The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[DNSB]

A sad lack of imagination.

[JSWolf]

Why would anyone use Cocoa HTML Writer to create eBooks? That's just really stupid.

[JSWolf]

When you cannot find the proper reading order of a series.

[MegDreamsofBooks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When you cannot find the proper reading order of a series.

Corollary: when a number of books in the series are "novellas" and only available in multi-author omnibus / have been published multiple times under different titles, but they're in the middle of the series so you HAVE to find them somehow.

[ownedbycats]

Series books not marked as being in series, so you begin to read and have no idea what is happening.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When you cannot find the proper reading order of a series.

Chronological Order vs Published Order vs Author's Intended Order vs Fan Community's Suggested Order For Newcomers vs Fan Community's True Reading Order For Super Hardcore Fans Only

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why would anyone use Cocoa HTML Writer to create eBooks? That's just really stupid.

Baen Books uses that.

I have a BaenDeDiv saved search because whatever they do to break up for file per chapter adds a Div Layer that nests to each succeeding chapter..


So chapter 42 has about 42+ divs starting right after the Body tag. The closing div is just before the \body tag.

This started shortly after (Webscriptions) Arnold passed the baton

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Chronological Order vs Published Order vs Author's Intended Order vs Fan Community's Suggested Order For Newcomers vs Fan Community's True Reading Order For Super Hardcore Fans Only

IMHO the only time that really matters is Assumes (you know what is up) or Spoilers. Otherwise, if the story can stand on its own, I care little.

(Or is Jon going to arrest me for reading out of the precise order???)

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by theducks

(Or is Jon going to arrest me for reading out of the precise order???)

Probably.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

IMHO the only time that really matters is Assumes (you know what is up) or Spoilers. Otherwise, if the story can stand on its own, I care little.

(Or is Jon going to arrest me for reading out of the precise order???)

Depends on the order and spoilers.

Sometimes It might just be easier to read in published order.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by MegDreamsofBooks

Corollary: when a number of books in the series are "novellas" and only available in multi-author omnibus / have been published multiple times under different titles, but they're in the middle of the series so you HAVE to find them somehow.

That was a problem I had with the novel Cyberbooks* by Ben Bova. I had it as a printed paperback, and for years I looked for an ebook version but couldn't find it. I finally discovered that it was part of a collection of humorous sci-fi books under the title Laugh Lines. If you can find it it is is a good read.

*The novel was prophetic about ebooks, with the ereader in the book very similar to the ones we now have. It was released approximately 10 years before the first commercially available ereaders. The novel dealt with the issues that were trying to stop ebooks, such as: (1) the Unions didn't want them because it would reduce the number of drivers and reduce the number of Union members, and (2) the Environmentalists didn't want it because it will reduce the issues they have to protest against.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Series books not marked as being in series, so you begin to read and have no idea what is happening.

A factor in this is when parts of a series are given different series names. An example of this are the Robotech novels by Jack McKinney. It is a novelization of the Robotech anime. Due to the Frankenstein nature of the anime, the novels read much smoother, and include details that were not in the anime, such as what happened after the ship that became the SDF-1 crashed on Earth.

Books 1-6 cover the Macross Saga, Books 7-9 cover the The Masters, and Books 10-12 cover New Generation. There was a large gap between books 6 and 7 (which would have been covered by a separate anime series that never happened), they did a five-book series named The Sentinels. Then Book #18 ties everything together and ends the series. The remaining Books (#19-#21) fill in gaps in the story.

The following Wikipedia page shows the correct reading order for the series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotech_(novels)

[ownedbycats]

Cozy mystery where the culprit is obvious from the start so you have to spent 200-300 pages watching the protagonist helplessly bumble around trying to figure it out.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Cozy mystery where the culprit is obvious from the start so you have to spent 200-300 pages watching the protagonist helplessly bumble around trying to figure it out.

Invented in 1930s and famous on TV as Inspector Colombo, though on that the viewer was told the perpetrator at the start and Colombo wasn't inept. Did US TV think audiences were stupid?

[ownedbycats]

Also there was a cat on the cover and no cat in the book. At the end protagonist gets a puppy.

The title was also "Murder at the Bookstore." The victim was killed when a sailboat blew up. The bookstore barely appeared.