Scales and Tales

I made a poll over on DW: (Do you write in books?)


In the spirit of 3W4DW, comments are turned off on LJ, but you can easily comment on DW via Open ID; just follow the fake cut!

So far I am finding Goodreads.com frustrating. It's not what I was really hoping for -- far too simple, but the layout is as difficult as the site is simplistic: still no way to place all my reviews on one page, still no way to, I dunno, be notified when a book by Author X is released? Definitely no way to move things from "read" to "reading" to "read" in a way that would keep a tally -- it would be really fascinating to see how many times I reread books, and which ones get the most rereads. (Obviously, a way to enter a ballpark figure for any book added would also be helpful, since I have reread most of my books in the years I have owned them. But even starting everything from "once" would be okay.)

Still no way to reorder the books on the list; they're all jumbled together in a pile based solely on when I added them, and I haven't found any way to sort them by series or whatever. (Perhaps I could assign imaginary "Finished Reading This" dates to them, and sort them that way? Can I set it to always show that way, or would I have to reorder it every time I logged in? Must experiment...)

Some sort of "make notes about this" option would be nice, too -- because a lot of what I want to remember about the books I read isn't the sort of thing one puts in a review, which will be read by others and has to concern itself with spoilers, basic mechanical/plot issues, and other very basic details. What I want is a way to remind myself that X and Y in this book reminded me of the relationship between D and E in another book; that it has hints of Kink A; that the [SPOILER] really fell flat and I am not to buy the sequel. These are things that other readers don't want to know (personal kinks or purchasing notes) or don't need to know (spoilers, my specific emotional reactions to random stuff), but I'd like to keep track of.

People of my flist who track their reading online, what do you use? What sorts of info do you really want recorded? (Maybe I'm just insanely organised in ways no other person wants?)

Conclusion: too much social networking, not enough recordkeeping. Overall disappointing. (Oh, and it's not even easy to use social networking -- the hoops I had to jump through, just to add a few authors to my "favourite author" list! Egad.)

Admittedly, only the parts that least need organising. :D

At any rate, I am now signed up at Goodreads: find me here if you're interested! I'm still trying to work out how to make the site useful to me (is it just me, or is it rather difficult to get places? Maybe LJ has spoilt me), and I have a 200+ book backlog of books to review, and a backlog of probably a thousand just to list (downside of being a prolific lifelong reader!) if I intend to do that, not to mention needing to decide whether to bother listing those I did not enjoy at all.

Once all that's done, then I can start wrestling with the site and seeing how to make it useful! Because so far, aside from using the "Shelf" feature as a primitive sort of tagging sytem, I'm really not finding it useful -- surely there should be a way to order the books, beyond "added to list" date? Plus there must be some way to see my reviews of things without hunting the book down, clicking on it, and (eventually, once it's been up a while) scrolling through all the newer reviews till I reach mine?

All tips appreciated; also any reminders of things I've forgotten to list, things you think I should put on the "to be read" list, or explanations of whom I should add to my "flist".

Or, y'know, dire threats aimed at getting me out of virtual book-organising and back to the giant pile of unfolded laundry that has been living on my bed for the last week and a half. *rueful look* (In case you don't know already, I am pants at organising anything that matters, reserving my talents for the alphabetising of CDs and things like virtual bookshelves. I totally fail at any kind of real-life organisation.)

Camera cable still missing! Starting to get worried. Must excavate laundry pile tomorrow, in case it's underneath it somehow...

I've managed to whittle my Books-To-Be-Read Pile down to fewer than 10 books, in preparation for the Foreigner group-read -- don't want to have too high a backlog before diving into Cherryh, because that usually results in massive sequel-reading sprees. :D

(The top of the list:)

In the spirit of 3W4DW, comments are turned off on LJ, but you can easily comment on DW via Open ID; just follow the fake cut!

I made a number of Foreigner icons which are free to use! Find them here.

From the responses so far, it looks like most would prefer to do the read-along here, which is fine by me!

cheyinka suggested, and I'm in favour of, making the first two sections our first reading section, and then reading three chapters per week. I'll take a look at my copy and see what that works out to, both in terms of time and in terms of spacing, and we can tweak that if needed.

I was tentatively thinking we could start at the end of 3W4DW -- would that be too soon? (Probably? I don't even know what day it is, argh. Must teach self to look at calendars more often than once a month-and-half...) Since it's just a few people, so far at least, we are probably pretty flexible in terms of start date; if you have some Big Important Thing you'd like to get through before we start, just say so and we'll see if it's workable.

(Relatedly: feel free to invite others to join us, if you have any scifi- or Foreigner-fans on your flists!)

Note to self: acquire Foreigner icon!

Raise your hand if you remember SurveyFail, a fandom-wide fiasco featuring two idiots trying to profit from the generosity of fen (the old FanLib story!).

(Apparently, they managed to cobble together a book in spite of all fandom could throw at them...)


In the spirit of 3W4DW, comments are turned off on LJ, but you can easily comment on DW via Open ID; just follow the fake cut!

Sorry, no post yesterday -- work killed me and I fell asleep.

Today, however, I have discovered the wonder that is Google Earth! Looked up various places I have lived, but mostly just had fun searching for widely-disparate locations from novels and going "wheeeeeeee!" as the globe spins and zooms. :D

This means I did not do the photo meme, though, for which I apologise; I'll do it tomorrow, I promise! (Anyone else want to chime in with a last-minute request, since I'm late?)

Still trying to work out logistics for the Foreigner readalong -- would you prefer to do it here on my journal? Or in a specific community? Because I've been toying with creating either a general sci-fi/fantasy discussion comm, or one intended for hosting read-alongs in particular. Any input?

In a similar vein: I know I'm a speed reader; I try to remember that other people aren't always as fast, but this makes it sort of hard to figure out a reasonable number of chapters-per-week for us to aim for. Suggestions, comments, heckling?

Hope you all had lovely weekends!

I was thinking of doing a photo meme today, but work is going to be crazy tomorrow so there's not much chance of my having time to take pictures! Nor, unfortunately, did I have enough time today to round up a recs post for one of my minor fandoms. (I plan to, soon!)

(So, if you've ever been curious about anything to do with Lance's fannishness, ask now!)




In the spirit of 3W4DW, comments are turned off on LJ, but you can easily comment on DW via Open ID; just follow the fake cut!

There's a really thought-provoking post about the meaning and context of "Mary Sue" over on hooked_on_heroines, which also dips a bit into the AO3 tagging system and feminist appllication of fanfiction criticism. Really interesting, given that "Mary Sue" is a term I use, and have never questioned deeply; also interesting in terms of AO3 and the User Tag process, because I am now technically an AO3 author, and a frequent AO3 reader who has thought about but so far refrom using the User Tag function...

I hadn't heard of this comm before, so I think tomorrow shall be spent exploring past entries!