The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

My cat decided to show her displeasure at the scratching post by getting into a box of my paper books.

Funny, that. No cat of mine has ever shown the slightest interest in paper books, and I've had 7 of them in 17 years (several kitties were already old when I adopted them, so they only lasted for a few years, unfortunately). My old lady Nublu was mad for paper and cardboard in general, but even she didn't touch my paper books.

The only conclusion to draw is that none of my cats has been a reader.

[ownedbycats]

Reading series out of order.

Most cozy mystery authors are good at making each book stand on their own, but when you know that a character is fine and well and not in prison in book three, it makes the "are they the murderer?" bit in book one kind of fall flat.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Reading series out of order.

Most cozy mystery authors are good at making each book stand on their own, but when you know that a character is fine and well and not in prison in book three, it makes the "are they the murderer?" bit in book one kind of fall flat.

That happens in ordinary mystery series too, sometimes, and might spoil the book even when you read the series in order. Specifically the future love interest of the female protagonist is usually a suspect in these cases, and if you already know he will become the love interest from some blurb, that takes the mystery part out of the plot. I've never liked it either.

[Quoth]

Spoiler for Dorothy Sayer’s “Strong Poison”.

Spoiler:

Harriet Vane isn't Executed

It's different when the book is first published compared to very much later.

I'm rubbish at writing blurbs, reviews and summaries. It gives some comfort that well written blurbs, reviews and summaries by big publishers are often rubbish too, for various reasons. Mostly the Marketing Dept.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Spoiler

Spoiler:

Harriet Vane isn't Executed

A spoiler tag with no context isn't all that useful, as I have no idea whether it's a spoiler for something I've read already, something I'm never going to read, or something I might read and thus would want to avoid the spoiler

I clicked on it, since most of the time I don't mind spoilers, and would suggest "Spoiler for one of Dorothy Sayer's books".

[Quoth]

It was a weak joke, but point taken.

[Renate]

Here's my rant: Table of Contents. They are generally all garbage

The worst are Project Gutenberg because they are scraped from the HTML.
Even for Shakespeare they can't manage a clean hierarchy.

The root of the TOC should be the name of the book.
Nothing under that should repeat the title.
Got a title page? Don't call it "A Tale of Two Cities", call it "Title page". What would you call that in a printed TOC anyway?

Also, use normal capitalization. If somebody wants ALL CAPS they can do that themselves. Making proper capitalization out of caseless text is very difficult.

My reader has the footer with the chapter and page. If the TOC just has "Chapter LVI", I use that. If the TOC has "Chapter LVI In Which I Am Born" I prefer to display "LVI In Which I Am Born" as space is limited. This is just a presentation bit and is not a complaint about what is in the TOC.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Renate

My reader has the footer with the chapter and page. If the TOC just has "Chapter LVI", I use that. If the TOC has "Chapter LVI In Which I Am Born" I prefer to display "LVI In Which I Am Born" as space is limited. This is just a presentation bit and is not a complaint about what is in the TOC.

I prefer no header and footer at all, just the progress bar. On a Kobo you can have a header, a footer, both, or neither, just as you like.

If I want to know which chapter I'm reading, I just tap in the middle of the screen and I can see the chapter number and title. I don't need to see them constantly.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Renate

Here's my rant: Table of Contents. They are generally all garbage

Honestly, I'm just glad when TOC works (which is most of the time, but still fails a surprising amount of time, even after all these years).

[ekbell]

The reason I learned to edit ebooks was one too many anthologies with mucked up ToCs.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ekbell

The reason I learned to edit ebooks was one too many anthologies with mucked up ToCs.

You and me both.

[JSWolf]

One thing i find really annoying about blurbs is when they have way too much review garbage in them. It's meant to be a short summery of the book, not a review.

Also annoying is a page or two of one or two line reviews. I have the book. I don't need the reviews.

[DuskyRose]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing i find really annoying about blurbs is when they have way too much review garbage in them. It's meant to be a short summery of the book, not a review.

Also annoying is a page or two of one or two line reviews. I have the book. I don't need the reviews.

This. One hundred percent agree.

I want to know about the story. I don't care about reviews in that space, because you know they're only going to pick the good ones.

I usually go and read the actual reviews first, and the one-star ones first when I do. That'll usually tell me if the problems will bother me or not.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing i find really annoying about blurbs is when they have way too much review garbage in them. It's meant to be a short summery of the book, not a review.

Also annoying is a page or two of one or two line reviews. I have the book. I don't need the reviews.

I scroll through Overdrive libraries in list mode. This only shows the first 1.5 lines of the book description. So many of those are just some vague review. Put them at the end, at least!

[ownedbycats]

I was a bit disappointed to see this in the summary for a book:

Author's Note: This book contains a non-binary character whose preferred pronouns are they/them. If the notion of a non-binary character (and its resultant use of grammar) is offensive, then this book is not for you!

Not about the non-binary character, but about the fact that the author felt the need to put a warning in place for it. Bloody transphobes.