The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Quoth]

No doubt a Sony Reader has a database, but AFAIK, it's not accessible like the Kobo database. That's why Kobo is better than Kindle too.
I've 6000 ebooks and PDFs on my Kobo Sage now and can find by collection, title, author, series and by recent, reading, unread, finished etc.
Search for a book good, without Kindle overhead of indexing content. The Kobo will easily search contents of current read and last two or three but not contents of each book in the whole library. Calibre can do that.

[HLS]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Well, I hate cooking passionately and I'm lazy, so I've done it often.

100% of my meals is delivery, take out or frozen. I have not cooked in 3 years. when you work 10 hour shifts ( 11 if you count lunch hour) you have no motivation to cook especially since you go to bed within 3 hrs of getting off work. Also living alone when cooking a lot of food gets thrown away since I hate leftovers. its over all cheaper to order out

[HLS]

Man, i accidentally paid my amazon store card with the wrong checking account, they still had an ancient one on file, so it bounced, showed me late and they reduced my credit line . grrr

[DuskyRose]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I've 6000 ebooks and PDFs on my Kobo Sage now and can find by collection, title, author, series and by recent, reading, unread, finished etc.

I second the Kobo. I have a libra 2 that I just love. Easy to load, easy to configure, very nice screen. And it doesn't object to being in Airplane mode all the time. It does have an upper limit on how much it can hold, but it's a larger number than the Paperwhite.

While I love the Kindle Paperwhite's size and shape, I've found the programming horrible. It doesn't sync very well, and while it's got a lot of room, I can't seem to use it. Even if I don't sideload, it balks at large libraries. It's frustrating to work with, and to find anything on. I only keep it for the connection to Amazon, and emergency purposes.

For me, a perfect machine would be the Paperwhite size and shape, but act inside like a Kobo. With a MUCH larger processor inside. Let them handle huge libraries!

But I'm not holding my breath for any of that. Lol

[Hitch]

Well.

So, I was looking for something new to read, and I stumbled across these novelizations of the Death in Paradise show. Which, I confess, is a guilty pleasure of mine, even though it's....well.

Now, the reviews are excellent, really; over 2700 reviews and ratings, nearly 5 stars (4.3, apparently).

I did not expect that:

• It's literally a retelling of one of the show's shows--the one about the Spa guru who gets stabbed in a meditation hut with 5 other people; and,
• that the WRITING wouldn't be nearly as good as the show's (!!!) (even though apparently, these books are by the person who originally wrote the scripts and developed DIP!);
• that I would have absolutely no...connection to the characters, and in fact, they're largely unlikeable. Dwayne is a cardboard cutout, as is the other fellow, Fidel, whom I think gets about 2 lines in the entire thing), and
• some genius at "Canelo USA" (publisher) decided to forcibly LEFT-align the enitre book. Other than disassembling the book, taking it apart and recoding it, there's nothing I can do to force it to do anything else. Suffice to say, I'm pissed about it. I HATE left-aligned text on my damn Kindle. At my shop, we don't justify them; we don't align them (other than things like block quotes, etc., of course!). That way, everybody can roll their own, on their own devices. I HATE IT when left-alignment is forced on me.
• Grrrrr.

Anyway, what a bummer. Purportedly, the second book in the series is "better" with a gripping plot and all that, but given how far astray the reviews for the first one led me, I'm not sure I want to risk the time to find out. It's not the money, although that counts too--but dammit. It's clear that the author leaned heavily on the extant characterizations of the participants (Richard Poole and all those folks) to fill in the players rather than putting them on the page.

(This is the reading V&R thread, is it not? Or have I taken a wrong turn somewhere along the turnpike?)

Hitch

[DuskyRose]

Originally Posted by Hitch

[*]that the WRITING wouldn't be nearly as good as the show's (!!!) (even though apparently, these books are by the person who originally wrote the scripts and developed DIP!);

I'm always leery of novels based on the shows/movies, when done by the script writer. Being good at presenting a story idea in a broad sense, like in a script format, really says nothing about them being able to present the story in text form.

I've read so many novelizations that just... fail.

Originally Posted by Hitch

[*]some genius at "Canelo USA" (publisher) decided to forcibly LEFT-align the enitre book. Other than disassembling the book, taking it apart and recoding it, there's nothing I can do to force it to do anything else. Suffice to say, I'm pissed about it. I HATE left-aligned text on my damn Kindle. At my shop, we don't justify them; we don't align them (other than things like block quotes, etc., of course!). That way, everybody can roll their own, on their own devices. I HATE IT when left-alignment is forced on me.[*]Grrrrr.

While I do like left-aligned text, as long as I can tab the first sentence and maybe add an empty line between paragraphs while I'm there... I can get the frustration.

Locking stuff like that in is annoying.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I know, this is the reading V&R thread and this is, thusly, not really appropriate, but damn, I'm going to miss Lance Reddick.

Not really a rant, either, but it is now impossible for me to read a Bosch book without hearing Titus Welliver, Lance Reddick, and even Gregory Scott Cummins and Troy Evans (Crate and Barrel). They all just fit, likely because of the very strong creator involvement.

Thankfully, much more loosely adapted works (like "Bones" and the various Jack Ryan properties) have not resulted in the same sort of unavoidable voice from the written word.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by John F

My library card expired (sometime in 2020) and I couldn't renew it (due to a policy change) at the Free Library of Philadelphia and I still get emails saying a title I recommended was purchased, and a book I had on hold is available for checkout (even though I never access the account anymore).

Over six years ago, I used to live in Montgomery County, MD, and had a library card from there. I would get sporadic e-mails from them, and didn't bother to do anything about it, because often the book in question had already been acquired from somewhere else and I just forgot.

This month, I decided to go to their site and fix things, when I discovered that my library card is still active...and won't expire until December 31, 2050. So, I checked out a book on Overdrive that my local library didn't have.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by HLS

100% of my meals is delivery, take out or frozen. I have not cooked in 3 years. when you work 10 hour shifts ( 11 if you count lunch hour) you have no motivation to cook especially since you go to bed within 3 hrs of getting off work. Also living alone when cooking a lot of food gets thrown away since I hate leftovers. its over all cheaper to order out

Wow. I find that amazing. I don't mean that you're wrong. It's just so different from me.

I like cooking most of the time. Ok, I get into a rut and cook the same things a lot. I'm not saying that anybody else would like what I cook, but I sure do. I just had my sweet and sour cabbage soup for three days and I'm looking forward to the other half I stuck in the freezer. When I'm just hungry, there is always PB&J or I open a can of peas.

[issybird]

I don't like to cook and can't cook, but I can manage to bung some protein and veg on a sheet pan every night. Also means no waste; it's a dinner's worth at a time. It gets a little monotonous, but it still beats cooking.

[theducks]

I refuse to pay the $$ for delivery. (and don't get me started on modern USA tipping). (Singles rarely have orders that qualify for 'free' delivery)

I do eat a lot of frozen (after cooking ) for my lunch. Frozen Pizza get tweaks before going into the oven.

The Movie said it: "Anyone can cook"
I do simple (just don't expect Gourmet from me).
Some Much, is from mixes or kits (Leftover Ingredients is the issue).
Having a usable Kitchen (workspace) helps. Having a few job dedicated (basic Rice cooker, Bread maker) appliances helps. You load'em up and walk away till they beep/blink.
Oh! And another borrowed Movie line: Recipes, are mostly guidelines. I start there and 'Season / add stuff, to taste'

And Yes! Too many/much Leftovers is a big negative. (2 additional meals is tops for me).

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by theducks

The Movie said it: "Anyone can cook"

Of course. I just don't want to. I can if I really have to; but I've never liked it and never will, so I do it as little as possible.

I know several people who enjoy cooking. More power to them. I'm just not one of them.

[Apache]

My wife and I both love to cook, but if we are tired or busy we just grab someting.
Apache

[Sirtel]

I guess we need a "Cooking Vent & Rant" thread...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No doubt a Sony Reader has a database, but AFAIK, it's not accessible like the Kobo database. That's why Kobo is better than Kindle too.
I've 6000 ebooks and PDFs on my Kobo Sage now and can find by collection, title, author, series and by recent, reading, unread, finished etc.
Search for a book good, without Kindle overhead of indexing content. The Kobo will easily search contents of current read and last two or three but not contents of each book in the whole library. Calibre can do that.

I can't say the database of a Sony is not accessible given that calibre can manage collections on a Sony. If the database is not accessible, then there is some other way Sony deals with collections.