2015 01:47
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Yeah, gamification is a thing that people really like to apply places it doesn't need to be. I wonder if there's someone out there who buys books for the achievements.
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Jun 7, 2015 13:18
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General Battuta posted:Yes, it's one of the high water marks of the entire science fiction genre, and some of them are among my favorite novels across any genre. I'll counterpoint this by saying I don't think much of the Culture novels in general. The Player of Games is excellent, no dispute about that, but much of the rest is basic SF with a thick pasting of left wing intellectualism. The Culture itself is a post-scarcity socialist utopia run by AIs with godlike intellect - which is why they share all the author's beliefs and prejudices - and as such it suffers the usual problem of stories where the plot is driven by agents beyond human comprehension: the only way to explain the plot is to assume that those agents are correct. Banks did it a lot better than most, it must be said, but I just couldn't get into books where the GUA* I'm Not As Clever As I Think I Am carefully patronises the gently caress out of the protagonists for 400 pages. Also avoid Feersum Endjinn. It goes way beyond faux-intellectualism and into complete wank. It's not a Culture novel, though it was disguised as one in its original printing. * Generally Unexpanded Acronym
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Jun 7, 2015 13:59
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Rusty posted:I haven't seen anything like that in Kindle or iBooks. Kobo's certainly have them. 
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Jun 7, 2015 15:06
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I blew through the Kobo achievements in about 2 days IIRC. They are set at pathetically low levels. I'd far prefer it if they could, for instance, link up with Goodreads and ask me to rate each book when I finish it. I never get round to updating Goodreads any more.
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Jun 7, 2015 16:08
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thespaceinvader posted:I blew through the Kobo achievements in about 2 days IIRC. They are set at pathetically low levels. It's available on Paperwhite, since Amazon owns Goodreads.
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Jun 7, 2015 16:12
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Jedit posted:I'll counterpoint this by saying I don't think much of the Culture novels in general. The Player of Games is excellent, no dispute about that, but much of the rest is basic SF with a thick pasting of left wing intellectualism. The Culture itself is a post-scarcity socialist utopia run by AIs with godlike intellect - which is why they share all the author's beliefs and prejudices - and as such it suffers the usual problem of stories where the plot is driven by agents beyond human comprehension: the only way to explain the plot is to assume that those agents are correct. Banks did it a lot better than most, it must be said, but I just couldn't get into books where the GUA* I'm Not As Clever As I Think I Am carefully patronises the gently caress out of the protagonists for 400 pages. Fully half the Culture books disagree exactly with this.
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Jun 7, 2015 16:31
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Jedit posted:I'll counterpoint this by saying I don't think much of the Culture novels in general. The Player of Games is excellent, no dispute about that, but much of the rest is basic SF with a thick pasting of left wing intellectualism. The Culture itself is a post-scarcity socialist utopia run by AIs with godlike intellect - which is why they share all the author's beliefs and prejudices - and as such it suffers the usual problem of stories where the plot is driven by agents beyond human comprehension: the only way to explain the plot is to assume that those agents are correct. Banks did it a lot better than most, it must be said, but I just couldn't get into books where the GUA* I'm Not As Clever As I Think I Am carefully patronises the gently caress out of the protagonists for 400 pages. As a counter-counterpoint I think one of the most compelling things about the Culture is that I don't think we're necessarily supposed to agree with the Culture's warmongering, interventionist standpoint. Consider Phlebas is very upfront about this - the Culture went to war because they feared that their sphere of influence was being challenged by the Idirans. The Player of Games exists entirely because the Culture decides to infiltrate and destabilize a small empire for no reason other than that they disagree with its governance. Excession is in many ways directly critical of the Culture.
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Jun 7, 2015 17:18
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I just finished Bridge of Birds last night and it was awesome. I found out that there are two more books in the series, are they any good? I didn't see any mention of them here.
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Jun 7, 2015 18:33
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Yes
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Jun 7, 2015 18:49
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Not as good but definitely worth reading.
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Jun 7, 2015 19:15
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I haven't read the third one in a long long time, but I re-read the second a couple years ago and it was a lot more mean-spirited and charmless than I remembered.
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Jun 7, 2015 20:06
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