Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
I would support an infinite variety of tags so that I could avoid looking at titles of books that in which I have no interest.
In addition to John's suggestion, I would also embrace subforums for [insert device name, e.g., Kindle]-only offerings with the proviso that if a book subsequently became available for more than just one device, the post could be moved to a multidevice subforum.
And if neither is going to fly (which is what I suspect), then I'd ask for a rule that requires the thread title to include the information or at least that the information be listed in bullet form at the very beginning of the message, before description/title information.
As to your suggestion about discerning it from the title, On Earth As It is In Heaven could be apocalyptic vampire novel with greek gods tormenting satanists, as easily as it is a christian novel.
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I'd definitely read the latter (and won't read this one, myself). From the first line of the post, though, it's about the lord's prayer, so I'd guess at that point that it's not for me. Why post it? I know that it IS for a number of others, just as I know that Dr. Drib probably won't read the romance I posted .. and it is one that I would have some trouble classifying .. it's a historical romance and God is mentioned in the description, but not as a major theme and there are no tags or publisher classifications that would place it firmly into christian fiction. And without reading a number of these actual books, it is sometimes difficult to assign a tag (especially at the point of posting), even if adding "christian fiction historical romance M/F" wouldn't push the title into being so long that no one could see that it was Kindle only (which ticks just as many people off, even if they can get it free, read it on nearly any hardware and liberate it, if so desired), let alone see the title. What if it were, in fact, Jewish fiction and I made a mistake (sure, it's euro centered and mentioned God, but that doesn't mean that is exclusively "christian" in nature, even if the odds are stacked that way). Do we then start labeling "muslim fiction" (does Amsterdam 2012 fit this? Or only radical propaganda describing the afterlife for it's followers?) What about a label for the non-christian fiction? Does that only include the books where no religion is ever mentioned? How do we label the wide category of urban fantasy, some of which has it's own religious leanings? Anti-Christian fiction? Will "christian fiction" include only books with proselytizing? If so, who is appointed to read them and determine this? Someone who likes it (and might not even see it) or someone who does not (and is overly sensitive and labels the historical romance where a priest occurs as such)? Some of the "christian fiction" I've seen tagged only has no bad words or pre-marital sex (or are practically harlequin books and faith is almost not mentioned), while others are sermons thinly disguised (and often poorly written).
I am firmly against subforums, unless you can log into the main forum and see ALL the posts at one time (which, from what I've seen here, you can't).
I don't feel duped to open a thread and discover it's a sports book, horror, a memoir or any number of other genres I am not interested in (including Christian fiction). I simply close the thread and move on.