What are your thoughts on DNF (Did Not Finish)-ing books? Do you feel guilty about it? Do you worry you missed out on something? Or are you confident in dropping a book and reaching for the next one?
At what point are you most likely to DNF, if ever? What sorts of things cause you to DNF?
@skaeth@bookstodon I usually read several books at the time (for example one of poetry and a novel, or non fiction and short stories) so I don't mind when one of the two or three become my favorite. However, sometimes stories take a turn that doesn't interest me or change the rhythm. I usually try to get hooked again two or three times and if it doesn't work, I leave it.
There was a poll that stated—Rowling’s opening line in the HP series is one of best in the world. Someone posted about how there are a bunch of other opening statements that are better.
Here’s one of my personal favorites, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in English):
“It is inevitable — the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
I saw some of his art online and thought it looked like “Invisible Hands” from Liquid Television, which I LOVED. Same artist! This didn’t have quite the same level of twisted, creepiness as that animated series, but I was so happy to find his work in comic form. There’s more too.
Book 29: “New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color” edited by #NisiShawl.
Read this after learning a Mastodon mutual is in it. Tend to have a hard time with short story collections, but this one slowly grew on me. I loved the author bios and having a better sense of what informed their pieces, especially as POC authors in this genre. “New Suns” makes up for some of its less successful parts by gathering these voices together into a greater whole.
Really enjoyable, and only the second book in this series. This one follows two characters from the first book, and like the first, devotes good time to their arcs. Unlike the first, the plot moves quicker: it jumps back and forth in time to explore one character’s history.
I think it works as a standalone book, but even better if you read the series. Taking my time to read the next one to prolong it.
Thread:
I've decided to read (at least) one short story a day (or 365+ stories in total) for 2023.
I'll keep track here, with links to works and authors when possible. Because an Internet without useless personal lists is not an Internet I want to be a part of. #bookstodon#ShortStories#Books#Authors@bookstodon
(1 of ?)
Oh my God! Oh fck! I wake up to this big news and all I can say is fck! I went to bed having read something about Philip K Dick Awards (I can't even remember what I read about it!) and I wake up to learn that my book, Where Rivers Go To Die, has been nominated for this and its a big deal to me and all I can day is f*ck! What a way to start the year!
I agree with Elon. Likewise this Bill Withers song could also be much shorter. Here, I've cue'd it up to explain the point. He just says "I know" over and over. How inefficient. A LLM could nicely summarize the song with a single "I know" (0:50)
'"Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”
“Snap ending.” Mildred nodded.
“Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag), whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.”
Mildred arose and began to move around the room, picking things up and putting them down.
Beatty ignored her and continued: “Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought."'
And not sff, but these are my favorite regular sapphic romances that I listened to last year. One per author because these are all authors where I’m going to be reading everything wlw they’ve written. 🌈📚 #LesbianBooks@sapphicbooks
The central bank of any national fiat currency monitors prices of tens of thousands of products and services, all over the country, every month. From that data it estimates the monthly inflation rate (change in the currency's value). Then it intervenes in the money supply as needed to push the inflation towards the yearly goal.
Thought I'd start a thread for the books I read during this year, to keep track and share what I've been spending my time with. Happy for recommendations along the way, but do already have a decent-sized to be read pile (and ebook library). #books#reading#bookstodon
The Unreal and The Real: Selected Stories volume 2, by Ursula K Le Guin
Well, it's got The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas in it, so that's worth the admission price on its own. But the rest of this collection is worth it, too. It engaged me much more than the first volume of stories did with an interesting selection of stories with shifted perspectives, using SF to give us a different view on our own world and its priorities, with lots of interesting ideas to mull over. #books#bookstodon
Vaxxers, by Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green
Interesting account of how they created the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in such a short space of time. My curiosity would have liked more on some of the science behind it, but it could have been two or three times longer and still barely scratched the surface of some of the processes around. Captures the feeling of 2020, along with a commitment to explaining why all vaccines are important. #books#bookstodon
“What an astonishing thing a book is… one glance at it & you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly & silently inside your head, directly to you.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. #Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
This is one reason why the #GOP wants to ban books. They do not want Americans to experience what Sagan refers to as "binding people together who never knew each other".
The GOP wants Americans to feel isolated and fearful of anyone "other" than themselves. It's much easier to exploit people so full of fear that they can't think straight. People who are calm and feel secure are much harder to manipulate, because they can take the time to think things through.
I sometimes thought my father thought he could't die while he still had books on his pending pile (a stab at immortality I seem to be replicating)... so, it was strangely touching to see Tom Gauld has had similar thoughts.
Greetings, myth lovers! For the upcoming #BookLoversDay we are asking: what are your favourite mythology-themed #books?
Tell us about the #myth and the #book with the hashtag #MythologyMonday for boosts!
Let's swap some awesome recs, all right? 😊
Your host @AimeeMaroux is looking forward to all your #book reports! 😚
I'm going to go with the Danish comic book series "Valhall" by Peter Madsen, Henning Kure and Hans Racke. It's a somewhat quirky retelling of norse myths that's having a lot of fun with them but still respecting the source material.
@Helen50@bookstodon The thing that made me better at abandoning books was reading Sarum. It's over 1,100 pages and tells the story of five families from pre-history to 1985 in the area around Stonehenge. While it had its moments (who doesn't like Stonehenge?) most of the book was incredibly tedious.
I slogged through it as a teenager - I'd started and by damn I was gonna finish! I got to the end and... it really wasn't worth it. I decided I never had to finish any other book I wasn't enjoying.
@Rhube@bookstodon@Helen50 I remember feeling guilty (for some unknown reason) the first time, many decades ago, I abandoned a book. Since then, I realised that I have so many books on my TBR pile that making myself read a book I'm not enjoying was just plain silly. I now quite often (more than 1%, less than 10%) abandon books without finishing them. Life's too short!
At the risk of reigniting a debate that has been had in my timeline in the past... here's a report of a University of Valencia that looked at over 20 paper examine the differential effects of reading digitally & on paper.
The research confirms my experience (my own & in the reading of my erstwhile students) that reading digitally is less likely to lead to long-term educational (knowledge) benefits...
Knowing so many of you share my love of #books, maybe you can help me find a new one to get lost in. I just finished “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr which was beautiful.
We haven’t compiled a good reading list together in months…
What stories have you discovered or rediscovered lately? 📚
