The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Renate]

I'm quite fond of gluten and even have of bag of the stuff in my kitchen.
I hope that with gene therapy I will be able to produce gluten internally.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by hildea

I don't understand why people have a problem with content warnings.

For me, a detailed list means spoilers; I could ignore it, but it irritates me by its mere presence. Yes, I'm easily bothered. So I delete it. If I discover anything in the book afterwards I can't stomach, it'll be on me for not reading the warnings; I'm not going to whine about it on social media or write vilifying reviews (unless there's something to vilify that's not related to my personal triggers).

I don't put every book immediately down after an animal abuse/suffering scene - usually I manage to soldier on regardless. So a warning would do nothing for me; I would probably not read the book at all, while it might actually not be so bad and I might even like it. A trigger warning is only useful when you know you absolutely don't want to have anything to do with the book where your trigger crops up. It's not quite so dire for me. So I prefer to decide for myself while reading the book, and not be forearmed with any trigger warnings.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

He has written a sequel to The Barrow in three parts and self-published it. It's available on Amazon.

Yeah, I'll leave those on the shelves for others to enjoy.

Thanks for the history dump warning. I can only hope I won't be too bored...

Maybe I'll have desensitized you to it, so that when you read it you'll be thinking 'it's not that bad.'

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by maddz

Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust. There was nothing to indicate there was going to be a Sapphic subplot - it just appeared out of the blue. Contrast with Melissa Scott's Astreiant or Ellen Kushner's Riverside series, the gay plots are properly integrated as part of the storylines.

I'm not sure I see the difference in the two examples you have pointed out. I haven't read either and am not likely to as they are just not my bag. But reading the description of the book on Amazon it doesn't seem like the reveal that the character is a lesbian is something that was grafted on at the behest of an editor seeking to tick boxes

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Were these leaves off a citrus lime tree, or leaves from a linden tree, which is commonly called a lime tree in UK and Ireland?

AFAIK neither has gluten and I never heard of genetically engineered limes.

Neither. Lime leaves used in cooking come from the makrut lime tree commonly found in Thailand. They are very popular in Southeast Asian countries.

You may find them being sold as kaffir lime leaves though that name has fallen out of favour since in South Africa, kaffir is equivalent to using the 'n-word' in North America and in Arabic, it would translate as disbeliever or infidel. Oddly, I've seen several references using 'k-word' as an euphemism and referring to the leaves as k-lime leaves.

And yes, selling them as gluten free is much like selling oatmeal as gluten free since neither has any gluten. Non-GMO just added a couple of dollars to the price of the package.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Renate

I'm quite fond of gluten and even have of bag of the stuff in my kitchen.
I hope that with gene therapy I will be able to produce gluten internally.

One person whom I know who avoids gluten like the plague also uses seitan in cooking as a replacement for meat. Oddly eating a slice of bread gives them all kinds of weird bloating, feeling that their bowels are impacted, whatever the symptom of the day is while eating a meal with seitan makes them feel well fed.

What is seitan? It's basically wheat gluten.

If anyone want to try making it at home, I've used the recipe from this site a couple of times: An Easy Homemade Seitan Recipe (A step-by-step guide) though I have used a different brand of gluten flour (just avoid Whole Foods since they are ridiculously overpriced).

[Renate]

Hmm, I'll have to try this.
I have a bag of Bob's Red Mill.
I use it in bread and pizza, but I should find a way to use it up quicker.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One person whom I know who avoids gluten like the plague also uses seitan in cooking as a replacement for meat. Oddly eating a slice of bread gives them all kinds of weird bloating, feeling that their bowels are impacted, whatever the symptom of the day is while eating a meal with seitan makes them feel well fed.

What is seitan? It's basically wheat gluten.

Unfortunately, people who use 'gluten-free' as a diet trend to make things riskier for people who actually have Celiac. Restaurant servers not taking them seriously is the main example, but recently I've seen a lot of complaints about stuff-being labelled as gluten-free (marketed towards trendy dieters) but then having in tiny print on the package 'may have gluten.'

I have issues with digesting fructans. Instead of getting digested, it ferments and results in a lot of gas and then this draws water into the bowels and results in diarrhea too. Mostly artichokes and alliums (onions/garlics). Wheat flour has some too, but low enough that it's usually fine unless I eat too much - I kind of wonder if the 'gluten intolerance' a lot of people report is actually more of a fructan intolerance.

Artichokes are easy to avoid - I don't really like them anyways. But alliums often sneak in as an unnamed 'seasoning.'

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Unfortunately, people who use 'gluten-free' as a diet trend to make things riskier for people who actually have Celiac. Restaurant servers not taking them seriously is the main example, but recently I've seen a lot of complaints about stuff being labelled as gluten-free (marketed towards trendy dieters) but then having in tiny print on the package 'may have gluten.'

Sounds like one of the people I used to work with. She was celiac and found that too many stores and restaurants were selling food containing gluten but boldly labelled as gluten free which her body was very unhappy about. One restaurant caused her a severe reaction. None of that nonsense about having trace amounts from factory contamination since that small an amount didn't bother/concern her that much, it was the type of reaction she would have 'enjoyed' from eating a sandwich made with regular bread. Turned out that they were using a leavening agent that included gluten from wheat starch in their baked goods.

[Witty Username]

Originally Posted by Apache

Looking at a book to buy set in late '30s and early WWII until the blurb mentioned that the protagonist's favorite book was The Thin Red Line. It wasn't published until 1962 and was based on James Jones's experiences on Guadalcanal.
Apache

Maybe it was Arthur Griffiths' book of the same title? Published around 1900, it's set during the Crimean war where the battle of Balaclava was the original "thin red line".

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yup, I think that that's ridiculous too. If they're worried about parents, and small children, fine--then put something up for parents. Something as simple as "parental warning" would do. They can do their own research--there are a billion websites up, "warning" parents about this or that or smoking or cursing or (gasp!) nudity and on and on and on. They can make their own decisions. Were it me, I'd watch the thing first and choose for myself if my kid could, or could not, see it--I wouldn't let some anonymous-to-me group or person choose FOR me. Shockingly, that's how parents parented for the decades before warnings.

About half the time, when I see a 'warning" for strong language, etc. my usual response is "thank GOD." I mean, go back only to what, the 80's and watch what was considered normal adult fare (by "adult" I do not mean porn) then, versus what's produced now and it's just...everybody has been infantilized.

ETA: (And really--aren't we talking about the same parents who cavalierly give their kids smartphones??????)

Hitch

What I find silly are the warnings on older programs that they may not be suitable. Here's one from Disney that even is displayed for some episodes of The Muppet Show. I've watches some of these shows/movies and they've never done me any harm. Kids really do not need to live in a sterilized environment. They need to be exposed to things like this.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Content rating in a couple of letters is one thing; a mile-long list of every possible thing that could possibly trigger someone is a far cry from it. And there isn't probably anything in existence that couldn't be a trigger for someone - an eating or cooking scene could trigger someone with anorexia, an action scene could trigger someone who has been chased, mugged, beaten or threatened in real life, a car chasing scene someone who's been in a car accident, nasty parents someone who had an unhappy childhood and so on. Shall we insert a condensed version of the plot in the beginning of every book out there to avoid complaining reviewers afterwards?

I too have a trigger - animal abuse. And I have left books unfinished because of it, even very good books, because I was just unable to read further. Knowing the animal in question was completely fictional didn't help. Did I write a review berating the author for not warning me and giving me nightmares? No. The world is full of nasty, unpleasant things, that's life. And naturally the books meant for adults reflect it; how could it be otherwise?

My wife and I watch some medical programs and one of the warnings is "May contain scenes of a graphic medical nature." Which basically says the viewer is stupid. It's a medical program. DUH!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Ugh, those end-of-book 'preview the next book' excerpts. They make it hard to figure out how much is really left in a book.

I delete that. It's useless. If I liked the book I just read enough, I'll eventually read the next book.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My wife was getting a laugh out of the warning in a M/M romance she was reading. One of the triggers was a warning that there was male/male sexual contact. It reminded her of the warning on a jar of peanut butter: May contain peanuts. From the rest of the warnings, she felt the warning page was more an ad for the content than a warning.

Also seen on peanut butter is "This product was made in a factory that handles nuts.".

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My wife and I watch some medical programs and one of the warnings is "May contain scenes of a graphic medical nature." Which basically says the viewer is stupid. It's a medical program. DUH!

"Professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt." The car was just driving normally. I guess they want us to speed instead.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Also seen on peanut butter is "This product was made in a factory that handles nuts.".

Well, peanuts are legumes rather than nuts.