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Rand Brittain posted:Getting every single error out of a scanned manuscript is surprisingly labor-intensive, and most companies doing them are not putting that level of effort into it. What drives me absolutely nuts is that Kindle, since pretty early on, has had a "report content error" feature where you can highlight something, indicate if it's a typo or whatnot, even suggest what the right thing should be... and it gets sent somewhere... and nothing ever happens. I diligently report OCR errors and the like out of hope that someday someone at Amazon will actually look at and act on these reports. It does not seem to ever make a difference.
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Dec 14, 2023 11:38
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Sonderval posted:Star fighters of Adumar (x-wing 9) by Aaron Allston is the single best SW book ever written. Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I think you misspelled wraith squadron, and meant to say Michael stackpole... I mean these are the two best, for sure, with books 6 and 7 being still pretty good. Nothing else compared.
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Dec 14, 2023 12:26
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Chairman Capone posted:I was going to say that Traitor is basically just two people discussing the morality of the Force for 200 pages, but then I remembered I was forgetting the Ganner segment! Traitor would have blown my 14 year old mind on the Force philosophy and torture stuff alone but Ganner having his own Thermopylae and glorious end guaranteed my mind was blown
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Dec 14, 2023 12:35
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Quinton posted:What drives me absolutely nuts is that Kindle, since pretty early on, has had a "report content error" feature where you can highlight something, indicate if it's a typo or whatnot, even suggest what the right thing should be... and it gets sent somewhere... and nothing ever happens. I diligently report OCR errors and the like out of hope that someday someone at Amazon will actually look at and act on these reports. It does not seem to ever make a difference. Every once in a while I've seen a kindle book listing that will have a warning on it like "Customers report that this book has quality issues" (usually something public domain that someone uploaded as a cashgrab and didn't double-check). But I don't know if they actually take them down or force the uploader to do anything about it. (I usually get all my public domain stuff off of Project Gutenberg if it's available there now. They have a pretty rigorous volunteer proofreading group that goes through books before they're uploaded. And it's all free.)
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Dec 14, 2023 13:30
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Mostly if Amazon gets enough complaints they'll pull the book.
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Dec 14, 2023 13:31
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Keret posted:Diamond Age had great worldbuilding and then took a sharp turn when Stephenson, yet again, felt the need to have his young female character get sexually assaulted for no good reason except that it was edgy I guess. He seemingly just cannot help himself and it's a real bad look. This is the main thing I remember from the book too because it comes out of nowhere, and means nothing in the story. It might as well not have happened.
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Dec 14, 2023 13:32
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I think you misspelled wraith squadron, and meant to say Michael stackpole... Wraith squadron is Allston. Stackpole wrote the Rogue squadron half of the X-Wing series. (I think Wraith Squadron is better).
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Dec 14, 2023 13:50
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Finally reading my copy of Kaiju Preservation Society and my verdict halfway through is that it’s just so lazy. Scalzi manages to write a 250 page novella and just spends his limited words on stupid unfunny cliche dialogue about band names instead of actually describing things or making real characters you can tell apart.
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Dec 14, 2023 14:05
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Quinton posted:What drives me absolutely nuts is that Kindle, since pretty early on, has had a "report content error" feature where you can highlight something, indicate if it's a typo or whatnot, even suggest what the right thing should be... and it gets sent somewhere... and nothing ever happens. I diligently report OCR errors and the like out of hope that someday someone at Amazon will actually look at and act on these reports. It does not seem to ever make a difference. DurianGray posted:Every once in a while I've seen a kindle book listing that will have a warning on it like "Customers report that this book has quality issues" (usually something public domain that someone uploaded as a cashgrab and didn't double-check). But I don't know if they actually take them down or force the uploader to do anything about it. Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Mostly if Amazon gets enough complaints they'll pull the book. Can't speak for trad books but Amazon will 100% take down indie/self-pub books that get too many reports. And then it's hell trying to get them to put it back up. If you're reading an indie book, please please please contact the author with the typos. We will do everything in our power to fix it ASAP. Some of us even have errata reporting pages on our websites for this purpose. I've heard nightmare stories about other authors who wrote in non-US English getting reported for typos because extra u's and missing z's and having their books pulled as a result. Which, yeah, different root cause but is equally terrifying. It's one of the reasons I decided to write in US English instead of Australian. Anyway, to contribute: I am mentally exhausted due to the end of the year and so I am actively avoiding my TBR. Instead I have started reading the first chapter of a random book that I can't even remember where I got it from but it is titled A Cat's Guide to Bonding with Dragons and it is apparently humorous fantasy written in first person POV of a Bengal cat.
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Dec 14, 2023 14:16
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GhastlyBizness posted:Traitor would have blown my 14 year old mind on the Force philosophy and torture stuff alone but Ganner having his own Thermopylae and glorious end guaranteed my mind was blown I'm a big Stover fan but honestly, I thought Traitor felt a little too much like his take on the material and not an organic part of the SW universe. His novelization of Return of the Sith, on the other hand, just made everything about the movie better, without letting the voice of the author intrude.
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Dec 14, 2023 16:46
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Quinton posted:What drives me absolutely nuts is that Kindle, since pretty early on, has had a "report content error" feature where you can highlight something, indicate if it's a typo or whatnot, even suggest what the right thing should be... and it gets sent somewhere... and nothing ever happens. I diligently report OCR errors and the like out of hope that someday someone at Amazon will actually look at and act on these reports. It does not seem to ever make a difference. I reported stuff all the time in the early days of owning a Kindle and like you I think they went nowhere. I'm sure they get sent to some portal for the publisher, who then never checks and/or acts upon it. I think leaving a negative review and being specific about the OCR errors is the only thing that did get one book I was bothered by an update. It doesnt seem as bad as it was but it's still iffy if it's an older book.
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Dec 14, 2023 17:21
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Leng posted:If you're reading an indie book, please please please contact the author with the typos. We will do everything in our power to fix it ASAP. Some of us even have errata reporting pages on our websites for this purpose. That you can report errors in an ebook and Amazon uses it to pull the book entirely instead of provide it to the authors to make corrections is loving wild. Not surprising because Amazon sucks like that, but still wild.
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Dec 14, 2023 18:02
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Keret posted:Diamond Age had great worldbuilding and then took a sharp turn when Stephenson, yet again, felt the need to have his young female character get sexually assaulted for no good reason except that it was edgy I guess. He seemingly just cannot help himself and it's a real bad look. 
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Dec 14, 2023 18:06
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Amazon also historically made it really difficult for authors to actually update books and provide those updates to customers. I don't know if they still do.
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Dec 14, 2023 18:08
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Leng posted:Can't speak for trad books but Amazon will 100% take down indie/self-pub books that get too many reports. And then it's hell trying to get them to put it back up. Ugh, that sucks. My foolish expectation was that Amazon would collate feedback and pass it on to the author/publisher for correction. The stuff I tended to report the most was just blatant OCR errors in earlier ebooks - where letters were mis-interpreted as numerals, ligatures as a different letter, etc.
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Dec 14, 2023 19:18
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I’d imagine the trouble is that a publisher probably has a pipeline for publishing books and the pipeline stops when it gets published. In particular, having someone do corrections on your entire back catalog of published books means paying someone to fix something that won’t make any more money.
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Dec 14, 2023 20:57
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That reminds me that I need to write to a publisher because I'm pretty sure that one of their books is missing a line in two places. Judging by their relative locations, I'm pretty sure their scanner missed the bottom line of both sides of a page, but it's hard to be sure because it doesn't break off or anything, there's just a missing line needed for a conversation to make sense.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:01
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Leng posted:Can't speak for trad books but Amazon will 100% take down indie/self-pub books that get too many reports. And then it's hell trying to get them to put it back up. Kobo doesn't have builtin reporting, but if the author or publisher bothered to include an address to send bug reports to (they usually do not), and I like the book, I'll generally highlight any issues while reading and then, afterwards, go through the highlights and compile a report. Or if I know the author personally (and know they welcome bug reports) I'll just send them corrections over discord, or fix the epub locally and send them the diff I know that's compatible with their workflow. All of these cases are pretty rare, though. quote:Anyway, to contribute: I am mentally exhausted due to the end of the year and so I am actively avoiding my TBR. That sounds incredibly comfy and also possibly like something my daughter would like. I should pick it up so that I have it on tap for after I read Exordia, because I'm probably going to need something comfy.
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Dec 15, 2023 00:03
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Ravenfood posted:Wraith squadron is Allston. Stackpole wrote the Rogue squadron half of the X-Wing series. Thank you for jumping on that grenade for me.
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Dec 15, 2023 04:37
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Anybody talk about this yet? https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/apple-murderbot-series-alexander-skarsgard-1235838405/amp/
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Dec 15, 2023 05:59
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I don’t think it will work in the screen.
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Dec 15, 2023 06:01
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Murderbot is not handsome. Murderbot has totally generic features. Apart from that, half the joy of the series is its narration, and that would be hard to pull off.
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Dec 15, 2023 06:05
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Murderbot is not handsome. Murderbot has totally generic features. Arguably in television being generically handsome is generic.
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Dec 15, 2023 06:08
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Zorak of Michigan posted:I'm a big Stover fan but honestly, I thought Traitor felt a little too much like his take on the material and not an organic part of the SW universe. His novelization of Return of the Sith, on the other hand, just made everything about the movie better, without letting the voice of the author intrude. I agree, it felt very un-Star Wars, but I thought that was in a good way. Finally something different I thought. I only read a few more than a few more books in the NJO series after this but it felt like a big step back, a big step down in quality to me. I lost interest in the books. I went back and read up on the wiki sites what happened since and it just reads like the worst cringe.
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Dec 15, 2023 07:00
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navyjack posted:Anybody talk about this yet? Do we have to? 
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Dec 15, 2023 07:39
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Can't wait to see murderbot do that hosed up eye thing.
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Dec 15, 2023 07:40
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Following completion of Craig Alanson’s Expeditionary Force series, he saw sense (and likely saw the backlash from readers) and has just released book 16. Plans are in place for another two to follow. Backlash was mostly around leaving story lines open rather than the content of the last book, so going for another 3 just makes sense. Im currently working my way back through the audiobooks before reading, but will report back in a few weeks when I’ve got to the latest!
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Dec 15, 2023 08:17
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Murderbot skews feminine-coded; it might make sense to have a dude play them if you wanna make a point of the lack of gender. On the other hand it's kind of a "safe" casting choice.
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Dec 15, 2023 08:21
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Any opinions on Naomi Alderman’s new book The Future? I thought The Power was pretty enjoyable. Positive blurbs from Harkaway, Alastair Reynolds and Connie Willis…
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Dec 15, 2023 15:19
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thotsky posted:Murderbot skews feminine-coded
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Dec 15, 2023 16:13
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Murderbot is a reflection of whoever is reading it. It's Bella Swan turned up to 11, the mirror in which everyone can see themselves, achieving representation points with seemingly everyone except the transgender, because the one thing Murderbot doesn't do is actively express a particular gender. Caveat, I think I only read the first two books before deciding it wasn't for me.
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Dec 15, 2023 16:33
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Slyphic posted:Murderbot is a reflection of whoever is reading it. It's Bella Swan turned up to 11, the mirror in which everyone can see themselves, achieving representation points with seemingly everyone except the transgender, because the one thing Murderbot doesn't do is actively express a particular gender. Caveat, I think I only read the first two books before deciding it wasn't for me. Eh, I don't think this is entirely true. Murderbot isn't really a deliberate self insert or reader reflection and has a lot of specific foibles that would harm that in its rejection of gender, sexuality and even self. Like the first arc the novella have is Murderbot learning to emotionally come to terms with the fact it is a person with agency and beginning to make its own decisions instead of passively existing to consume media. Its a coming of age story more than anything, but a very specific one that largely applies to people who have been traumatized beyond all reason rather than the traditional 'this person is just like me and experiencing the same struggles I am ramped up to 11!'.
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Dec 15, 2023 16:44
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I was including trauma and coming-of-age in the mirror. Everyone is able to look past the elements that don't fit their reflection to see the bits that fit perfectly. It's got something for (almost) everyone. I think Murderbot is a masterfully purposefully crafted reader reflection to maximize it's potential empathy. Kudos to Martha, it took skill to pull it off. I'm just done with reluctant hero stories, so it's not for me at all.
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Dec 15, 2023 17:03
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Murderbot reads as slightly feminine to me, despite being avowedly NB and Ace. I get on just fine with they/them in my head though.
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Dec 15, 2023 17:07
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mystes posted:What makes you say this? I haven't read the whole series but nothing about it seemed gender coded at all to me Looking past a feminist reading of their situation; one of the first things we learn about them is that they're into soap operas. Murderbot also seems to primarily bond with women or bots explicitly presenting as female. I'm alright with a dude playing Murderbot, it's just a little surprising. thotsky fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 18:00
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There was some talk in here at one point about how the gender of the reader influenced how they perceive the gender of Murderbot
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Dec 15, 2023 18:08
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I've seen way more people forget Murderbot uses 'it' pronouns and default to 'he' than 'she' for whatever that's worth. I do find it irritating* that people want to force a gender perception onto it at all. It's a machine, but it also has enough awareness to pick its own pronouns and I remember that even coming up explicitly in at least one of the books unless I'm misremembering. That said, I sort of stopped caring to keep up with Wells' work after how disappointed I was with Witch King. So I don't really care about a Murderbot tv adaptation on the one hand, but on the other I'll probably be irritated to see people call it 'he' whenever stuff about the show inevitably crosses my radar in the future. *(I'm non-binary so it probably hits closer/harder for me than other people.)
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Dec 15, 2023 19:06
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I’ve always read Murderbot as more feminine than masculine. I’m excited for Martha Wells getting a bag of money, but have low expectations for the show.
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Dec 15, 2023 21:00
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The Genderbot Diaries
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Dec 15, 2023 21:07
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Murderbot feels genuinely unfilmable. The entire charm of the premise is that you've got what is essentially the Terminator, but its internal monologue is funny and charming. Its outward presentation to everyone else - which is the only thing we can really get in a modern TV show, since TV and film consider voiceovers to be the Great Satan - is not just uninteresting but inscrutable without the inner voice.
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Dec 15, 2023 21:26
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