Set First Page

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

I've never quite understood why we've bothered with EPUB3 when we have HTML5.

Well, we would have to wrap the HTML5 with something, so why not call that "something" EPUB3?

Eagerly awaiting more details on what exactly HTML5 does to make EPUB3 obsolete...

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Maybe I am mean but I detest and edit out everything that comes before the story, in my reading copies. Dedications are the worst, why do I need to know or care that the tome is dedicated to some random relative, or worse some random initials. If I go to a movie there is no opening scene where main actor gets to say I dedicate this role to auntie dotty.
So for once I am with amazon on where to open at. And that is enough channelling of Katie Hopkins for today.

On the other hand, what with the move comparison, you have to put up with far worse other kinds of junk.

Originally Posted by cybmole

And peeve 2 is the arty smarty epigraph, which is where the author quotes some obscure dead white guy, usually, to prove that he/she is better educated than you will ever be.
Now , shall I mention acknowledgments-, there's thankfully no five minutes at end of movie where actors namecheck everyone they ever met, so why do novelists feel the need...

Why do you care what is tacked onto the end of the book? You don't have to keep reading...

Also again with the ridiculous move comparisons. Actors don't get to say any acknowledgments the same way editors and cover artists and agents and other assorted miscellania in the book world don't get to say any acknowledgments. On the other hand, movies do have credits, which serves much the same purpose as acknowledgments.

You are being irrational and orthogonal.

[cybmole]

epigraph for this post:
"QVANTI CANICVLA ILLA IN FENESTRA "- terry Pratchett ***

rhetorical Question 1
so you approve of having intro pages like:

i'd like to dedicate this to YYZ - you know who you are

troll text:
epigraphs usually occur at the front of the book. in bad/pretentious cases they are at the front of each chapter of the book; so are more annoying then acknowledgements, which , like movie credits, one can "walk out" on.

google tells me that epigraphs date back to the 1700s, and that there is a growing trend for USA authors, who never made it past grade school, to use top 40 lyrics in place of classical allusions..

For me that's as sensible as putting
" please allow me to introduce myself..." Jagger.Richards ,
at the front of a bible but there you go

*** http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/the-...companion.html

[eschwartz]

So again, epigraphs are worse than your own movie-comparison ads and trailers and federal warnings and other stuff... because why? And some of that can't even be skipped.

[cybmole]

actually movie, ads, fed warnings etc are dead easy to skip when ripping/ backing up. I'ts been ages since I've bought a DVD ( that is such an obsolete format ) but back when I was buying educational ones I would routinely make a backup via DVDFAB that had all the ads n stuff removed.
Netflix / AMazon Prime don't put non skippable crap at the start of their films

Many dvd players have firmware hacks that make everything skippable, even the stuff that the studios want to force you to watch every time. Usually it's the same hack the removes the region blocks so you can actually watch any dvd you buy. I recall googling and adding those to bought dvd players back in the day. Ah, the nostalgic wonders of DVD DRM

Back on topic: anyhow I just happened to pick movies rather than say music CDs as my peeve analogy. Would you really want opening epigraphs, dedication etc tracks on each of your music albums. Perhaps something aposite by the billy goats gruff:

Spoiler:

"I'm a troll, fol de rol... ",

or would you just say , no problem I am happy to start playback at track 3 not track 1 every time ?

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

So again, epigraphs are worse than your own movie-comparison ads and trailers and federal warnings and other stuff... because why? ...

I think i'ts because I fell like I'm on the losing side of some game of literacy one-upmanship that I don't want to play.

I don't want to have to google "obscure dead white guy" in order to appreciate the context of some obscure quote from some even more obscure book that the author studied in advanced latin, or be reminded that i have not personally read the tentire bibliography of every author of note from 1400 ad onwards ( shock , horror)

I'd actually rather have the top 40 lyrics quotes, though they will lead to much head scratching for readers of any book that outlives the current pop culture

we could try the honesty test.: open say 100 books from your calibre library. list all the books/plays/poems that are name-checked in their epigraphs - admit to how many of those you've never read or never heard of
I'd do it for you but I've zapped all of mine

[cybmole]

PS so refreshingly quaint to meet folks who still use DVDs, i'ts like discovering an Amish community at the end of your street.

Just as shelves of hardbacks have evolved to calibre library/ content server/portable devices, movies have evolved from easy to scratch discs to files on a media server... I rediscovered Plex recently as it's supported on my new Kindle Fire TV stick; I setup Plex media on main PC & pointed it at my video folders only. It correctly indexed, found metadata for etc. all stored shows and movies ( with just a couple of quick patchups/renames) & I can now stream them all to the fire stick or to my fire tablet, Plex can even get the trailers & jungles if you want them ! everything has been sorted and organised, by show, by season, with cover art...automatically... and so far I don't even need to think about formats, bit rates. all that is taken care of under the bonnet. Compare that with find the dvd box set, ( or realise that your kids borrowed it & have not returned it ) fight with these plastic buttons that dare you to extract the disc without snapping it, sit through " you wouldn't steal a car... " for the millionth time.... then watch the FBI warning again... those Amish know how to live it up

[DiapDealer]

Yeah, you're a regular renaissance man. I've been a Plex Pass subscriiber for several years. What does any of that have to do with you thinking that authors (whose books you want to read) are name-dropping to prove their intellectual superiority? And if you edit that stuff out, why would you care why they're doing it in the first place?

[cybmole]

this is clearly going the way of my original_epub conversion arguments

but final fling/ attempt to explain.

if seems ( obviously in my own paranoia) that the author is implying : if you've not read the obscure book used for my epigraph you clearly don't have the right literary background to appreciate what comes next. Lifes too short to have to detour & read all that stuff.

so Carpe Diem, or fish for dinner as we say here, and all that...

honesty test 2: what % of authors have actually read their epigraph sources , cover to cover, and what % just googled up something suitably academic looking ?

NON TIMETIS MESSOR

[Notjohn]

What about editing out the stuff one doesn't agree with? I'm reading Armageddon Averted, about the involution of the late and mostly unlamented Soviet Union. Toward the end, Mr Kotkin makes some gratuitous swipes at Reagan's part in the events leading up to that collapse. Shall I take those out, to make a book more to my (no doubt biased) liking?

If we had an app for this, we could read only the stuff that confirms our prior knowledge, without troubling ourselves with any new information.

Oh! And what about changing the titles, for crying out loud? What right has Evelyn Waugh got to title his book A Handful of Dust when I haven't the faintest idea what the literary reference might be? Or Ernest Hemingway with The Sun Also Rises? The snobs!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by cybmole

if seems ( obviously in my own paranoia) that the author is implying : if you've not read the obscure book used for my epigraph you clearly don't have the right literary background to appreciate what comes next. Lifes too short to have to detour & read all that stuff.

so Carpe Diem, or fish for dinner as we say here, and all that...

honesty test 2: what % of authors have actually read their epigraph sources , cover to cover, and what % just googled up something suitably academic looking ?

NON TIMETIS MESSOR

Man, paranoia is right. That sounds like a full-blown complex you got going, there. I've never once felt an epigraph was some sort of "test" for the right to appreciate, nor wondered whether the author had read their own epigraph source (life's indeed too short to worry about stuff like that).

So does removing the "test" restore your right to read the book without the proper prerequisites, then?

I repeat ... skipping an epigraph is still a lot easier than dreaming up delusional reasons for their existence.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Or Ernest Hemingway with The Sun Also Rises? The snobs!

that one's easy it means "betcha don't finish this before tomorrow ! "

then there's War and Peace a.ka. I think that's all my options covered.

give me a hard one.

so honesty test 3: how many times has a stricking epigraph prompted you to go buy/read the quoted book in question, in order to better appreciate the author's cultural milieu ?
.....


yep, thought so.

Apropos of nothing much, one of my favourite The Simpson's scenes is where Mr Burns has a roomful of monkeys with typewriters. he checks what one monkey has just typed & sees "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," - says "rubbish" & bins it.

i guess actually the closest movie equivalent is the tag line, but the only place I see those is IMDB & I've get to see one that calls for a classical eduation

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

So does removing the "test" restore your right to read the book without the proper prerequisites, then?

.

oh yes, that & the happy pills work just fine

can no one spell T R O L L today

PS >notjohn
ON "changing the titles"- you surely don't believe that authors get to choose their own titles do you:
go read Barry Eisler on why he now self publishes, or what happened when the guy who cranks out the Jason Bourne stories wanted to not have a 3 word title....
http://www.barryeisler.com/faq.php

Spoiler:

the sad story of the original Rain titles began with the moniker Rain Fall for the first in the series. It was a silly play on the protagonist's name, and led to an unfortunate and unimaginative sequence of similar such meaningless, interchangeable titles: Hard Rain, Rain Storm, Killing Rain (the British titles were better, but still not right: Blood from Blood for #2; Choke Point for #3; One Last Kill for #4). By the fifth book, I was desperate for something different, and persuaded my publisher to go with The Last Assassin, instead. In general, I think The Last Assassin is a good title, but in fairness it really has nothing to do with the story in the fifth book beyond the fact that there's an assassin in it. But it was better than more of Rain This and Rain That. The good news is, the fifth book did very well indeed; the bad news is, the book's success persuaded my publisher that assassin was a magic word and that what we needed now was to use the word assassin in every title. And so my publisher told me that although they didn't care for my proposed title for the sixth book—The Killer Ascendant—they were pleased to have come up with something far better. The sixth book, they told me proudly, would be known as The Quiet Assassin.

I tried to explain that while not quite as redundant as, say, The Deadly Assassin or The Lethal Assassin, a title suggesting an assassin might be notable for his quietness was at best uninteresting (as opposed to, say, Margret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, which immediately engages the mind because of the connection of two seemingly contradictory qualities). The publisher was adamant. I told them that if they really were hell-bent on using assassin in a title that otherwise had nothing to do with the book, couldn't we at least call the book The Da Vinci Assassin, or The Sudoku Assassin?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by cybmole

so honesty test 3: how many times has a stricking epigraph prompted you to go buy/read the quoted book in question, in order to better appreciate the author's cultural milieu ?
.....


yep, thought so.

Honesty test 4: why would you feel an epigraph's relevance or worth was predicated on the sale/reading of the source it was quoted from?

Honesty test 5: why are you buying/reading books by authors who write books in a manner that offends you so?

Very odd. Oh well, done now.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I repeat ... skipping an epigraph is still a lot easier than dreaming up delusional reasons for their existence.

so why DO epigraphs exist really. . seriously - I'd like to know

if they are

a) not a test
b) not a look how clever/educated I am statement
c) not an invitation to immerse ones self in the author's cultural milieu

could it be

d) a desperate attempt to inflate the page count
e) my agent/publisher says I have to have one
f) I bought this neat random epigraph generator app & it' would be a shame not to use it
g) other - please elucidate

I asked google. It said See also Pretentious Latin Motto.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Epigraph
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...iousLatinMotto

which brings us back to Terry Pratchett
NON QVOD MANEAT, SED QVOD ADIMIMVS