The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by nana77

Maybe I'm lucky, as the serie I read (currently flexitarianly) has on those sections, other than the index, 2 or 3 pages promoting a book (the same into the vary montly releases), some pages mentioning the editor choices from a specific year (1981/2/3/4...), them plot and his personal thoughts, and them reviews by goodreads' statistics percentages.
Sometimes there are plus like the auditions for SF short novels, or interviews like the one from the author of the series' covers since more than 25 years.

All this is far more than I can stand, except for the author's personal thoughts (and the plot, of course).

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I don't consider an author interview to be crap.

If it's a one off, no problem. If the same multi-page author interview/biography is in every book by the author, do you really need to read it that many times?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If it's a one off, no problem. If the same multi-page author interview/biography is in every book by the author, do you really need to read it that many times?

One thing I do for an about the author page is I remove the URLs. No need for them.

About the author is usually the same. But it's usually one page so I leave it in.

[nana77]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

All this is far more than I can stand, except for the author's personal thoughts (and the plot, of course).

I guess that for when there are short novels - as in SF's-, it's interesting to watch them, and (imho) one of the bestest way to give to newest authors a credit and discover new approaches and styles, as also it's possible to vote for the prizes too. One of those stories is still one of the bestest shorts I've read.
Also considering that doing so on that environments might be safest, for newest writers, as comparing to others ones unknew.
A person I meet once was saying, as she likes to write and did partecipated to contests (not the ones mentioned above), that she found an entire chapter, copied and pasted, from her novel (that didn't won) on a lately published one (that she didn't wrote).

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by nana77

I guess that for when there are short novels - as in SF's-, it's interesting to watch them, and (imho) one of the bestest way to give to newest authors a credit and discover new approaches and styles, as also it's possible to vote for the prizes too. One of those stories is still one of the bestest shorts I've read.
Also considering that doing so on that environments might be safest, for newest writers, as comparing to others ones unknew.
A person I meet once was saying, as she likes to write and did partecipated to contests (not the ones mentioned above), that she found an entire chapter, copied and pasted, from her novel (that didn't won) on a lately published one (that she didn't wrote).

That may be, but I don't want them to inflate the page count of the ebooks I read. Put them somewhere online. If they're in a book, I'll just delete them without reading anyway.

Of course YMMV.

[nana77]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

That may be, but I don't want them to inflate the page count of the ebooks I read. Put them somewhere online. If they're in a book, I'll just delete them without reading anyway.

Of course YMMV.

LOL, but those books' series, which in here are being published both on digital and on paper at newsstands, doesn't cost more for that.
But really, I don't want to bother yours, I'd just liked to mention that, while reading a novel that has 220 pages yet, adding and having 25 other for shorts from newest authors, to them may matter a lot.

[DNSB]

Another pet peeve is when you purchase an omnibus edition and they include exactly the same fluff in every book inside the omnibus. One recent example which included the prequel to the series, the 8 books that made up the series, 2 interstitial stories between books in the series and a short sequel wrapping up some questions about the series. A total of 12 "books" and each one had the same ~16 screens of fluff plus for the full stories and the prequel, the first chapter of the next story.

A few minutes with Sigil cleaned that up along with making the internal covers consistent and cut the length of the book by around 240 pages (ADE synthetic page number algorithm).

[Courant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I'm looking for is something I've not read that I may enjoy reading. But the problem can be sometimes trying to find something in all the chuff that is romance.

I feel your pain, finding good books is difficult and one of the reasons is so much is romance, even if it isn't in the romance section.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

GoodReads is the worst site for this. I've seen many complaints and yet the staff doesn't care. The problem is that you need many many reviews and the people who wrote the crap reviews to write proper reviews. And as for the stars, that's all crap until they get sorted out which is not going to be any time soon.

It's basically a steaming pile.

My theory is that Amazon runs goodreads on a minimum budget because of the links. There is no advantage to fixing anything. In my opinion the biggest problem is that there are too many 5 star reviews and 3 is considered a negative rating. This makes it difficult to use to find books.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Another pet peeve is when you purchase an omnibus edition and they include exactly the same fluff in every book inside the omnibus. One recent example which included the prequel to the series, the 8 books that made up the series, 2 interstitial stories between books in the series and a short sequel wrapping up some questions about the series. A total of 12 "books" and each one had the same ~16 screens of fluff plus for the full stories and the prequel, the first chapter of the next story.

A few minutes with Sigil cleaned that up along with making the internal covers consistent and cut the length of the book by around 240 pages (ADE synthetic page number algorithm).

Another annoyance is when they use a separate CSS file for each book in an omnibus.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Courant

My theory is that Amazon runs goodreads on a minimum budget because of the links. There is no advantage to fixing anything. In my opinion the biggest problem is that there are too many 5 star reviews and 3 is considered a negative rating. This makes it difficult to use to find books.

The thing is, too many people are (IMHO) too stupid for words when they review and/or add star ratings for books they've never read and that have not yet been published. Unpublished books should never be listed.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The thing is, too many people are (IMHO) too stupid for words...

You could have stopped there.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Unpublished books should never be listed.

What about people who put them into their want to read lists, so they don't forget about them? Or people who have preordered them? Or who get ARCs? And then there are the books that can have a six-month or more lag in publication dates between the US and the UK. How do they allow for that?

The bottom line is that there's no guarantee that any review actually reflects a book that's been read. The good thing is that it's easier to identify fake reviews when they're on unpublished books!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by issybird

What about people who put them into their want to read lists, so they don't forget about them? Or people who have preordered them? Or who get ARCs? And then there are the books that can have a six-month or more lag in publication dates between the US and the UK. How do they allow for that?

The bottom line is that there's no guarantee that any review actually reflects a book that's been read. The good thing is that it's easier to identify fake reviews when they're on unpublished books!

Why not Mention the review was on the ARC. IIRC that is one of the purposes of ARC. Reviews that are available at release. Nothing wrong IF the book was reviewed (minor edits expected after an ARC)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

What about people who put them into their want to read lists, so they don't forget about them? Or people who have preordered them? Or who get ARCs? And then there are the books that can have a six-month or more lag in publication dates between the US and the UK. How do they allow for that?

The bottom line is that there's no guarantee that any review actually reflects a book that's been read. The good thing is that it's easier to identify fake reviews when they're on unpublished books!

The problem is not so much the reviews but the star rating. That needs to be accurate. But it's not. And on Goodreads, I still say that unpublished books should not be listed. If a book in the UK is out before the US, then only the UK version gets listed until the US version is released.

Unfortunately, ARC reviews will have to be done away with as they get lost is the garbage. Unless ARC reviews can be verified and only those are allowed before release.

[nana77]

Did you tried the "listopia" that matches average rating for (e.g.) 1000 reviws, or 3000, ecc... or that combines it by year?
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/205516
Calvin and Hobbies (e.g.) is stiil #6 till "at least 3000 reviews" ; #3 within "at least 300 ratings" .