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freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

ToxicFrog posted:

Huh. Does Calibre not see the e-reader at all, or does it see it but can't send books to it? I don't have a working PRS anymore to test with, but my calibre 5 install still has "sony device interface" and "sony PRST1+ device interface" plugins enabled.

It recognises it, but says it's not a "suitable format" to send to the device. The library books I'm getting are ACSM files... they used to have a little arrow that I'd click to extract the data (?) or convert to an EPUB (???) in the Reader software, but that no longer works. This only happened in the last few weeks so I assume it's some sort of change to how DRM works with Overdrive.

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Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

freebooter posted:

It recognises it, but says it's not a "suitable format" to send to the device. The library books I'm getting are ACSM files... they used to have a little arrow that I'd click to extract the data (?) or convert to an EPUB (???) in the Reader software, but that no longer works. This only happened in the last few weeks so I assume it's some sort of change to how DRM works with Overdrive.

ACSM is the format that you open in Adobe Digital Editions that downloads a DRM'd EPUB from them. Try downloading the latest version of ADE and opening it in that?

buffalo all day
Mar 13, 2019

June: stupid month

PRADA SLUT
Mar 14, 2006

Inexperienced,
heartless,
but even so
Is there a version of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (or broader collection, including at least that) with both English and French poems, but also some type of literary “analysis” or similar of each poem?

In addition, does something similar exist for Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (minus the translation).

Failing the above, what’s a good version of them otherwise?

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
The Edna St. Vincent Millay translations have always been my favorite.

Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

https://mobile.twitter.com/DrakeGatsby/status/1469016589802614787

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010


Oh no not eighty whole books.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Oh no not eighty whole books.

a maze; a labyrinth

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

PRADA SLUT posted:

Is there a version of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (or broader collection, including at least that) with both English and French poems, but also some type of literary “analysis” or similar of each poem?

Oxford's World Classics edition is bilingual and has essays and notes. I don't know how extensive you want the analysis, but it's probably what you want.

Ramrod Hotshot
May 30, 2003

Despite the title, this article is less about the Matrix and more about Snow Crash, specifically how freaks like Zuckerberg took that dystopian warning and decided that it was their personal vision for the future they wanted to create. And now we get to live in it! :q:

https://twitter.com/BBC_Culture/status/1468582412913311744

One part that struck me in particular:

quote:

Yet even though most cyberpunk stories culminate in victories for their heroes, not many end with a happy planet. "Nobody has yet imagined a way out of the typical cyberpunk dystopia ... which is surely a symptom of a creative block," Paul Walker-Emig noted in a 2018 article for the Guardian critiquing the genre. For him, he wrote, modern works of the genre like Cyberpunk 2077 and Altered Carbon had done little other than employ "cool cyberpunk symbols" without ever challenging the status quo. He suggested instead that cyberpunk should update to offer a utopian image of the future, guiding us towards a better life.

I think this is a really interesting idea for a novel or a movie. You have a cyberpunk dystopia which has been the state of the world for decades if not centuries, and feels to everyone living in it like the terminal state of being. But suddenly, some political or economic catalyst or a combination of them reawakens something in the dregs of society, who begin working together toward a revolution against the vampiric CEOs that control the world.

Now that I'm thinking about it I guess there is quite a bit of fiction like this, such as Snowpiercer, but there's always some conceit like it's a train that circles a snowy world. Nothing that's really believable in our world.

I was hoping Termination Shock might be such a novel, but

quote:

Stephenson's new novel Termination Shock, published in October, certainly toys with a solution to one of the world's most pressing concerns. In an unspecified year in the near future, when climate change has wrought havoc on the planet, one character purports to cool down the planet by firing sulphur into the air and reflecting sunlight back into space. But the results are less than promising.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
The later Altered Carbon books do offer a path forward. From what I recall it is "communist revolution enforced by orbital laser"

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Rand Brittain posted:

ACSM is the format that you open in Adobe Digital Editions that downloads a DRM'd EPUB from them. Try downloading the latest version of ADE and opening it in that?

I tried this earlier but ADE for whatever reason simply won't open after I installed it; I tried installing the earlier version, 3.0, but then uninstalled it because when I was trying to open ebooks in Calibre it would default to opening them in ADE... I think I'm just going to put all this in the too-hard basket and buy a Kobo.

lifg
Dec 4, 2000
<this tag left blank>
Muldoon

Solarpunk was coined just for people who think cyberpunk fiction should have a moral purpose. I’m not a fan, but it’s a growing genre.

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

The later Altered Carbon books do offer a path forward. From what I recall it is "communist revolution enforced by orbital laser"

I read all the books and have zero memory of what transpired in them and reading this post that makes me sad.

buffalo all day
Mar 13, 2019

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

I read all the books and have zero memory of what transpired in them and reading this post that makes me sad.

tell me about this dream frasier episode of yours...

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

buffalo all day posted:

tell me about this dream frasier episode of yours...

Just a redtext somebody bought for me but I have several dream Frasier episodes

Hughmoris
Apr 21, 2007
Let's go to the abyss!
I need a little Christmas guidance.

I have a family member that wrote a book. This is their first attempt at writing something and it's a little rough around the edges in terms of formatting, grammar, etc...

As a gift, I'd like to hire a professional to proof read and format their book. Can anyone recommend a service that does such? Its about 18k words.

This book is more intended to be shared with family, not self-published on Amazon and attempting to sell. I just want to help them get it the best it can be, maybe get it printed and a few hardcovers for the coffee table.

Hughmoris fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Dec 19, 2021

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



i can change it into a scifi epic for 2k

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Hughmoris posted:

I need a little Christmas guidance.

I have a family member that wrote a book. This is their first attempt at writing something and it's a little rough around the edges in terms of formatting, grammar, etc...

As a gift, I'd like to hire a professional to proof read and format their book. Can anyone recommend a service that does such? Its about 18k words.

This book is more intended to be shared with family, not self-published on Amazon and attempting to sell. I just want to help them get it the best it can be, maybe get it printed and a few hardcovers for the coffee table.

Even if it's not intended for professional self-publishing, the self-pub thread here or the people at the Writer's Cafe on Kboards should be able to steer you towards a good editor/proofer/formatter.

I don't have a regular editor or proofer I use, but for formatting I really recommend Phil Gessert:

http://www.gessertbooks.com/

Chainclaw
Feb 14, 2009

I want to re-read House of Leaves, but it's a novel I want in physical form, and it seems like they could easily gently caress it up with a bad reprint. Is there a guide to prints of that book, or a preferred edition?

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
There's a guide at the front of the book. Get the "Remastered Full Color Edition" and you'll be fine. (I don't believe that the "Incomplete" edition actually exists, and I've never seen a black-and-white copy anywhere, although that might be the British version with a doorknob on the cover.)

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Dec 21, 2021

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

Chainclaw posted:

I want to re-read House of Leaves, but it's a novel I want in physical form, and it seems like they could easily gently caress it up with a bad reprint. Is there a guide to prints of that book, or a preferred edition?

Unless you're buying secondhand or used, you're only going to find the Full Color Complete Edition.

SniperWoreConverse
Mar 20, 2010



Gun Saliva
holy poo poo what

i'm pretty sure i have the 2 color version and assumed the other versions were lies

juggalo baby coffin
Dec 2, 2007

How would the dog wear goggles and even more than that, who makes the goggles?


i have a weird question and idk if this is the best place but here it is:

we get all kinds of phonetic renderings of regional accents in books, but has there ever been a rendering of a 'neutral' accent written phonetically by someone who is entirely steeped in a rural accent?

like we tend to assume that the neutral accent is the 'correct' way to pronounce the words as written, but all those regional accents are just as legitimate ways of saying those combinations of letters, so if there's a way to phonetically write like a 'hillbilly' accent there must be a way for a heavily accented person to render the more dominant accent in the same way.

as an english guy i can render the differences between stock american pronunciation and stock british pronunciation, but as a child of the modern era ive been extremely exposed to the 'neutral' american accent, so it's more difficult for me to really perceive the accent properly. when you grow up immersed in an accent you can't really detect it, cause everyone speaks like that and as far as you're aware you're just saying the words as written. it's only when you encounter others you really become aware of your own accented speech. but thanks to TV, i think the american tv voice is also perceived as neutral by almost everyone on earth.

so i'm trying to find out if there's anyone in history, probably from before the era of mass media, who would have written something where what we regard as neutral is done phonetically, in contrast to maybe the author's own regional accent.

i feel like phonetic accents are always used in fiction to connote a certain degree of outsiderness with that character compared to the rest of the cast, so i thought it would be interesting to have a cast of entirely rural people with one big city person turning up and them being rendered as the outsider. ive written characters with accents before but never rendered them phonetically, i much prefer to convey accents through idiom and word choice. i think it comes off as weirdly insulting to write someones accent phonetically cause it kind of implies they aren't speaking properly, but in this case it would be interesting to see what is regarded as 'proper' being shown as a deviation in its own way.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

There's a guide at the front of the book. Get the "Remastered Full Color Edition" and you'll be fine. (I don't believe that the "Incomplete" edition actually exists, and I've never seen a black-and-white copy anywhere, although that might be the British version with a doorknob on the cover.)



my dad typeset the current versions of Bug Jack Barron and The Iron Dream by norman spinrad, and those both (although especially bug jack barron) have some wildly stylish text fuckery that was an absolute bastard to redo for the digital age. it was pre-ereader too so those books probably need redoing yet again cause nothing fuckin works right on ereaders. i was a little kid at the time and its so surreal to me now that we had norman spinrad and a few other new wave greats through our house, and all i wanted to do was show them whatever computer game i was playing.

juggalo baby coffin fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 23, 2021

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



The regular version is called "eye dialect" and it (paradoxically) often just exaggarates the standard/"neutral" pronunciation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_dialect

Can't recall encountering the opposite version, except for like a character using very fancy words that the narrator/pov character doesn't understand (in which case they might be malaproped in the text, but usually later, when they're repeated)

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!
Not quite the same, but something that jumps to mind is when the book is written in English but the characters are speaking something else, and they encounter an English speaker. Like post-apocalyptic science fiction where the characters encounter texts from the past and "sound them out" without context, as in By The Waters of Babylon when the protagonist prays to a statue of WASHINGTON. Or another example from the first Terry Pratchett novel where one character introduces the concept of "underground sound of reflected spirits" which is eventually revealed to be echo-gnomics/economics.

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



I actually just remembered that I read Semiosis/Intereference by Sue Burke recently, where in the latter half some people from earth try to reconnect with a remote colony that was established centuries before (Globish is what they speak on earth in 2700 or whatever, the colonists speak "classical english")

quote:

We are greeted with preindustrial joy.
"Wilcum tar hom!" he said. "Wae taut hyew whur comin whin wae swa laiets in ta skai."
Karola didn’t answer, and for a long moment I doubted her. Perhaps Shani, may she rest in peace, would have been better. Then she said, "Hyew saw tat? Did hyew heer us?"
"Hyes, laiets, an tru ar tiliscyops wee swa et wus a spais sheep en worbit, but hyeer hyew? Ai dund—"
"What’s he saying?" I sent. "Doesn’t he speak Globish? We thought they would speak Globish."
"It’s the accent. We knew sounds would shift, but not how. Mostly the vowels. They’ve become diphthongs."
"Everyone spoke Globish when they left. Globish was the world language."
"Yes, but this project was based in the United States. It used Classic English. They’ll understand Globish, of course. But talk slowly."
"Es dier sum sorda cunsirn?" he said, looking concerned at our apparent silence.
"Hyur language es a surprise," she answered slowly.
He laughed. "Hyou ah a surprise!" He spoke very slowly, and despite his wide-voweled accent I finally understood him a little.
She turned to me. "He said they saw our spaceship in the sky. They have telescopes, apparently "."
"Ah hyew frum Eart?" he said, one word at a time, his face hopeful, and his accent falling further into a pattern. But why would he think we were from elsewhere?
I stepped forward. "Yes, we are from Earth. I am Om. I lead this group."
"Ai am Arter. Tees es Hosay…" He gestured to a taller—though still short—gray-haired man."

It's not really eye dialect, cause I don't think it's any "standard" pronunciation. It seems pretty regular though, so not completely improvised. Anyway, there are some chapters where the narrator is a "native", and I don't recall any of them having the opposite. That'd been neat.

ulvir
Jan 2, 2005

there’s multiple parts in ulysses that is written in a way to emulate spoken irish

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



aiui OP is looking for like an irish author or character "transcribing" RP as they hear it

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

Carthag Tuek posted:

aiui OP is looking for like an irish author or character "transcribing" RP as they hear it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW3B_tXlj7Q

Rolo
Nov 16, 2005

Hmm, what have we here?
My mom gave me the complete short story collection of Flannery O’Connor. I’ve never read her before and the internet says positive things but I wouldn’t put it past her to slip conservative boomer stuff onto my bookshelf. She also likes some really good things so I’m wondering which this is.

Thumbs up or down?

ToxicFrog
Apr 26, 2008


Sham bam bamina! posted:

There's a guide at the front of the book. Get the "Remastered Full Color Edition" and you'll be fine. (I don't believe that the "Incomplete" edition actually exists, and I've never seen a black-and-white copy anywhere, although that might be the British version with a doorknob on the cover.)



E-readers are greyscale, so digital editions are de facto "black and white" even if the file itself has annotations for coloured text.

House of Leaves is one of those books that sounds interesting but I'm not sure it's interesting enough to shell out for a hardcopy and it doesn't work right in digital, so I have yet to get around to reading it.

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

Rolo posted:

My mom gave me the complete short story collection of Flannery O’Connor. I’ve never read her before and the internet says positive things but I wouldn’t put it past her to slip conservative boomer stuff onto my bookshelf. She also likes some really good things so I’m wondering which this is.

Thumbs up or down?

Flannery O'Connor is extremely well-respected.

Eason the Fifth
Apr 9, 2020
I hated Flannery O'Connor when I was forced to read her for school, but came around on her work as I got older. In a lot of ways she's the exact opposite of conservative boomer stuff (and also incredibly nuanced). You can easily look at her work through Queer theory and watch her ideas slot right in.

juggalo baby coffin
Dec 2, 2007

How would the dog wear goggles and even more than that, who makes the goggles?


the replies to my question are all very interesting, i think this one:

Carthag Tuek posted:

I actually just remembered that I read Semiosis/Intereference by Sue Burke recently, where in the latter half some people from earth try to reconnect with a remote colony that was established centuries before (Globish is what they speak on earth in 2700 or whatever, the colonists speak "classical english")

It's not really eye dialect, cause I don't think it's any "standard" pronunciation. It seems pretty regular though, so not completely improvised. Anyway, there are some chapters where the narrator is a "native", and I don't recall any of them having the opposite. That'd been neat.

is very interesting cause the phonetics can be read as basically how we pronounce things now, which leads you to imagine what kind of crazy pronounciation is standard to the listener in that quote.

ive found during my research a lot of phonetic representations of deviation from the norm, in either a working class or an extremely rich class direction, but no representation of the norm from the perspective of the people who normally are considered to deviate.

like upper class people in england have their own weird slack jawed dialect where they don't really pronounce any of the letters, so they pronounce 'william' as something like 'wuhm', but kind of like with rural people you'd only really encounter someone writing their dialogue phonetically when the writer means to kinda mock or demean that group in some way.

i dont know if you could get a phonetic representation of a 'normal' accent from the perspective of someone with a 'deviant' accent now, bc everywhere has TV so you would grow up hearing the 'normal' accent as much as your own.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

ToxicFrog posted:

E-readers are greyscale, so digital editions are de facto "black and white" even if the file itself has annotations for coloured text.

House of Leaves is one of those books that sounds interesting but I'm not sure it's interesting enough to shell out for a hardcopy and it doesn't work right in digital, so I have yet to get around to reading it.
It's a very entertaining physical object.

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



Iain M. Banks' Feersum Endjinn has several chapters that are written basically phonetically "by" the narrator. It's been at least 10 years since I read it so I don't remember what other characters sound like to the narrator. Might be worth checking out? I should read it again, I liked it.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Rolo posted:

My mom gave me the complete short story collection of Flannery O’Connor. I’ve never read her before and the internet says positive things but I wouldn’t put it past her to slip conservative boomer stuff onto my bookshelf. She also likes some really good things so I’m wondering which this is.

Thumbs up or down?

O'Connor is great, and many of her short stories dunk on the moral hypocrisy of conservative types.

Xanderkish
Aug 10, 2011

Hello!
So I recently found out, to my shock, that the Unabomber's manifesto, Industrial Society and its Future, is apparently something that non-fringe people read and discuss. I've seen articles about it from university presses, in Rolling Stone and Fox News, I've had decidedly non-terrorist friends of mine of multiple political stripes say they've read it and found some of his points interesting, and apparently it's on some university reading lists. So I've started to read it and it's...just stupid and cliched?

Maybe I'm biased because of the whole "He was a loving serial killer" angle, but this poo poo just reads like some overeducated narcissistic fucker's blog post. There's criticism of industrial society that's been a thing since at least the Communist Manifesto, his weird poo poo about how modern leftists are modern leftists because they have low self-esteem, and his irritatingly arrogant assertion that people's motivations for art or science or wealth aren't whatever they say their motivations are, but what he says their motivations are, which is some loving neo-Freudian thing called "the power process".

And naturally the solution to all this is to do away with modern society and go back to primitive life, because apparently people were happier then! Sure you and everyone you love might at any moment be wiped out by a disease, a famine, or a long winter, but at least you wouldn't have to take poo poo from your boss (that is me only lightly paraphrasing--he loving argues that all those threats were more preferable to premodern man than the "disempowerment" of modern society). But people were less stressed out then! How do we know this, considering we have little to no written records from premodern societies, and what ones we do have were likely written by people in power who wanted to justify the societies they dominated? EhhHHHhHHhh power process modernism autonomy.

I know a lot of the appeal of this manifesto to at least some people is because it's the unabomber and wow isn't it crazy that a serial killer can write coherent sentences that Really Makes You Think rather than just smearing his feces on the wall, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills; none of this poo poo is original! It's like loving Bansky had a graduate degree on a bomb, who cares? Anyone could read poo poo like this without it having to be from the loving unabomber!

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Eason the Fifth
Apr 9, 2020
Anything written by a PhD should be automatically suspect imho

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