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branedotorg posted:if you see a book below 4-4.2 on goodreads, it's going to be bad, no matter how many geocities era animated gifs you see in the reviews. The Man Who Was Thursday is a 3.83, Frankenstein a 3.86 and even Kafka's Metamorphosis's the same that's not right
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Jan 15, 2024 01:12
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yeah if a review is low on goodreads i assume it’s either: 1) being review bombed and/or is involved in some YA drama 2) actually very good but involves conscious effort, patience, or goodwill to appreciate like famous austrian author adolf hitler is still sitting at 3.18, tied with can xue’s love in the new millennium, that’s sort of a number to keep in mind
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Jan 15, 2024 01:34
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Tree Goat posted:like famous austrian author adolf hitler is still sitting at 3.18, tied with can xue’s love in the new millennium, that’s sort of a number to keep in mind * - Better known for other work.
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Jan 15, 2024 01:44
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lifg posted:* - Better known for other work. Painting?
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Jan 15, 2024 08:36
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Is there a Letterboxd but for books? (Well other than this forum) It’d be cool to see all the books I’ve finished in a year and be able to review them.
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Jan 16, 2024 14:44
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LibraryThing and StoryGraph are better features-wise, but GoodReads has the larger userbase.
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Jan 16, 2024 14:59
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Yeah, GoodReads is the answer.
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Jan 16, 2024 15:05
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Is there a Letterboxd but for books? (Well other than this forum) It’d be cool to see all the books I’ve finished in a year and be able to review them.
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Jan 16, 2024 22:08
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Is there a Letterboxd but for books? (Well other than this forum) It’d be cool to see all the books I’ve finished in a year and be able to review them. pre:books.txt
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Jan 17, 2024 16:31
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Armauk posted:
Just curious, what is books.txt and why is it made in NotePad?
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Jan 17, 2024 16:39
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eightysixed posted:Just curious, what is books.txt and why is it made in NotePad? Some benefits: It's available offline, you can format it however you want, you own the data, absolutely no tracking, no one needs to know you read the entirety of A Crown of Thorns and Roses.
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Jan 18, 2024 21:01
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Started reading Chain Gang All Stars because, not knowing anything about it, I thought it was some serious, poignant novel about black life in the gang world or something It’s not that, but uhhh I’m pleasantly surprised because it owns, lots of action One or those books where I seemed to notice it everywhere and once I saw it in person I had to get a copy, marketing works
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Jan 18, 2024 21:35
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Probably a 3nd of the way in to the second Thursday Murder Club book and while on the bus I had the thought: "Spillane was less fascist".
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Jan 18, 2024 22:28
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Is there a Letterboxd but for books? (Well other than this forum) It’d be cool to see all the books I’ve finished in a year and be able to review them. StoryGraph was my answer for the reading logging thing. It has an app and is very lightweight. For me, it’s the book Letterboxd. I love LibraryThing but I use it to catalogue physical books not to track my reading, so at least for me it’s a different use case.
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Jan 19, 2024 02:18
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Has anyone ever read The Dark Island by Robert Barr? I’ve listened to the fantastic BBC Radio adaptation and have questions about it that I’m hoping the book could answer
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Jan 21, 2024 14:39
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Hey book barn, long time reader (but not of your sub just like books in general), first time poster. If there's a better thread for this question point me to it. Does anyone here have any experience with Kubo.com? Humble has a Terry Pratchett bundle that I want to get, but it's fulfilled through Kubo. I don't know what kind of DRM they have and I don't want to be locked into yet another app, and worse it looks like they push their own reader (which from what I can tell is a cheap android tablet) pretty heavily. Here's what I want: normal file types (.epub or .mobi ideally) that I can throw at my existing apps and hardware. The ability to just download the files and stick them on my home server so I can have them on hand without having to remember which digital library I picked them up from. Basically I want to know how onerous and annoying Kobi's DRM scheme is.
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Jan 21, 2024 16:05
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Kobo's DRM is like Kindle's. Their ereaders are actually pretty nice, on par with Kindles, but if you're not into a dedicated ereader then they won't convert you. It's not hard to break the DRM but you would need to download a program and a plugin (Calibre and DeDRM) to do so. Downloading from Kobo will give you a .acsm file for Adobe Digital Editions that has the DRM on it
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Jan 21, 2024 18:27
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Cyrano4747 if you want help breaking DRM or working calibre let me know! I'm more than willing to help you read books freely.
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Jan 21, 2024 18:33
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Thanks for the info. So just to be clear, I'm not getting normal file formats directly from Kobo, but would have to de-DRM it myself. After that would it be good to go as far as formatting etc. goes, or is this one of those situations where you end up with funky paragraphs and chapter headers? Humerus posted:Downloading from Kobo will give you a .acsm file for Adobe Digital Editions that has the DRM on it Am I to gather from this that I'd have to gently caress with Adobe? Because I really want to avoid having anything to do with Adobe, my god they suck.
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Jan 21, 2024 19:11
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I'm pleased that you are asking about how to use files you are purchasing, but breaking DRM seems to be getting close to  but I'm a dumbass so I'm happy to be wrong also gently caress our capitalist corporate overlords and all
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Jan 21, 2024 22:09
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Bilirubin posted:I'm pleased that you are asking about how to use files you are purchasing, but breaking DRM seems to be getting close to afaik removing DRM from something you've purchased yourself is not illegal. It's when sharing/distributing it that becomes an issue. The only sin you're committing by removing DRM is breaking whatever end user licence agreement you completely scrolled past and accepted when you signed up for an Amazon or Kobo account.
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Jan 21, 2024 22:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:Thanks for the info. Unless there's a way I'm not aware of, yes. The flow is Download .acsm from Kobo, open that in Adobe Digital Editions, which creates an epub that I can then import into Calibre where the DRM is stripped. It's the same as downloading (most) books from Google Play so I was already familiar with how to do it.
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Jan 21, 2024 23:14
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Thanks for the info.
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Jan 22, 2024 00:59
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It's there a TBB book club? Because if so, I have a new book recommendation - https://twitter.com/bombsfall/status/1749477989018948088 
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Jan 22, 2024 20:13
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There is a book club, and why the hell would we want to read something that advertises itself as full of hate?
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Jan 22, 2024 20:18
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Is it about facing and destroying a series of archons
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Jan 23, 2024 08:54
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StrixNebulosa posted:There is a book club, and why the hell would we want to read something that advertises itself as full of hate? And sounds poo poo
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Jan 23, 2024 12:25
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StrixNebulosa posted:There is a book club, and why the hell would we want to read something that advertises itself as full of hate? It was meant as a joke.  The book sounds like a terrible mess.
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Jan 23, 2024 17:08
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Mordiceius posted:It was meant as a joke. Jokes, in my dead gay forum? Hell no! Anyway that book reminds me of “How I won a Nobel Prize” which I *think* has the same premise (haven’t read it, but it’s on my list), but apparently, it’s good https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/julius-taranto/how-i-won-a-nobel-prize/9780316513074/
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Jan 23, 2024 20:04
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101 posted:afaik removing DRM from something you've purchased yourself is not illegal. It's when sharing/distributing it that becomes an issue. The only sin you're committing by removing DRM is breaking whatever end user licence agreement you completely scrolled past and accepted when you signed up for an Amazon or Kobo account. I understand and appreciate what you are saying, but in reviewing the Book Barn rules after this discussion, you will note this is expressly mentioned as a no go. So unless in discussion with admins its decided this really isn't a problem for the site I'm going to have to insist this line of conversation be dropped going forward. On the other hand, goon written book Exordia just out today is offered free from DRM, so its nice to see authors and publishers addressing this issue of inter platform transferability of materials we purchase.
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Jan 23, 2024 22:07
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Fwiw I believe Tor.com (which may or may not have been renamed) does not put DRM on their books at all, though I assume Amazon still puts their own on them. I just know when I buy from Play Books if it's a Tor.com published book, I actually just download an epub instead of the .acsm file like other books. It all just sucks, I remember when MP3 files all had fractured and lovely DRM and then iTunes moved in, unified the DRM and then eventually they stopped having DRM altogether...just in time for streaming to take off. I just think ebooks are too niche to really call for that sort of overhaul unfortunately.
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Jan 23, 2024 22:38
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I was kinda shocked that the DRM on the kindle books I bought was so bad that I couldn't even open them up on my new Kindle without doing some account stuff and I can't open them up in Calibre. So the answer became clear: never buy an ebook again
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Jan 24, 2024 00:23
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Casey Finnigan posted:I was kinda shocked that the DRM on the kindle books I bought was so bad that I couldn't even open them up on my new Kindle without doing some account stuff and I can't open them up in Calibre. The promise of ebooks has been largely unfulfilled imo. I mean, they're... "ok", at best, just another format to read, but everything around them kinda... sucks. The DRM, the price (sometimes more expensive than a physical copy!), the lock-in (can't lend or borrow), crappy default typography (which tbh is kinda bad, even if Amazon has improved a bit on this front), crappy editions (good luck reading a badly formatted ebook). Some parts of ebooks (official versions!) can even be outright broken, like footnotes. Even the screens haven't improved much, just a mediocre gray unevenly lit screen (backlit, if you're lucky). Slow "page turns". Etc. E-books stormed out of the gates decades ago, but then... largely sat there, without any progress. For example, anyone with an ebook containing a large number of images knows it sucks to read on a traditional b&w e-reader (besides being slow, looks bad, in grayscale). Compare that to what Stripe press did with this ebook, Poor Charlie's Almanack: https://www.stripe.press/poor-charlies-almanack/cover Obviously e-books have been very good for self-published authors, and for that alone I give them a pass, but after being a big fan of ebooks when the first kindle came out, today I kinda regret not buying more physical editions. Oh, also immediate lookup of a word is very nice too.
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Jan 24, 2024 06:56
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A lot of people just put out really poor ebooks, and they tend to stay bad because there is not a huge public outcry for someone to make a slightly-nicer ebook of Terry Pratchett's books the way there's a demand for fancy print editions of his works. There generally isn't even a way to get updates with typos corrected!
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Jan 24, 2024 07:03
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I understand all of your points, and it makes total sense.  Having said all of that, I love my 10th Generation Paperwhite.  I’m sort of an insomniac, so I can quietly read with no light at 3am and not disturb the girlfriend until it’s time to go back to sleep. v  v
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Jan 24, 2024 07:11
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Comfy Fleece Sweater posted:The promise of ebooks has been largely unfulfilled imo. I mean, they're... "ok", at best, just another format to read, but everything around them kinda... sucks. The DRM, the price (sometimes more expensive than a physical copy!), the lock-in (can't lend or borrow), crappy default typography (which tbh is kinda bad, even if Amazon has improved a bit on this front), crappy editions (good luck reading a badly formatted ebook). Some parts of ebooks (official versions!) can even be outright broken, like footnotes. Even the screens haven't improved much, just a mediocre gray unevenly lit screen (backlit, if you're lucky). Slow "page turns". Etc. All of this is true, but there is one thing that I do love about e-books, and that is that I can carry around an entire loving library on the device that I already have in my pocket for calling people and browsing the forums while taking a poo poo. I will be the first person to recognize that I really, really should have gotten a dedicated reader years ago, but I still prefer physical copies when I can get them for most "serious" reading. But gently caress around time sitting in a subway or on an airplane? Man, it's nice to not have to carry an extra thing around. Which is a big part of why I seek out copies without much in the way of DRM, because it's much easier for me to manage for me with my habits that don't include anyone's bespoke hardware.
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Jan 24, 2024 14:25
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Well yeah, the whole library thing is also an excellent point. Can’t my Kindle hold like 4,000 ebooks? And that’s only with 3GB available for use after the OS. Good lord a phone could hold The Library of Congress 
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Jan 24, 2024 15:03
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You can download the entire Wikipedia on your phone with some caveats.
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Jan 24, 2024 15:28
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Bilirubin posted:I understand and appreciate what you are saying, but in reviewing the Book Barn rules after this discussion, you will note this is expressly mentioned as a no go. So unless in discussion with admins its decided this really isn't a problem for the site I'm going to have to insist this line of conversation be dropped going forward. Fair enough. My apologies
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Jan 24, 2024 17:32
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Megazver posted:You can download the entire Wikipedia on your phone with some caveats. sweet, gonna skip the caveats & download even more then!
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Jan 24, 2024 17:40
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