The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I did... once. To be fair, I was 8, and the animal was a (in hindsight, likely rabid) raccoon that had gotten into the apartment hallway.

I left the apartment, it started hissing at me, and I immediately turned and ran back into the apartment.

That was a smart thing to do.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That was a smart thing to do.

Agreed. Anytime an animal makes an aggressive move at you, even if it's "just" snarling, good idea to retreat as gracefully and un-provokingly as possible. (Hint: don't turn your back.)

I love me some critters, well and truly do, but no matter how much you love 'em, or whatever, animals aren't "thinking" like people do. They're reacting and if you're remotely near offspring or...hell, buried food, anything, you're committing a crime that calls for self-defense on that critter's part.

OR, it could be a Kodiak bear. They are bitchy cranky from birth. Seriously, not happy-happy-joy-joy animals. I've seen them stand up on their hind legs, on a hill/mountaintop and take a 'swipe' with their paws at an overflying Twin Otter or other airplane. CRANKY.

Hitch

[gmw]

To be fair, there are some people I wouldn't turn my back on either. Although, come to that, there are some people I've run away from too (sadly, I'm not a fast runner). Sometimes it can be hard to guess the best option and, man or beast, the situation can change quickly.

[gmw]

Various self-contradictory titles, unless deliberately ironic, make me cringe. For example:

Frank Herbert: Unpublished Stories ... ah, so if the stories are unpublished, what exactly am I buying?


This next is mostly just the unfortunate way the book is listed on the website (in this case Kobo) rather than of the title itself, but still...

The River of Silver: Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy (The Daevabad Trilogy, Book 4) (P.S. I did enjoy the trilogy, which is how I came to notice the "trilogy" had grown a fourth book.)

[DNSB]

I remember when I purchased So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, the cover included the comment "the fourth in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy".

[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

Various self-contradictory titles, unless deliberately ironic, make me cringe. For example:

Frank Herbert: Unpublished Stories ... ah, so if the stories are unpublished, what exactly am I buying?

I can give this a pass as it’s informative and economical. It conveys exactly the information needed in a couple of words. It beats: Frank Herbert: The Stories that are Only Being Published Now that He’s Dead; He Didn’t Think They were Worth Publishing but His Heirs are Greedy, So Don’t Expect Them to be Very Good.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by issybird

I can give this a pass as it’s informative and economical. It conveys exactly the information needed in a couple of words. It beats: Frank Herbert: The Stories that are Only Being Published Now that He’s Dead; He Didn’t Think They were Worth Publishing but His Heirs are Greedy, So Don’t Expect Them to be Very Good.

Apache

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by gmw

Frank Herbert: Unpublished Stories ... ah, so if the stories are unpublished, what exactly am I buying?

I'm just imagining the book (well, eReader) bursting into flames and vanishing into nothing.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by issybird

I can give this a pass as it’s informative and economical. It conveys exactly the information needed in a couple of words. It beats: Frank Herbert: The Stories that are Only Being Published Now that He’s Dead; He Didn’t Think They were Worth Publishing but His Heirs are Greedy, So Don’t Expect Them to be Very Good.

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I'm just imagining the book (well, eReader) bursting into flames and vanishing into nothing.

just figured out multi-quoting..

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Speaking of Overdrive, why is that when I have several books on hold, they all become available at the same time? Since I'm not expecting another power outage in the near future, I need to figure out which ones to pass on for now.

I thought 4-5 books becoming available at the same time was bad. My friend got over a dozen. The same friend earlier complained that he hit the holds limit.

[ownedbycats]

eReaderIQ has only American and UK links. Okay then, so I click on the US link, and see this message:

Kindle titles are available for CA customers on Amazon.ca.
Continue shopping on the Kindle Store at Amazon.ca.

Clicking that brings me to Amazon.ca's search page. Depending on the title or whatever, half the time I either get either the audiobook or something completely unrelated. Why don't they just link me to the Canada product page? At this point, it's easier just to change the url to .ca and get it directly...

[ownedbycats]

So I just read this book and thought that it read like a rough draft. Turns out the author had died during the writing. So it maybe is a rough draft.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

So I just read this book and thought that it read like a rough draft. Turns out the author had died during the writing. So it maybe is a rough draft.

I think I read somewhere (caveat, can't recall so don't take it seriously) that the estate and his publishers are looking for a continuer. Sort of like the Goldsborough dude for Rex Stout, but of course, in this case, almost more important as didn't he leave a trilogy unfinished?

Gosh, maybe they'll get somebody as good as Brian Herbert! (Sorry, sorry, sorry, couldn't resist....)

Hitch

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

So I just read this book and thought that it read like a rough draft. Turns out the author had died during the writing. So it maybe is a rough draft.

I have Mars, Return to Mars, The Return, Saturn and a few others. Eleven total and one duplicate of Voyagers if anyone wants it.

Maybe I'll skip "Neptune"; I get tried of reading drafts.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I think I read somewhere (caveat, can't recall so don't take it seriously) that the estate and his publishers are looking for a continuer. Sort of like the Goldsborough dude for Rex Stout, but of course, in this case, almost more important as didn't he leave a trilogy unfinished?

Gosh, maybe they'll get somebody as good as Brian Herbert! (Sorry, sorry, sorry, couldn't resist....)

Hitch

Ha!
My granddaughter angrily waved an Enid Blyton book at me yesterday; "She didn't write this!"
So not only has the publisher been selling random "ghost written" adventure stories (no author listed other than Enid Blyton) but they have added to St Clare's school series, which was completed long before Blyton's death.
This ought to be illegal. It would be called fraud if it was a painting. At least the extra Dune books or Sherlock Holmes books have the real author on the cover. This is cheating the ghost writer, the child readers and often parents that buy the books! Blyton wrote so many books how would random public, especially primary school kids know? Sheer greed by publisher cashing in on the well known name.