The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I recently learned of Betteridge's law of headlines. "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

I have a real aversion to click-bait headlines. I hate them with a fiery passion. But I haven't yet figured out how to tell Google News to not show me such headlines without completely blocking that news source.

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

(Rather amusingly, I was then struck with the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon and started seeing references to it everywhere.)

I've had the same experience with the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Looking into the Dunning-Kruger Effect made me experience Baader-Meinhof...

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I recently learned of Betteridge's law of headlines. "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

(Rather amusingly, I was then struck with the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon and started seeing references to it everywhere.)

Cars.

The moment someone starts getting serious about a given make/model of a car, or buys a new one, they will see the same car everywhere. Frequency Illusion indeed.

Hitch

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Cars.

The moment someone starts getting serious about a given make/model of a car, or buys a new one, they will see the same car everywhere. Frequency Illusion indeed.

Hitch

Bravo! Those almost always end up as last years model (or the company goes belly up). (Exception: Use in Period pieces. Just get it correct.)

I am the same way about brand names of clothing being dropped everywhere. Warm/cool, clean and dry is my style.

I am mostly fine with attributing a shoe/tire print to a specific model in a who-dunit. But why not even use a fake name?

[Quoth]

I'm still fed up with Amazon Kindle Wish list sort for "Low to High" being totally broken and main Amazon search for anything or books or Kindle Store is broken too.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by theducks

I am mostly fine with attributing a shoe/tire print to a specific model in a who-dunit. But why not even use a fake name?

Goodstone and Fireyear tyres?

Real products in a book are OK in context, but I binned a book because every character that was introduced (every time if they changed) had a head to toe list of real brands worn.
I never think, Oh, she/he is wearing Levis. I think jeans.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I'm still fed up with Amazon Kindle Wish list sort for "Low to High" being totally broken and main Amazon search for anything or books or Kindle Store is broken too.

I've found a case of Amazon treading the US store as the golden child and other stores as we don't give a damn as it's not the US so why bother.

Look at the Kindle daily deals. Scroll to the bottom and click See all results. From there in the US store, you can choose a genre to filter. But the UK store does not have this.

I was looking at the daily deals in the UK store because of a post in the Science Fiction and Fantasy deals thread.

It could be that what you say is broken at Amazon may work if you used the US store given how Amazon doesn't give a damn outside of the US.

[issybird]

Sixteen amps etc. posts have been moved to the technology rant thread in the Lounge.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=292798

Drift is fine, but the amps were taking over.

[Rumpelteazer]

I hate it when a synopsis of a book only consists of blurbs. Just what other writers think about it, maybe a short description of that this book compared to other books. But no actual description of what the book is about.

Calibre just downloaded the synopsis (the only one it could find) for a new book and it only had blurbs and a couple of sentences about the writer. I had to find the description of the book myself and copy and paste it.

Lately I've been more mindful about what in the synopsis, since I like to let Calibre add it to the start of the book when transferring it to my Kindle. That way I can quickly read it when looking for a new books to read. At some point I will have to go through all of my books in Calibre and adjust it, probably for most books. I'm dreading that task.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

I hate it when a synopsis of a book only consists of blurbs. Just what other writers think about it, maybe a short description of that this book compared to other books. But no actual description of what the book is about.

Calibre just downloaded the synopsis (the only one it could find) for a new book and it only had blurbs and a couple of sentences about the writer. I had to find the description of the book myself and copy and paste it.

Lately I've been more mindful about what in the synopsis, since I like to let Calibre add it to the start of the book when transferring it to my Kindle. That way I can quickly read it when looking for a new books to read. At some point I will have to go through all of my books in Calibre and adjust it, probably for most books. I'm dreading that task.

What you are describing is a blurb. A blurb is the description of the book. It's not just the review bits.

What I don't like is when review stuff is mixed in with the description of the book. Then I have to remove it or edit it to remove the review part if it's mixed in.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Lately I've been more mindful about what in the synopsis, since I like to let Calibre add it to the start of the book when transferring it to my Kindle. That way I can quickly read it when looking for a new books to read. At some point I will have to go through all of my books in Calibre and adjust it, probably for most books. I'm dreading that task.

It may be simpler just to generate a calibre catalog in the azw3 format, with synopses, and load that to your Kindle. That's what I did when I still used Kindles; the catalog was a lot easier to browse than the individual descriptions attached to books. I use a catalog on my Kobos too for this reason, even though the synopsis gets sent to a Kobo automatically from Calibre along with the book.

[305869]

Nothing makes me angrier than this when trying to buy a book.



Luckily I found it through another vendor.

It's gotten a lot better in recent years but it used to be almost impossible to buy ebooks in English from my home country. Sometimes your only choice was piracy. Later I stayed in the UK for a couple years and suddenly having access to so many books in English was dizzying. The anglosphere really has it good!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by 305869

Nothing makes me angrier than this when trying to buy a book.



Luckily I found it through another vendor.

It's gotten a lot better in recent years but it used to be almost impossible to buy ebooks in English from my home country. Sometimes your only choice was piracy. Later I stayed in the UK for a couple years and suddenly having access to so many books in English was dizzying. The anglosphere really has it good!

I've used both Kobo and eBooks.com to buy eBooks that were not available were I am but are available elsewhere. Just switch the store to where the eBook is available and buy from there.

[305869]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've used both Kobo and eBooks.com to buy eBooks that were not available were I am but are available elsewhere. Just switch the store to where the eBook is available and buy from there.

The screenshot is from ebooks.com. I could not purchase it through them with a card from my country. I could purchase it through Kobo though

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by 305869

The screenshot is from ebooks.com. I could not purchase it through them with a card from my country. I could purchase it through Kobo though

With eBooks.com, you can use PayPal.

[Renate]

I got about 200 pages into "White Noise", Don Delillo.
I liked the writing, the characters were good, but as it spun into outer space I couldn't care less what happened.