The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Apache]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That was one of her best.
Apache

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Apache

That was one of her best.
Apache

The Carol Burnett Show was one of my favorites. I miss the good old days when comedy was funny.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The Carol Burnett Show was one of my favorites. I miss the good old days when comedy was funny.

I agree, they've got sketches that still hold up to this day, such as this:

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I miss the good old days when comedy was funny.

Luxury. In my day we gathered around a hollow box and watched the roaches inside scramble about.

[nana77]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Luxury. In my day we gathered around a hollow box and watched the roaches inside scramble about.

Imho this one, despite being more recent (I wasn't to know the earliest shots were made in 1986), has its own nice mood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_and_Cigarettes

Spoiler:

Just not to feel always on OT, thinking at something appropriate at the topic, do you think schools will ever adopt ereaders, instead charging kids whitin 15/20 Kg of backpacks?
Last year a guy on work experience, after having made a season on a kitchen, bought 300$ of books for the next school's year, the professor said him the list wasn't done correctly the past year, and he has to buy others books (omg).

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Luxury. In my day we gathered around a hollow box and watched the roaches inside scramble about.

That's similar to how Pokémon came about. When growing up the creator of Pokémon saw kids playing with giant beetles and having them fight each other.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by nana77

Imho this one, despite being more recent (I wasn't to know the earliest shots were made in 1986), has its own nice mood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_and_Cigarettes

Spoiler:

Just not to feel always on OT, thinking at something appropriate at the topic, do you think schools will ever adopt ereaders, instead charging kids whitin 15/20 Kg of backpacks?
Last year a guy on work experience, after having made a season on a kitchen, bought 300$ of books for the next school's year, the professor said him the list wasn't done correctly the past year, and he has to buy others books (omg).

There are schools with no books. We have some in Limerick. Sadly they use iPads which the parents have to buy. The pupils/students never get to keep the books. Admittedly most cheap (not all) Android tablets are not suitable.

Other schools (often in USA) use Chromebooks.

The Kindle DX/DXG was initially aimed at 3rd level education. It was a failure and Amazon sold them off cheap.

I don't believe any eink reader is suitable. Also there is the problem of DRM and the fact that textbooks are usually PDF.

It's a reasonable goal.

[ownedbycats]

Read a book with a 'quirky' protagonist that gave me definite 'neurotypical author writing neurodivergent character in the most stereotypical manner possible' vibes but never stating it outright. I'm on the spectrum, and it left feeling inauthentic and a bit gross.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Read a book with a 'quirky' protagonist that gave me definite 'neurotypical author writing neurodivergent character in the most stereotypical manner possible' vibes but never stating it outright. I'm on the spectrum, and it left feeling inauthentic and a bit gross.

Have you read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and if so what did you think of it? I enjoyed it but I'm (I think) neurotypical and so don't know if it's the sort of thing you're talking about or a more realistic portrayal.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Have you read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and if so what did you think of it? I enjoyed it but I'm (I think) neurotypical and so don't know if it's the sort of thing you're talking about or a more realistic portrayal.

I read it once, years ago. I've never been able to pick it up again because it also left me with that same sort of feeling. The author outright admittng he did no research on autism spectrum disorders because "imagination always trumps research" doesn't help.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I read it once, years ago. I've never been able to pick it up again because it also left me with that same sort of feeling. The author outright admittng he did no research on autism spectrum disorders because "imagination always trumps research" doesn't help.

I wondered if that was the case. Thanks.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

The author outright admittng he did no research on autism spectrum disorders because "imagination always trumps research" doesn't help.

An excuse for laziness. You can always choose to ignore research if you are writing fiction, but imagination doesn't trump research.

In some cases you should even admit in end-notes that something is fantasy if it's not SF&F genre. Like instant sedatives or poison. There's a reason why actual bullets are used on a rampaging animal or gunman in a built up area.

And if it's supposedly not fiction, the Publisher should do some research.

[DNSB]

One author my spouse loves mentioned in one of her newsletters that when she wrote a neurodivergent character into one story, she contacted a local support group and had their scenes checked to make sure that they were plausible for the character's condition. Many of the suggested changes became part of the final version.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Read a book with a 'quirky' protagonist that gave me definite 'neurotypical author writing neurodivergent character in the most stereotypical manner possible' vibes but never stating it outright. I'm on the spectrum, and it left feeling inauthentic and a bit gross.

I'm reading some Spanish YA Fantasy at the moment and the author has used the same method for describing teenagers.

Maybe (some/most/a lot of) teenagers are compulsively impulsive and always acting against their own best interests and wishes, behaving a bit like coked up mafiosi in an American mafia flick, but it doesn't ring true for me at least. And it mostly feels like a cheap trick to generate drama and drive the plot forwards.