Books, F.D.O.S, And The Return Of The Forgettery

The blue fits the latter (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator).

OK, so it became pink in the comments. -.-"

Whether it goes pink or blue is probably due to the order in which you do the coding.

frog

I'm curious - do a lot of people use the term 'forgettery' where you live? I don't hear it any more in the UK. When I was a kid I heard older people say it for fun, but I never hear it nowadays.

frog

Nope, I read about a boy's forgettery in an Enid Blyton short story and now I use it often.

Ah, I see! Are you on LibraryThing or GoodReads? You might like those sort of sites, for keeping track of what you read. Then when you're my age, you'll have a long, long list of all the books you've read since the age of 11! I get the feeling there's quite a few kids on GoodReads, actually - from the reviews of some kids books and YA books. You can write your thoughts on the books you read, and give them a rating, and people can read what you wrote, and you can read what others write.

frog

Ooooh, really? Seriously?? Like a library minus the borrowing? Doesn't have an age limit, though, right?

Also, do you have an account on either of those websites? I've made one on GoodReads, and I think it looks pretty awesome.

Yep, I'm on both. I use LibraryThing because I decided it would be fun to try to list every book I've ever read, although realistically I'm not going to remember most of them! And I use GoodReads to track books I'm currently reading and write my opinions on them, although I often forget to update it, so there are lots of books I read that I forget to post about. GoodReads is better in terms of interaction with other people who read.

frog

Personally I dislike GR, and I stick with LT, which I would have suggested to you previously but they firmly state that they follow COPPA and therefore no one under 13. Though if you really wanted to join, with the maturity of your writing, if you fibbed about it I doubt anyone would be any the wiser.

The only drawback with LibraryThing is that you have to pay if you want to list more than 200 books. I decided when I joined that I would pay for a lifetime membership, so this aspect doesn't bother me, but if a person doesn't have that option, it'd be a bit of a bummer to get to your 200th book and not be able to list any more books!

frog

That's true. I paid for lifetime also when I started being active on it. My husband might start using it more but there's not enough local sources, so he's "protesting" paying until they add this one he wants that, combined with the public library one, would cover most Dutch texts he has, haha.

I prefer the site as a whole though, and I'm glad that they have a way to get a small bit of revenue from users to help with their costs, without resorting to plaguing users with super annoying ad tactics and whatnot.

I prefer LibraryThing as an online library to list and keep track of all the books I've read. I prefer GoodReads for interaction, and reading other people's reviews, seeing what my friends are reading and what they think of it, and fun stuff. And I love the option to record what page I'm on, and to make a note of what I think of a book while I'm still in the middle of it, so I can see how my thoughts and reactions change throughout the book. Although in reality I often forget to do that, and I end up reading a lot of books without recording them on GoodReads!

frog

Yeah, the page progress & potential comments on it is a good feature, I certainly wouldn't be upset if LT implemented similar. And I admit GR is definitely easier to keep up with what friends are doing. But LT is first and foremost a cataloging site, so Tim won't change the focus to a big "friend feed" sort of thing like that. Which, I don't mind at all, really. I like where the focus is. And I love the interaction on LT soooooo so so much more than GR. Personally I find the average intellectual level to be far higher on LT, where GR is just like FB with all sorts of tweens and people who never read anything but fluff making up the bulk. When I was on there and trying to find groups to hang out in and such, I could maybe find one in fifteen that wasn't chock-full of people who couldn't spell or use grammar/punctuation, and tons of those people were even supposedly "authors"! I don't run into that at all on LT. Plus, authors aren't allowed to spam, and are not given massive places of prominence how GR has shifted things. So, yeah, LT definitely wins for me. =)

Haha - yes, there are a lot of tweens on GR, and quite a lof of fluff. But I joined with a bunch of intelligent friends that I already knew from elsewhere, so I still get intelligent interaction there. And we form our own groups. (I totally agree about most of the existing groups! It's hard to find a good one!) I do find quite a lot of thoughtful reviews of the books I read - depending on the book, I suppose. There are of course certain types of books that are a lot less likely to be read by ditsy teens!

I do get friend requests from people I've never heard of, and yep, they seem to be authors wanting to spam their stuff. I just don't accept the friend requests - as with FB, I only add people I know from elsewhere. I do feel a bit weird writing a negative review about a book where the author is on the site though!

On LT, because I'm just using it to catalogue all the books I've read, rather than to review, I've not had any interaction at all. But then, I haven't really looked into the interaction possibilities, as they are not made as obvious as they are on GR. But the kind of interaction I'd want is discussion of books I've read, which comes more naturally in a situation where I'm already writing my thoughts about the various books I read.

There is a FB kind of feel about GR - you update with book reviews and it goes into your friends' feeds, and they comment, and you comment back. But I like that chatty aspect, when it's with intelligent people and talking about books. What sort of interaction do you have on LT?

And gosh, it's true what you were saying about the Bloop notification bug - I get notifications when you've responded to a comment of mine, but not when Dream Reader has responded. Steve needs to fix the coding change he's made!

frog

Gosh, really?? I thought the bug was already fixed.

LOL I know, the bug is such a pain!

Ah see I knew no one when I joined GR. My friends there are half from Plurk and half from people I've met in groups and things on there when I was using it. So I know there are a bunch of intelligent people, they're just totally dwarfed by the huge numbers of fluff-centric folk and whatever, so it's a pain, heh. And I agree, there are a large number of well-written reviews, too. I do still find ignorant folks reviewing the "thinkers" (so-to-speak) though and completely frustrating me, haha.

Well LT has "Talk," which is like a massive forum board; there's thousands of groups (plenty are old dormant ones, but there's at least a few hundred truly active ones) relating to, well, everything, really. Not just all sorts of genres/authors, but also religion, politics, cats, dogs, cheese, haha, anything people like there's pretty much a group for. And then there's all the "challenge" groups, which generate a lot of chat. Anyway so, I wind up chatting about all sorts of things with lots of people. The average age there is also quite a bit higher than on GR; there's only a smattering of younger people (well also I've ignored the HP/SMeyer groups so I don't see that junk lol) and the bulk is probably 30+, with a significant portion being over 40, too. So even where the intellectual level may not be so high, the maturity level generally is, ya know, so it's still more pleasant in general. haha. This is one group you might enjoy

Hehe - I've actually today just joined an intelligent challenge group on GR, and gosh, it's full of a lot of pretentious up-their-own-ass people! I'm going to write a Bloop entry on it, I think. I find this a problem with a lot of social sites, when trying to meet people to have a decent discussion with - either they are stupid, or they're ridiculously pretentious! There are of course some friendly, intelligent, down-to-earth people in this group too, but the most vocal ones seem to be pretentious arses.

I'll have to check out the LT forums and groups. BTW, since you seem to find a lot of less well-known sites, have you found any active blog sites where there is a significant proportion of people who are intelligent but not pretentious? Like, regular intelligent people who don't feel the need to parade their intelligence as a badge of superiority?

Haha - just checked out your link. I'm always in two minds about pedants groups! Like, my pedantry is always a bit tongue-in-cheek - I'm totally a pedant, but I also laugh at my pedantry! I don't actually seriously despise people who make spelling and grammar errors, nor do I think it's the most terrible thing in the world that errors are made! But the group might be quite fun - I think I'll join!

frog

Oops, apologies to The Dream Journal for naughty words in my comment! I did of course mean 'up-their-own-bottoms people'!

(That word always seems more offensive in the American spelling to be honest - and in my transatlantic confusion, I've used both spellings in my comment! I just checked The Oxford English Dictionary out of curiosity, and it doesn't class the British spelling as a 'taboo', or even 'vulgar' - just not a 'polite' word! But it has the American spelling as 'vulgar'! )

frog

Haha, that's OK. I thought that it was an OK word actually (but inappropiate) 'cause it basically means two things:
1)A horse/donkey
2)A bottom
That's why I think it's an OK word, even though I don't use it.

P.S. It's the same with "shit" except that I use that. I try hard to replace it with "shoot", though. But nowadays I just say "merde" and basically nobody knows what I mean. :3

Not horse, just donkey. lol.

We often say 'shite' in the UK - it's milder than 'shit' but not bland like 'shoot' - Irish people use it a lot too. Along with 'feck' for the 'f' word!

frog

haha I agree with you, and the dictionary; "arse" is pretty mild/non-offensive, and I occasionally use it as such, while "ass" tends to be more of a "true" curse word, not something used in mixed company and the like. =P

So, if it's in an appropiate time, I can call my friend(s) and arse? :3

bahaha. Well, if you're just joking around with them and you know that they're not easily offended, it might be okay. But I wouldn't suggest doing it if you're upset with them or something, or if you're not sure how they feel about that sort of word. You don't want to just go around offending people, lol.

Sorry, I meant "an arse". I wonder why there ain't an "edit" button for commments.

LOL, yes, I admit there is some of that on LT. BUT, if you stay out of the religion/politics groups, you really don't see much of it. Those are the only places people tend to get really over the top about stuff. The pedants group can be annoying at times, but mostly they're not too bad, as they actually sit and discuss the stuff. Like someone throws out something that's bugging them, and then others chime in with agreement or examples of how it's actually not a bad thing, or whatever, and it's typically just good conversation. But of course, sometimes it can get annoying, lol.

Umm, I haven't actually really be using any for a while (hence winding up back here when I felt like writing some stuff lol). I joined DW (dreamwidth) a couple years ago and it was pretty great then, but then I'd found Plurk and wasn't really in the journaling mindset, so I pretty much stopped using it—only use it now for keeping my text-version of my annual reading list—so I'm not actually sure what the community is like anymore. It's been over a year at least I think, since I actually went to any groups or anything, so things could have shifted. You can check it out, could still be a pretty decent place. If it still needs codes to join I should have some, so just lemme know if ya try it and need one.

Ah, yes, I also joined DW a couple of years ago. Someone gave me a code - and now they aren't even requiring codes, so I've since made a couple more journals there, with the intentions of writing themed journals, like a book journal and an organisation journal. I really like the ethos of the place, and the layout, and how you can adjust everything to your own layout, although I never really got into journalling there - the communities I was interested in were either dead or full of teenagers who were pretentious in a different sort of a way. Not intellectual pretention, but a sort of emo PC pretention, somehow wanting to prove that they were in a minority, and proudly displaying their disabilities/sexual preferences/any minor difference from the norm as a badge of identity and coolness! I do keep meaning to return, though, as I'm sure if I look round more thoroughly there must be some great people there. They're just hard to find, because so many people there have their main journal at LJ, and just use DW as a spare journal, to fall back on if LJ shuts down.

frog

Journals? DW? Uhh, I think you lost me here. I thought LT was just where you write reviews on your books or something like GR but better. >.< *Confused*

OK, wait, ignore me about the DW, I didn't read Atropos' comment properly. ಠ_ಠ

Yeah, the DW crowd was a lot of a) the creative-minded folk who got upset about LJ's ridiculous rules in regards to their fan-fic writing and such, and b) people who got pissed about some non-PC ads (I think it was regarding gender issues? It was like 2yrs or more ago, I forget) displayed on LJ and their lack of response about it, or something, so a lot of people in the minority type groups left for DW due to that. So I can see there being a decent amount of that sort of behavior lol. I know I'd found a couple groups there though, I'm sure there's more since then, too. =)

Ah, yes, that makes sense - there is a lot of fanfic there! I was trying to find a creative writing group, and it all seemed to be fanfic, or else RP, neither of which interest me!

I wonder if there were any disability-related issues on LJ too - DW makes a big deal about being accessible to people with disabilities (and it is way better than LJ in its visual customisation options) and a lot of the groups have rules forbidding people to use flashing icons.

frog

Maybe. I know the girl who made/runs DW also has some sort of disability, some kind of debilitating disease. So that could, at least partially, explain the larger awareness/sensitivity factor. And yeah, haha, there is a LOT of fanfic and fanfic comms there. It's not something I'm into at all either, and I do recall being a bit inundated by those groups and people who were almost entirely all about that, lol. But there were a bunch with other interests too, just took a little more time to find 'em.