The Reader’s Nook - The N&G Book Thread

[yukbon]

I’m a major tiktok noob in the first place, but I tried delving into booktok. Had to close the app at “yassifying Lolita.”

tiktok is like concentrated versions of whatever. so if it's "this is a shitty take on a book done by someone that doesn't know shit about literature or the subject" then it's going to be a really, really dumb and shitty take. same if it's conservative politics or history or whatever.

 

[Max Sterling]

I’m a major tiktok noob in the first place, but I tried delving into booktok. Had to close the app at “yassifying Lolita.”

You gotta feed the algorithm. Block the things you don't like, engage with what you do. Almost all my videos are cute cats, LGBTQ rights, cooking (actual cooking, not the weird gross wtf stuff) and Socialist think pieces.

 

[Bull Shannon]

You gotta feed the algorithm. Block the things you don't like, engage with what you do. Almost all my videos are cute cats, LGBTQ rights, cooking (actual cooking, not the weird gross wtf stuff) and Socialist think pieces.

Yeah, I can see the algorithm slowly getting me, but it’s taking time as I open the app like once a week. So do you straight-up block users if one TikTok by them doesn’t appeal? I thought just swiping up sufficed.

 

[Max Sterling]

Yeah, I can see the algorithm slowly getting me, but it’s taking time as I open the app like once a week. So do you straight-up block users if one TikTok by them doesn’t appeal? I thought just swiping up sufficed.

I do tell it to not show me stuff by a user if their stuff doesn't appeal to me. I get a lot of fantasy and sci-fi book rec's, which is right up my alley.

I just downloaded Children of Time on Audible after hearing a few people say it was worth the read/listen.

 

[kvetcha]

Finished the first couple Wayfarers books and am switching gears to read Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility. I’m hoping my recent Station Eleven viewing will have put me in the right headspace.

 

[Nee Lewman]

Finished the first couple Wayfarers books and am switching gears to read Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility. I’m hoping my recent Station Eleven viewing will have put me in the right headspace.

I haven't read or watched Station Eleven, but I can't imagine anything putting me in the right headspace for Sea of Tranquility. That said, It was really good and well worth the read. One of the most lyrical things I've read in a long time and very of the moment.

 

[Nee Lewman]

actually, having just read the description of Station Eleven, yeah it probably put you in the right headspace.

 

[kvetcha]

I haven't read or watched Station Eleven, but I can't imagine anything putting me in the right headspace for Sea of Tranquility. That said, It was really good and well worth the read. One of the most lyrical things I've read in a long time and very of the moment.

I liked Station Eleven the novel, but I loved Station Eleven the miniseries. Highly recommend.

 

[Bull Shannon]

I do tell it to not show me stuff by a user if their stuff doesn't appeal to me. I get a lot of fantasy and sci-fi book rec's, which is right up my alley.

I just downloaded Children of Time on Audible after hearing a few people say it was worth the read/listen.

I’m in the minority in Children of Time; most people hail it as a modern classic, but it left me cold. I’d love to elaborate after you’re done, so as not to yuck your yum (or commiserate over shared yucks)

Finished the first couple Wayfarers books and am switching gears to read Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility. I’m hoping my recent Station Eleven viewing will have put me in the right headspace.

Huh, I’m halfway through Sea after finishing Wayfarers 2. Small world! I’ll share full thoughts here, but I’m loving it so far.

 

[kvetcha]

I’m in the minority in Children of Time; most people hail it as a modern classic, but it left me cold. I’d love to elaborate after you’re done, so as not to yuck your yum (or commiserate over shared yucks)

Huh, I’m halfway through Sea after finishing Wayfarers 2. Small world! I’ll share full thoughts here, but I’m loving it so far.

I'm also really into it! About 65% of the way through, I think.

 

[Aelias]

What -- THE Bill Watterson?

I didn't believe it at first either and then immediately called a local to put in a pre-order.

 

[kvetcha]

Update: Finished Sea of Tranquility, liked it very much. I was also delighted to read that Patrick Somerville, who was showrunner for Station Eleven, will be adapting this AND The Glass Hotel for HBO.

…I’m now on the waitlist for The Glass Hotel.

 

[Bennnnn]

Update: Finished Sea of Tranquility, liked it very much. I was also delighted to read that Patrick Somerville, who was showrunner for Station Eleven, will be adapting this AND The Glass Hotel for HBO.

…I’m now on the waitlist for The Glass Hotel.

I read Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel last year, but haven’t done Sea of Tranquility yet. I enjoyed the series of Station Eleven, but didn’t completely love it. The book was pretty different which was nice. The Glass Hotel on the other hand…really worked for me. I enjoyed it a lot more. It’s kind of similar structurally and stylistically, but the characters and situations I just gravitated toward more.

 

[kvetcha]

I read Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel last year, but haven’t done Sea of Tranquility yet. I enjoyed the series of Station Eleven, but didn’t completely love it. The book was pretty different which was nice. The Glass Hotel on the other hand…really worked for me. I enjoyed it a lot more. It’s kind of similar structurally and stylistically, but the characters and situations I just gravitated toward more.

Very excited to read it.

I saw Station Eleven years after I read the novel, so I had enough distance that it sort of exists as its own object in my mind. I had retained only the loosest outline of events from the book, and the show hit me very differently. It does seem to be somewhat divisive, though.

 

[Ericj32]

When it comes to books that are classics/public domain and thus available in several editions - do you have a preference or loyalty on which edition you buy?

This goes for both books in print and ebooks. For ebooks, I have a really hard time paying $10+ for a penguin edition of something that's public domain. I usually go for the Delphi Classics editions that have all of the author's works bundled together in one ebook for $1.99 or $2.99. They often seem to include other ephemera: illustrations, photos, articles written by the author on other topics, printed criticism of their work by other famous writers, or printed biographies of the author. If I see an individual novel ebook on sale for $2.99 or less with a really nice cover image, I might buy it, but otherwise it just seems like a waste of money.

For books in print, I'm kind of a sucker for a deckle edge and thus, often end up with Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions. I wouldn't hesitate to just say that those are unequivocally the best if it weren't for the bizarre cover art that a good chunk of them have. I'm not at all interested in a book cover that tries to illustrate the plot of the novel as if it were a graphic novel:

Or the set of covers that look like they were designed for angsty goth teens:

Like I said, many of them are really nice covers that I love, but I wish that they'd go for a slightly more consistent aesthetic.

I used to like the regular black penguin classics, but they recently changed the cover design on those so that the both the author's name and title now appear in white text and both in all caps and they seem to have increased the font size of the author's name - like maybe it will grow on me, but after so many years of seeing the author's name in orange and the title in italics, this just looks wrong - I could see someone looking at this edition of Jane Eyre and thinking that Charlotte Brontë was the title of Jane Eyre's novel:

the way that I'm used to:

There's also the newer set of Penguin Clothbound Classics that are hardcovers with patterned designs on the covers:

they're kind of cool - but they're anywhere from $15-30 and I got of few of them and the way that the design is printed on the cloth kind of looks like it will wear off easily. They don't look quite as clean and precise in person, and some of the color combinations or images also just seem odd to me:

There are also Modern Library Classics editions, which feel like the paper is a little heavier somehow:

They also have updated covers on these which appear quite simple and elegant to me:

besides these, there are the hardcover Everyman's classics editions, vintage classics (another one of my favorites though there seem to be different versions between the US and the UK for these), and the red-and-white Oxford World Classics.

I'm torn on this because currently my collection is a smattering of different editions, and part of me wants to see a little more uniformity from the spines on my bookshelves, at least when it comes to the classics.

 

[Mr Moore]

When it comes to books that are classics/public domain and thus available in several editions - do you have a preference or loyalty on which edition you buy?

This goes for both books in print and ebooks. For ebooks, I have a really hard time paying $10+ for a penguin edition of something that's public domain. I usually go for the Delphi Classics editions that have all of the author's works bundled together in one ebook for $1.99 or $2.99. They often seem to include other ephemera: illustrations, photos, articles written by the author on other topics, printed criticism of their work by other famous writers, or printed biographies of the author. If I see an individual novel ebook on sale for $2.99 or less with a really nice cover image, I might buy it, but otherwise it just seems like a waste of money.

For books in print, I'm kind of a sucker for a deckle edge and thus, often end up with Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions. I wouldn't hesitate to just say that those are unequivocally the best if it weren't for the bizarre cover art that a good chunk of them have. I'm not at all interested in a book cover that tries to illustrate the plot of the novel as if it were a graphic novel:

Or the set of covers that look like they were designed for angsty goth teens:

Like I said, many of them are really nice covers that I love, but I wish that they'd go for a slightly more consistent aesthetic.

I used to like the regular black penguin classics, but they recently changed the cover design on those so that the both the author's name and title now appear in white text and both in all caps and they seem to have increased the font size of the author's name - like maybe it will grow on me, but after so many years of seeing the author's name in orange and the title in italics, this just looks wrong - I could see someone looking at this edition of Jane Eyre and thinking that Charlotte Brontë was the title of Jane Eyre's novel:

the way that I'm used to:

There's also the newer set of Penguin Clothbound Classics that are hardcovers with patterned designs on the covers:

they're kind of cool - but they're anywhere from $15-30 and I got of few of them and the way that the design is printed on the cloth kind of looks like it will wear off easily. They don't look quite as clean and precise in person, and some of the color combinations or images also just seem odd to me:

There are also Modern Library Classics editions, which feel like the paper is a little heavier somehow:

They also have updated covers on these which appear quite simple and elegant to me:

besides these, there are the hardcover Everyman's classics editions, vintage classics (another one of my favorites though there seem to be different versions between the US and the UK for these), and the red-and-white Oxford World Classics.

I'm torn on this because currently my collection is a smattering of different editions, and part of me wants to see a little more uniformity from the spines on my bookshelves, at least when it comes to the classics.

I tend to stick with Penguin classics or Vintage but I only buy on Kindle so the physical uniformity isn't so much an issue for me. I was tempted at first by the free and very cheap editions but read so many user reviews that suggested they appeared to be translated into a foreign language and then back again using a computer translator that frequently make no sense and certainly aren't true to the original so I gave them a miss.
I used to like the look of the Everyman editions in the bookshops, I think they're still around for affordable hardback versions.

 

[Bull Shannon]

When it comes to books that are classics/public domain and thus available in several editions - do you have a preference or loyalty on which edition you buy?

This goes for both books in print and ebooks. For ebooks, I have a really hard time paying $10+ for a penguin edition of something that's public domain. I usually go for the Delphi Classics editions that have all of the author's works bundled together in one ebook for $1.99 or $2.99. They often seem to include other ephemera: illustrations, photos, articles written by the author on other topics, printed criticism of their work by other famous writers, or printed biographies of the author. If I see an individual novel ebook on sale for $2.99 or less with a really nice cover image, I might buy it, but otherwise it just seems like a waste of money.

For books in print, I'm kind of a sucker for a deckle edge and thus, often end up with Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions. I wouldn't hesitate to just say that those are unequivocally the best if it weren't for the bizarre cover art that a good chunk of them have. I'm not at all interested in a book cover that tries to illustrate the plot of the novel as if it were a graphic novel:

Or the set of covers that look like they were designed for angsty goth teens:

Like I said, many of them are really nice covers that I love, but I wish that they'd go for a slightly more consistent aesthetic.

I used to like the regular black penguin classics, but they recently changed the cover design on those so that the both the author's name and title now appear in white text and both in all caps and they seem to have increased the font size of the author's name - like maybe it will grow on me, but after so many years of seeing the author's name in orange and the title in italics, this just looks wrong - I could see someone looking at this edition of Jane Eyre and thinking that Charlotte Brontë was the title of Jane Eyre's novel:

the way that I'm used to:

There's also the newer set of Penguin Clothbound Classics that are hardcovers with patterned designs on the covers:

they're kind of cool - but they're anywhere from $15-30 and I got of few of them and the way that the design is printed on the cloth kind of looks like it will wear off easily. They don't look quite as clean and precise in person, and some of the color combinations or images also just seem odd to me:

There are also Modern Library Classics editions, which feel like the paper is a little heavier somehow:

They also have updated covers on these which appear quite simple and elegant to me:

besides these, there are the hardcover Everyman's classics editions, vintage classics (another one of my favorites though there seem to be different versions between the US and the UK for these), and the red-and-white Oxford World Classics.

I'm torn on this because currently my collection is a smattering of different editions, and part of me wants to see a little more uniformity from the spines on my bookshelves, at least when it comes to the classics.

I love this topic!

I'm not too picky in terms of consistency of publisher/spine; if I'm shopping in the store, I'll favor the print that is most readable and the cover that's most pleasant (I'll skew between demure covers and more colorful, interpretive ones, though I agree the comic-book style ones are not my jam even though I'm happy to see some cartoonists I love get a check). Glad to finally have a word to go along with my love: deckle edges. They're great, but not key.

The internet age has made it a bit easier to pick and choose editions and covers; I've had some really good luck with Thriftbooks filling in a few holes in my collection and getting copies of series books which fit one another. That said, I recently received a copy of Dead Man's Walk with the worst book cover I've ever seen (I still haven't read it out of shame):

(honestly, the cover itself is in that poor resolution)

Also, on the spine consistency front, I've been a member of NY Review of Books Classics for about two years now, and I'll tell you: the uniform spines slowly become a monolithic reminder of all the Serious books you haven't read yet. I do like the nyrb style of cover in general though; they do a good job of balancing design and class.

 

[Aelias]

I like to be consistent with a series or author but not across my collection as a whole. I like seeing a variety of different publishers and styles on the shelves so I don't try to match all the spines but I do avoid the graphic covers and movie covers. I usually stick with paperback to save space unless it's a favourite that I know I'm going to be re-reading. I only buy physical books, e-readers aren't for me. I hadn't seen the Penguin Clothbound Classics and am really tempted to pick up a couple favourites.

 

[Bull Shannon]

As a Sanderson-allergic nerd in a literary world dominated by Sanderson (my last job was with a Mormon company, and every other software engineer was stoked for the new Stormlight book), I get some giddy schadenfreude from seeing this Wired columnist fold him like a card table:

Brandon Sanderson Is Your God

He’s the biggest fantasy writer in the world. He’s also very Mormon. These things are profoundly related.

www.wired.com

I will say some of the things said are low blows (what nerd hasn't worn a blazer with a graphic tee? It's a mistake we must all grow through).

edit: In finishing the full article, I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. While I really dislike Brandon Sanderson on the basis of his work, he's an overall generous presence (I've listened to his podcast and watched some of his writing lectures) and the piece belies Frank Grimes levels of resentment from a writer who can't square disliking the art with liking the artist's guest shower.

 

[ayayrawn]

Yeah, this felt like an entirely unprovoked hit piece. Likening him to Card in the first few paragraphs primes you to think that there's something deeply problematic about Sanderson and look, we all get that Mormonism isn't the most progressive religion, but the worst thing he has to say is that Sanderson is boring. Not being personally profound or charismatic is not a justification for this treatment, IMO.

Walking around a convention asking all of an author's fans if they agree that the author is a bad writer is a....strange approach. That's not even a defense of his writing, which I don't like either.

There is surely an angle you can take for one of the world's most successful authors being compulsively prolific while being an absolute dud in real life and end up with something interesting to say, but this wasn't it.

Yeah, I'm not really a fan (read the first mistborn trilogy and thought it mid, and the first stormlight was okay but maybe 400 pages too long), but this is probably unnecessary. Mormonism is gross, sure, and part of why I don't like his work (mainly for how sterile it feels rather than him inserting his religion, which I don't think he does), but if a lot of people are enjoying it then so what. By all accounts, he's still a nice guy. He's open and communicative with both his fans AND critics online, and hears them all out, which I appreciate it.