There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

@diazona@techhub.social avatar

diazona

@[email protected]

Software engineer, former particle physicist, occasional blogger. I support the principle of cake.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

FrancescaJ , to bookstodon
@FrancescaJ@mastodon.nz avatar

I mostly keep track of books on so I was a little surprised after finishing All The Light We Cannot See by that of all the people who answered ‘Flaws of characters a main focus’ only 38% said Yes 🤔 I mean Werner is a complex sympathetic character but the ways he is complicit in Nazism is a major driver of the plot. If that ain’t a character flaw I don’t know what is! Nevertheless that complexity is part of why it’s a great book that avoids cliche @bookstodon

The cover of All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. A boy runs down a cobbled alley, wearing black leather shoes & a grey coat - clothing from the WW2 era. The alley is narrow & grey but the end of it creates a vertical plane of light in the picture. The boy is running towards the light

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@FrancescaJ @bookstodon Y'know, I always feel like I have a hard time understanding that question. So when writing my own reviews - for fiction novels at least - I tend to interpret it as "is the plot largely driven by the main character's struggle to overcome their own character flaws?" (I'm sure there are other ways that the character's flaws could be a main focus of the novel, but I have a hard time imagining what they would be.)

Now, I don't know anything about this particular book, but I could imagine that if other people are thinking the same lines I would, in order to answer that question with a "yes" it's not enough for the main character to be a Nazi. He would have to perceive it as a flaw and work to overcome it, and that would have to drive the story. And maybe it does, I dunno... but if not, I understand answering "no" there.

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@FrancescaJ @bookstodon Oh interesting, I'll have to check that one out, thanks!

bibliolater , to bookstodon
@bibliolater@qoto.org avatar

How do you feel when you approach the end of a that you have enjoyed ?

I am nearing the end of a seven hundred and forty seven page . Just forty five pages to go. I am experiencing mixed emotions as I have enjoyed the work, it increased my knowledge and widened my intellectual horizon; however, I will be glad when the book is finished.

@bookstodon

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@bibliolater @bookstodon If I enjoyed reading the book I generally find myself hoping there's a sequel

jason_w_karpf , to religion
@jason_w_karpf@mastodonbooks.net avatar

New Study Achieves Breakthrough in Warp Drive Design - Press Release

A warp drive concept that works within known physics. At last!

@bookstodon @religion https://apple.news/AZ2WX4m78Qnq0LETaaeToJg

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@jason_w_karpf @bookstodon @religion Huh, well it'll be interesting to see what additional research happens along these lines. It sounds interesting but the press release sounds very promotional, so I'm reserving judgment.

(I wonder what the religion group's interest in this is? 🤷)

dickrubin716 , to bookstodon
@dickrubin716@bookstodon.com avatar

I would love to get your thoughts and feedback on my from my latest book, The Challenges of Being Me. Do you like it? Does it capture your attention? Without knowing anything about the book, what genre would you say this cover best fits? @bookstodon

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@negative12dollarbill @dickrubin716 @bookstodon Interesting, I kind of had the opposite guesses: the title makes me think of self-help, but the image suggests something else (possibly YA)

CultureDesk , to bookstodon
@CultureDesk@flipboard.social avatar

AI-generated books on Amazon now have the potential to kill people, as they've moved into the realm of mushroom foraging. Guides have popped up like, well, mushrooms, packed with information that makes no sense and could easily be dangerous, illustrated with structures that are "the mycological equivalent of a picture of a hot blond with six fingers and too many teeth," writes Vox's Constance Grady. Here's more.

https://flip.it/ekbDMe

@bookstodon

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@doc @CultureDesk @bookstodon Depends on jurisdiction of course, but in the US, probably not. Or, I mean, you can sue anyone for anything, but you're not going to win if the only allegation you make is that they published something that was wrong.

Maybe a good lawyer could find some way to frame it as negligence 🤷

ChrisMayLA6 , to bookstodon
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

While its good to see that books still hold their own (in revenue generating terms) with films & music (they outperform both), the big news is that video games generated more revenue globally than books & music combined.

As someone who has never played a video game, but reads a lot of books, I'm not sure how I feel about this... but it tells us something about where the globe's creative & receptive energies seem to be spent.


@bookstodon

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@ChrisMayLA6 @bookstodon Video games have much more revenue potential than any of the others, though - people can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a single game by buying in-game content. If this graph includes all that revenue, then I bet it's not giving an accurate impression of how many people play video games compared to reading books, and shouldn't be taken as a representation of how people's "creative & receptive energies" are spent.

OwenTyme , to bookstodon
@OwenTyme@mastodon.social avatar

I've found another online store that respects the price I've set on print copies of my books.

Has anyone ever heard of bookshop.org? Anything good or bad to say about them?

I found my books on it recently and the site has good reviews online, so I've added bookshop.org links to the list that shows up when you click on one of my books2read links.

My books on their site: https://bookshop.org/contributors/owen-tyme

@bookstodon

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@OwenTyme @bookstodon I haven't heard a lot, but what I have heard has been good.

I haven't gotten the chance to use them myself since I so rarely buy physical books these days and the few times I did I couldn't find what I was looking for on bookshop.org, but I always check.

kmherkes , to bookstodon
@kmherkes@wandering.shop avatar

My humble offering to anyone seeking a weekend read:

Weaving In The Ends, a novella duology that starts w/a summer fling & ends w/a Winter Solstice brawl.

It's the closest I have to a feel-good story, it's a cozyish quick read that can be read as a standalone, or as an easy springboard into the world of 2 connected novels.

Available in print & ebook now, audio coming soon!

https://books2read.com/WeavingInTheEnds

@bookstodon

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@kmherkes @bookstodon Sounds like this might scratch an itch I've been having lately 😀 I'm putting it on my list

booktweeting , to bookstodon
@booktweeting@zirk.us avatar

CLEVERLY SELF-REFERENTIAL AND WILDLY imaginative novel is both a roman à clef about the “Golden Age” of science fiction and a Borgesian parable exploring the nature of memory and reality. Charming and trippy. B PLUS

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-circumference-of-the-world-lavie-tidhar/1143018566?ean=9781616963620

@bookstodon

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@booktweeting @bookstodon Sounds interesting!

pivic , to bookstodon
@pivic@kolektiva.social avatar

‘God forbid that a dog should die’: when Goodreads reviews go bad https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/17/god-forbid-that-a-dog-should-die-when-goodreads-reviews-go-bad

Goodreads is horrible for readers and books. The technical platform is very badly maintained with bugs in the extreme. Amazon mine user data for nefarious purposes, for example, in building concentration camps (ICE).

I recommend anyone who's interested in keeping track of their books in a social way (if one wants; one can also use the platform so that nobody else can see your activity) to use Bookwyrm (https://bookwyrm.social), which is completely open-source and actively maintained by very kind people—you can host your own instance, which is BTW built on ActivePub—to whom I donate money to keep the site rolling; no ads, no tracking.

There's also The StoryGraph (https://www.thestorygraph.com) that was created by people who were fed up with Amazon and their . The system is closed-source and actively maintained.

@bookstodon

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@robbiedavis @pivic @bookstodon @hardcover Cool, I'll have to check that out!

kenthompson , to bookstodon
@kenthompson@mastodon.world avatar

, anyone? Perfect example from publishing. A publisher is using AI to write crappy nonfiction, then assigning author names that almost match leading experts in that field (to trick search engines). No doubt other AIs will now search those texts as authoritative. This is done solely to make money and only makes the world a worse place.
@bookstodon @pluralistic

https://www.washingtonpost.com/newsletters/book-club/

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@hexbatch @OhOkKay @kenthompson @bookstodon @pluralistic I definitely agree that that is a good practice, either that or some other way of preserving drafts, notes, or evidence of incremental progress. (There isn't really anything special about Git in that regard; a commit history can easily be faked.)

But I also think it's not reasonable to expect, in general, that writers must have done this. There are, and (probably) always will be, many cases where an author doesn't have records of their incremental progress, and that can't mean they have no defense against an accusation of AI-powered plagiarism.

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@hexbatch @OhOkKay @kenthompson @bookstodon @pluralistic Pretty much, yeah, as long as the email server operator is trustworthy. But even then, there's no particular need for Git; you can just email yourself a draft. (Unless you want to keep the contents of the draft private even from the email server operator)

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@OhOkKay @hexbatch @kenthompson @bookstodon @pluralistic There is nothing in this scenario we're discussing that would give AI tools the opportunity to scrape your drafts. (Unless you choose to use a website that uses all content they receive to train AI models.)

ferngirl , to bookstodon
@ferngirl@det.social avatar

If the ain't your jam, might I suggest a good book? Right now, I'm reading The Dictionary of Lost Words (by Pip Williams), and I'm really enjoying it.
@bookstodon what are you reading? Anything good?

diazona ,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@ferngirl @bookstodon Currently finishing up "The King's Seal" (https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/1315c50a-e30d-4cb7-8b2d-86c309e1cb4a), which is the end of a series... which I actually don't think is all that great - it's fine, but not a standout - though I suppose the fact that I did stick with it through a 3-book series has to count for something 🤷

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •