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Syrinxx posted:Why are fiction novels always called <Title> : A Novel ? Isn't it kind of implied that it's a novel when it's sitting in the fiction section? It's a marketing thing but it differentiates more "literary" novels (that is, not novels that necessarily actually have more literary value, but novels that are marketed as such) from thrillers, mysteries, scifi, and other kinds of genre fiction. Note that most genre novels don't usually have this, though some thrillers have "a thriller" and some mysteries have "a (name of recurring protagonist) mystery". It's also a fairly recent development, I think it started getting popular in the late 80's/early 90's. Plus, there are of course some books in the fiction section that are not novels. Collections of short stories or novellas for example. And I think it's a fair bet that it's also been used on the cover of "novels" that are really a bunch of bullshit about the writers' personal life as a means of thinly masking that. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Mar 2, 2010 |
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Mar 2, 2010 19:13
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therattle posted:Yes. Otherwise it's desecration. People who write on books other than their own make me furious. A lot of the time when you see writing in a library book, the library got it that way
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Mar 9, 2010 20:13
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Don't worry, there's a couple more books after you stopped reading the series, but nothing happens in them.
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Apr 15, 2010 03:05
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Oleum Animale 68C posted:Is there a book series about a high fantasy world undergoing an industrial revolution? Yeah, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
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Apr 28, 2010 02:06
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There is a successful Russian literature thread, a successful military history thread, a decent Japanese literature thread, we've also had, in the past, decent threads on Pynchon, Shakespeare, Wallace, and other non-SF/F matters, so I wouldn't doom your classics thread to failure before you even write it.
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Apr 28, 2010 22:40
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I generally dislike Ayn Rand's philosophy but I definitely think you should read her books before forming any kind of opinion on them.
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May 11, 2010 19:59
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Van Dis posted:This forum has terrible taste but here goes nothing. Why are you asking for recommendations in this forum if you hate it so much? I mean I don't like all of the same scifi stuff that most TBB folk do either, but really, there are plenty of other online communities where people talk about all kinds of other books... so what's the point of coming to whine with this exaggerated goony nonsense? Anyway here are some recommendations: Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon is a really good travel book covering several areas of the country, you might especially find the parts about the South and the Appalachian states good reading. For NYC: Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, Tom Folsom's The Mad Ones, John Wray's Lowboy, Richard Price's Bloodbrothers. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 19:04 on May 20, 2010 |
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May 20, 2010 18:55
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What the hell? McMurphy has a pretty valid point - having two threads for one book series, one just to "entice people" to read it seems pretty ridiculous.
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May 21, 2010 16:22
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BABY FlNLAND posted:has the argument in favour of GRRM (George R.(Raymond) R.(Richard) Martin) degenerated into "the many GRRM threads are justified because there are many GRRM threads" I think he's saying just that SA is inhabited by a particularly nerdy group of people in general which is why GRRM is one of the most popular authors. While I'm not a fan personally and think having more than one GRRM thread is stupid, there are plenty of other online book discussion communities inhabited by very different kinds of people that talk about very different kind of books, so if this place really rubs you the wrong way it's really not that hard to find another place more suited to your tastes.
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May 22, 2010 15:58
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There's a longstanding thread on Russian literature, a good thread on DFW, we've had some decent discussions of Joyce, Shakespeare, Pynchon, and others. Yeah, SF and fantasy is the majority and the fact that there are long threads about Warhammer and Star Wars books is not a good sign, but still, it's easier to complain and talk down about others than it is to contribute positively. If everyone who complained about how TBB is too nerdy would instead focus on posting about books they do like and consider worthwhile, and supporting threads that aren't about nerdy poo poo, it wouldn't even be an issue.
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May 22, 2010 16:16
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In addition to those already mentioned there's We Read, Book Army, Shelfari, and Amazon has discussion forums tied to certain books and genre's, though I can't say they are all that good. There are also various genre specific discussion boards out there, and a lot of interesting discussion actually takes place on blogs rather than on forums. There are hundreds and hundreds of book related blogs of varying degrees of interest. Also there are now literary/publishing discussions on Twitter that can be pretty interesting. #litchat is one of the good weekly ones, authors and editors are often invited to participate.deety posted:Goodreads has groups, which basically means anyone can make their own forum there. Some of the groups are good, others are lame. The only problem is you have to wade past fifty zillion loving "roleplay" groups made by little kids who use them like a chatroom. I've found that not really a problem at all. If you want to discuss classics of western lit for example you can pretty easily find large active discussions about it without having to deal with any of that kind of stuff.
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May 25, 2010 14:28
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Publisher or bookseller depending on the arrangement. But yeah almost never the author.
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Jun 18, 2010 04:02
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Fire In The Disco posted:Is there a specific thread in The Book Barn where I can post for help finding a book I once read, or do I start a new thread? well I'm going to take this opportunity to be an rear end and point you to a forum elsewhere that I created for explicitly that purpose http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Lost-Books/bd-p/lostbooks
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Jun 24, 2010 00:27
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Goodreads is the best site of its type, IMO. At least if you are looking for social-based recommendations and reviews. If you are looking for a lot of data then check out Librarything.
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Jul 23, 2010 00:14
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I just finished reading almost every Eric Ambler novel that I could find in print, though there are still a couple I'm missing. For an author as formulaic as he was, the quality was consistently very high, I was always entertained and interested and often surprised - especially with his post-war books. In fact the only book of his that I'd say doesn't really work is Send No More Roses (also called Siege of Villa Lipp) which is the only one I've read that doesn't follow his usual formula. If you haven't read Ambler and you enjoy John LeCarre or Len Deighton, definitely check him out as from what I understand, he pretty much invented that style. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 16:17
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The formulaic books I was talking about (Eric Ambler's) are not at all the kind where you can predict the whole plot from the beginning, I just meant that they all start out with the same kind of setup. Many of them are fairly unpredictable.
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Sep 18, 2015 09:06
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i just read The Day of the Jackal and it was ok.
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Oct 7, 2015 20:46
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I don't remember that part, the prose was generally very plain and I would say "workmanlike", though it did cause me to wonder if the infamous IKEA scene in the Larsson books might have been a parody of it. mostly though I thought the plot had a good buildup but that the payoff didn't really work right and I feel like the author was more or less cheating with the whole "manhunt" section of the book.
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Oct 8, 2015 00:39
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what do you mean? they are coloring books for adults, meaning they tend to feature more complex art than those for children. seems pretty easy to understand..
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Oct 28, 2015 20:52
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Hedrigall posted:It's just insane how they've popped up all of a sudden. Did someone like Oprah spruik them?  what the hell country do you live in where 5 or 6 books out of the top 10 best-sellers are coloring books?they are just a fun hobby/timewaster kind of thing like crossword puzzles etc.. they aren't particularly new either, and lots of adults still read books all the time so I'm not sure what you are talking about at all.. though again this might be related to your strange country. also, "spruik", really?
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Oct 29, 2015 04:31
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well that's cool, they are definitely relaxing. though it's still weird that they are in the top 10 of any country's bestseller list. even Australia
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Oct 29, 2015 22:40
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Ornamented Death posted:It was largely the same here, and as far as I can tell that wasn't an act of desperation, but rather the intended direction of the company as envisioned by the C-suite. B&N is well on it's way to the same fate for literally the exact same reasons. It's insane. It was a response to Amazon, definitely sort of an act of desperation. Although in the case of B&N, said C suite has been almost completely replaced twice during this whole process and there are some shareholder lawsuits in the background that have also driven things.
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Nov 3, 2015 19:06
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Is it worth sticking with Nook or should I abandon ship soon? Depends on what you mean by soon. B&N has been dying its slow death for a while, I predict they will not last out the decade but most likely result is Nook and related properties being acquired by someone else, Microsoft or Apple or even Amazon, in which case it still wouldn't be entirely useless and there will probably be some sort of conversion process. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Nov 3, 2015 |
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Nov 3, 2015 19:25
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Personally I cannot stand ebooks, I just can't focus on them. I solve the storage problem with paper books by constantly giving books to other people. Unless it's some sort of rare edition or something I'll use for reference in the longterm.
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Nov 3, 2015 19:44
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these days like 90% of the books I read are NYRB paperbacks. they are consistently very good books, and they also consistently short/thin books which is great since i am always on the road. and they are also consistently well designed       Earwicker fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Nov 4, 2015 |
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Nov 4, 2015 09:33
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Hedrigall posted:According to you, all those words together in a formatted downloadable file aren't worth any money at all. But print it on paper and it magically becomes something of value. uh, yes? congratulations on wrapping your mind around magick 101 i guess
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Nov 4, 2015 16:39
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:Valid point. However, saying that the content of the book Independent of physical form doesn't have monetary value still devalues the author in a non-monetary sense. good. most authors could use a rigorous de-valueing.
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Nov 5, 2015 17:18
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:Would there be any interest in an Occult/Theosophy/Hermeticism thread if I were to make one? definitely
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Nov 10, 2015 01:31
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Hedrigall posted:I was with you with all the book-culling, but this bit hurt me. Books are precious, if not to you then to somebody, somewhere. This attitude sounds romantic but is really just silly given the enormous number of absolute garbage books that are produced in massive quantities and are still floating around out there. If you are talking about something like novels or history or philosophy or cookbooks, sure, those are all still useful to someone as long as the book is in good condition. The thousands and thousands and thousands of copies of obsolete business books, political screeds, y2k preparedness guides, ghost written celeb memoirs, stuff often purchased in bulk by colleagues of the author and given away for free at businesses conferences and political rallies or press events... there's nothing remotely "precious" about those, even if some of them might be mildly entertaining for a minute. Let alone something like a phonebook, which is still produced in massive numbers. A book in and of itself is not some sacred special object, it's just a carrier of information. I can understand why a specific book might have special meaning for someone of course but the medium in and of itself is no more "precious" than a candy wrapper.
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Nov 30, 2015 16:15
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I know the answer here is to just set aside an hour or so a night as reading time, but I’ve never been good at that sort of thing. This is stupid and kind of pathetic when I type it out, just wondering if anyone’s done the same thing and how they got their reading back on track. I made reading part of my daily routine by combining it with other daily routines. Every morning I read for an hour or so while having my coffee and breakfast. At night before bed I read for an hour or two while smoking a joint and drinking whisky. If I'm eating lunch alone I'll read then as well. That works with my current schedule because I work from home part of the year and on the road part of the year (lots of reading time there as well). When I had a 9-5 office job I read during my commutes and would also make it a point to go out to lunch by myself to sit and read at a cafe or restaurant once or twice a week. Some people read at the gym as well while using a bike or treadmill or elliptical but I've tried that and it makes me motion sick :/
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Dec 3, 2015 17:37
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IMO if you are looking for accessible and well written but also very thorough and thought provoking history, check out Norman Davies' Europe or The Isles
Earwicker fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Dec 5, 2015 |
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Dec 5, 2015 00:04
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There was also a decent non-fiction thread and a history thread but they seem to have faded away. But also it's stupid to complain about content you want to see without making at least some effort yourself. If you think there should be a Hemingway thread then by all means: start one.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:31
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blue squares posted:I can't even be bothered to vote for President and you want me to make a thread??? the President is already elected by a small committee well before the election, your vote is purely a waste of time if you start a thread there might be some visibile result, i.e. people posting in it. or there might not. maybe someone needs to do one of those The Sun Also Rises And Zombies mashups.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:45
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A Farewell to My Arms
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Jan 4, 2016 19:43
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less laughter posted:Actually it's more that actual readers prefer reading books to yapping about them. This isn't really true and this kind of "actual reader" nonsense is dumb. Lots of people who enjoy reading lots of books also enjoy discussing them with other people. This is why things like book clubs and literature classes exist and are popular. You may not be one of them, but you are not the only type of "actual reader" that exists. You certainly seem to spend a lot of time posting about TV shows. Doesn't that take away from your "actual reading" time just as much as discussing books would?
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Jan 5, 2016 23:12
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I am not attacking your character. There is nothing at all wrong with discussing tv shows. But since you said that discussing books would take away from your reading time, I'm wondering why the same does not apply to discussing TV shows. What's the difference? Mel Mudkiper posted:you have a weird habit of going after people's post histories in arguments bro I'm not really "going after" anything. I'm pointing out that many people who enjoy reading also enjoy doing things that take time away from reading. For some people that might be discussing the books. For someone else it might be watching or talking about tv shows. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make anyone any more of an Actual Reader. That part is bullshit. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 23:20
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A human heart posted:I'd love to discuss the books i read more, unfortunately very few people actually want to talk about the very cool writings of tedious europeans. A lot of the books I read are by tedious Europeans just different ones than the ones you like apparently!
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Jan 6, 2016 06:08
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The Death of the Author was an event that occurred in the fall of 1967 when all texts were rendered completely anonymous due to a word virus trojaned into academia by a French mentalhacker
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Feb 15, 2016 17:38
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yeah you will find tons of pissy one star reviews on goodreads, amazon, b&n, etc. for any book that is commonly assigned in any kind of high school or college class. some classes even have students write and post these reviews as an assignment.
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Mar 10, 2016 17:58
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Nakar posted:What do 1-2 stars mean to you? It probably depends on reviewer standards. For instance 1 might mean "mediocre/bad but I finished it" or might mean "I dropped it, terrible." Without a clear standard it's hard to know what the reviewer means. Is 1 star the shitpile or is it as bad as a book can be without being not worth bothering with? Bit of a difference there. Even this is overly optimistic about people's motives. There are people who will give a book they never read 1 star because of something the author said in an interview on tv, or because they really dislike a person they know who enjoys a movie based on the book, or because the book contains a positive portrayal of the homosexual lifestyle according to an email they got from their cousin, etc. And at the same time there are people who will give a book 5 stars unread because their friend or cousin wrote it, or because they like a previous book by the same author and just assume this one is good, or they're told it supports their political beliefs, or because they feel like they're "supposed to" have read that book or supposed to like it because of whatever social group they consider themselves a part of, etc. And then there are of course people who rate a book based on their experience with the shipping company who delivered the book to them, or based on the price set by the retailer, etc. And none of these kinds of bullshit ratings are outliers, they are all extremely common.
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Mar 10, 2016 19:34
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