What Kind Of Improvements Would You Like To See In Books/literature, whats's missing?

[Marcus365]

What Kind Of Improvements Would You Like To See In Books/literature, if any... what's missing?

[pwalker8]

Not real sure what you mean. Could you elaborate a bit?

[Marcus365]

Is there anything missing in the books that you've read so far? Is there anything you would like to see added or taken away from what's popular or available at this point? Depth, creativity, imagination, things like that...is there anything lacking, is there any room for improvements?

[DiapDealer]

I'd like to see the world of literature (aka Books) grow less enamoured of "the new." I don't mean new authors, or new books, but rather that I'm disappointed in the "shoving aside" of excellence on the grounds of not being "innovative" or ground-breaking enough. That seems to be very popular right now. Especially in SFF.

By all means, innovate. Grow. Just stop using innovation (or novelty) as the sole criteria by which quality should be measured.

[Marcus365]

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

[QuantumIguana]

I suppose things can always improve, but I don't necessarily know what that improvement might be until I see it. The more ideas are presented, the greater the opportunity that something that something good will be created. New can be good, but sometimes you find the way to the future by looking to the past. A old, discarded idea can seem new and fresh after a time. Take dragons, for example. They used to be the most badass monsters out there. Then it seemed that every dragon was a kind, wise figure who only wanted to help humans. Going back to the old-fashioned dragon would be a breath of fresh air. Or vampires: it would be so refreshing for vampires not to be angst-ridden victims who were really good at heart, and go back to being monsters.

I would like to see an alternative to dystopia. Bleak, bleak and more bleak gets tiresome. I get tired of protagonists who are more flawed than people normally are. While no one is perfect, there exist people who are basically decent. But when you say this people tend to respond "You want everything to be puppies and rainbows!" No, I just think things could be a little more balanced. I'm not saying there should be no dystopia (I do read some of it) or that characters should be Dudley DoRight. It just seems that bleak can be overdone.

[SteveEisenberg]

I can't imagine how I could ever be familiar enough with the hundreds of thousands (or is it just tens of thousands?) of fiction books released annually to say something was missing from the content. So my content answers have to be in terms of non-fiction topics not covered.

We have a child living in Taiwan and have been been reading books on the island's history. There are not enough that are well-researched, highly readable, and in English.

The more obvious answer to the OP question is that we need more backlist coming out as eBooks. Here's the latest book I've decided to read and that apparently has no eBook:

http://www.amazon.com/Lee-Teng-hui-T.../dp/1403970564

As seen in the above link, the pricing could, from a purely selfish view on my part, also use improvement. I will be asking my daughter to borrow it for me from her college library.

EDITED: I see that the linked title, while not an Amazon eBook, is available as a Nook eBook for $81.00. I wish the author and publisher the best of luck in getting others to pay this price.

[crich70]

I don't know about literature itself but it would be nice if Amazon would put the text to speech option back in its ereaders. The k3 had it and I don't know why Amazon took it out when the brought out the PaperWhite. I think ereaders in general should have that as a feature.

[xg4bx]

I wish science fiction would make a real comeback. Even in film it's a seldom seen genre.

[rkomar]

More commas!!!

[teh603]

If we're talking about literature as in litfic, I'd like to see Modernism taken out behind the barn and finally put out of it's misery. Modernism has been hogging the stage for too long, and we need room for Postmodernism and whatever the next movement will be. Who knows, it might actually get me reading the stuff.

If we're taking about literature as in the written word, I'd like to see either a thought mark character, or italics added to the basic unicode set. I'd like to be able to have my narrator read minds, without having to go back and italicize everything in an editing pass.

[WillAdams]

Editing.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by rkomar

More commas!!!

You would help to bring about the commapocalypse?

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

Editing.

This.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by crich70

I don't know about literature itself but it would be nice if Amazon would put the text to speech option back in its ereaders. The k3 had it and I don't know why Amazon took it out when the brought out the PaperWhite. I think ereaders in general should have that as a feature.

They removed audio from the readers, eliminating TTS was just a side effect of that. Apparently, not enough people wanted to buy audiobooks to listen on their e-ink Kindles. Audio functionality does add expense. I have a Paperwhite, but I may pick up an older Kindle just to have TTS available. It's nice in the car.