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Hope this is the right place to ask this. I've been asked to write a review on Hawking's "The Grand Design" for a friend's philosophy blog. Book is now finished, and I'd like tips on review writing. I'm well versed in essay style writing from a BTh, and my current physics studies arms me technically. So I'm just chasing tips and tricks to good review writing, esp on scientific style books.
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Oct 26, 2010 00:08
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Timefortea posted:Hope this is the right place to ask this. I've been asked to write a review on Hawking's "The Grand Design" for a friend's philosophy blog. Book is now finished, and I'd like tips on review writing. The biggest thing in good review writing is to keep in mind your (potential) audiences. Think about what your readers want to know; conversely, though, make sure to communicate your own personal reaction(s) to the work, just do it in a way that also tells your audience what their reactions might be. Stay away from controversial topics that don't directly relate to the work, like race and politics and religion.
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Oct 27, 2010 02:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Review tips.. Thanks! I appreciate the help.
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Oct 27, 2010 14:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Stay away from controversial topics that don't directly relate to the work, like race and politics and religion. Hot tips for reviewing books: don't talk about anything interesting!!!!!
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Oct 27, 2010 23:17
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Bonaventure posted:Hot tips for reviewing books: don't talk about anything interesting!!!!! Just saying that if it ain't relevant to the work, don't bring it up, because you'll piss *somebody* off. If you have to mention it to write an effective review -- i.e., if the book is just flat out racist and the criticism needs to be made -- go for it. Most of my experience is from writing Amazon reviews, and over there if you mention politics, religion, or race unnecessarily you'll pay a *huge* price in negative votes even for making generic, innocuous statements (see, e.g., the reviews of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue, here: http://www.amazon.com/Going-Rogue-American-Sarah-Palin/dp/0061939897 ). If it isn't directly relevant to the work, if you're not bringing it up for a reason, there's just no point -- you'll piss off readers and won't gain anything by it. The main thing though is just imagine who your potential audiences for the review are and make sure you include all the things they'll want to know.
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Oct 28, 2010 14:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just saying that if it ain't relevant to the work, don't bring it up, because you'll piss *somebody* off. If you have to mention it to write an effective review -- i.e., if the book is just flat out racist and the criticism needs to be made -- go for it. Your problem seems to be mistaking 'writing a review that most people on Amazon will find inoffensive' and 'writing a good review.'
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Nov 2, 2010 14:40
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Kieselguhr Kid posted:Your problem seems to be mistaking 'writing a review that most people on Amazon will find inoffensive' and 'writing a good review.' Don't really think I have a problem, but thanks!
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Nov 3, 2010 17:07
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So does anyone know a good source of free digital books? I know about the gutenburg project, and I'm kind of looking for ebooks but not really. What I want are files (not  ) of books that are semi-suitable for reproduction as a physical book. Pdfs would be ideal, but anything that's workable would be good. A lot of the sites I've seen have html versions that are all split up into separate pages and would be a huge pain to reformat without totally boning it up. I figure it's pretty unlikely, but I was wondering if anyone had run into something like this? Any way to browse google books by the ones that are out of copyright/fully downloadable?
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Nov 4, 2010 04:21
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http://www.archive.org/details/texts and google books.
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Nov 4, 2010 04:47
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Awesome, how did I not see this before? But the #1 downloaded item is in arabic??? inspire.pdf table of contents pg 1 posted:27 The Operations of Abyan in Images Then it has like 10 more things about "what to expect in jihad," "it's an obligation," stuff like that. Next comes like 8 pages about how so many agencies and governments are against the mag, then every two pages or so there's a blurb about how al Queda guys never get shot but shoot 50 other dudes rambo style. "NEWS FLASH [blurry pic of guy with his face covered posted:"] Then I scrolled down another page and theres a pic of the twin towers collapsing with this caption in bloody font: UNTIL WE TASTE WHAT HAMZA BIN ABD AL-MUTTALIB TASTED What the gently caress am I looking at!? This is some actual hosed up for real terrorist poo poo! As far as google goes, I guess google books got sued? Hasn't something been going on with buzz too?
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Nov 4, 2010 06:22
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Yes, it's a magazine published by al-Qaeda, aimed at Westerners. It was only launched recently and has received some press coverage in a few places including this interesting article published by the Australian.
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Nov 4, 2010 07:28
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Just wondering if we've heard anything about TBB secret santa this year? We got it started pretty late last year and still managed a dozen people, so the earlier the better, really.
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Nov 6, 2010 05:50
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I'd be interested in doing Secret Santa again, but it's going to depend on the dates. I'll be traveling for the holidays so I'd need to get something shipped (and hopefully received) fairly early.
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Nov 6, 2010 06:29
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I'm trying to remember the name of a book based on a very loose and very vague description. In the beginning, the book was following some girl who was locked away in a castle or something and one of her only friends was the ghost of some guy who may or may not have gone on some fantastic adventure to get some sweet princess poon or something when he was alive. I remember key points being the girl confided to some place, and the guy was a ghost. This was all in the first 20-50 pages of the book. I have no idea where it was going from there.
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Nov 9, 2010 05:22
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Philosopher King posted:I'm trying to remember the name of a book based on a very loose and very vague description. Crewel Lye by Piers Anthony?
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Nov 9, 2010 16:49
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Encryptic posted:Crewel Lye by Piers Anthony? Holy crap. You are some sort of wizard. Well done. Is that series any good?
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Nov 10, 2010 18:13
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Philosopher King posted:Holy crap. You are some sort of wizard. Well done. Is that series any good? 
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Nov 10, 2010 18:26
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Philosopher King posted:Holy crap. You are some sort of wizard. Well done. Is that series any good? I read it when I was a kid. Full of cross species sex and terrible puns. Like, worse than every thread in the history of GBS combined. It's a point of the series that he accepts fan written puns and writes them into the books. Almost furry fanfic. I had bad taste as a kid, but I don't think I could make it through one of them now. edit; It's the Xanth series by the way. Now that I think about it, they started off kinda bad, got slowly worse, and then it really jumped the shark shortly after Crewel Lye e; I can't believe I just admitted to reading the Xanth series  e2; Vale of the Vole is where it really got terrible. I remember because that's when the publisher changed and the puns got out of control. Dramatika fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Nov 10, 2010 |
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Nov 10, 2010 20:43
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Philosopher King posted:Holy crap. You are some sort of wizard. Well done. Is that series any good? The first several Xanth books aren't too bad but it got progressively crappy once the series got into the double digits. I read a shitload of them when I was younger. Expect a lot of groan-worthy puns. Piers Anthony (the author) does come off as a creepy fucker at points but the early books keep that to a minimum from what I recall. I'd say Crewel Lye is probably the best of the early ones, though - that's actually the first Xanth novel I ever read myself. A couple of the other early ones like Castle Roogna and Centaur Aisle are both pretty good as well.
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Nov 10, 2010 21:04
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This makes a lot more sense now. Back in 8th grade English we had that crappy "reading time" and one day I didn't have a book so I was allowed to pick one off of the teachers shelf. She got really worried and upset saying she wasn't sure it would be appropriate for me but I shrugged it off. Never got to the hot unmentionable on sinful creature action.
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Nov 11, 2010 00:05
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"Reading time" was pretty much the best part of elementary school. I ran out of classroom books in 5th grade and my teacher handed me a dictionary, which had way more dirty words than Bunnicula did.
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Nov 11, 2010 00:59
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Before high school I had done book reports on Lord of the Flys, Catcher in the Rye, and Silence of the Lambs. I do not think my teachers understood.
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Nov 11, 2010 04:15
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Philosopher King posted:This makes a lot more sense now. Back in 8th grade English we had that crappy "reading time" and one day I didn't have a book so I was allowed to pick one off of the teachers shelf. She got really worried and upset saying she wasn't sure it would be appropriate for me but I shrugged it off. Never got to the hot unmentionable on sinful creature action. Heh. If it was Crewel Lye, there's not much in the way of sex - a few bits where the femme fatale character gets naked but nothing overly graphic and definitely no real sex scenes to speak of. There's a fair amount of gore, though. It leans more towards a pulpy sword and sorcery adventure than a goofy pun-fest like the later books. Admittedly, I haven't read it in years so no idea how well it holds up now.
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Nov 11, 2010 04:53
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Encryptic posted:Heh. If it was Crewel Lye, there's not much in the way of sex - a few bits where the femme fatale character gets naked but nothing overly graphic and definitely no real sex scenes to speak of. There's a fair amount of gore, though. It leans more towards a pulpy sword and sorcery adventure than a goofy pun-fest like the later books. If you really want see how awful and creepy Piers Anthony is, get Ponucopia for your ebook reader of choice. You don't want to be caught reading it in public... Its the only book I have perma-deleted from my Kindle account. (To get it back I would have to buy again.) Aparantly it has a sequel called The Magic Fart. I can't bring myself to buy it. Cartoon Man fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 20:59
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I hope this is a small enough question that it doesn't warrant it's own thread. I like to read philosophy and ancient history books. A lot of these books are very old and foreign. I used to buy recent translations I could find. But, with this current explosion of free books, I'm not sure what to do now. Is it worth buying a recent translation of "The Conquest of Gaul," or is a 100 year old translation just as good? I tried comparing my Penguin Classics version of Marco Polo's "The Travels" with a google books version and a project gutenberg version. All three are very different! Although they all tend to get the general idea across, I am troubled by these differences. How do you pick the best translation and does it even matter?
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Nov 14, 2010 20:57
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I think opting for more modern translations (1950 onwards to take a somewhat arbitrary point of reference) isn't a terrible general rule. A lot of translations in the first half of the century are pretty wretched just due to a lack of respect for the act of translation ('fixing' the books based on their own tastes, etc). Not a foolproof philosophy by any means, but it cuts out a lot of rubbish.
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Nov 14, 2010 21:09
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I'm inclined to agree with inktvis - I think it does matter, and more modern translations tend to be more respectful towards the original text. Apart from anything else, having to deal with an antiquated version of your own language only really puts up another barrier between you and the original. You want to come as close to reading it in the original as possible, and the more modern the translation the more likely it is to be clear to you in the way it would've been for the original readers (I think this is part of the reason Pevear and Volokhonsky get so much praise). Obviously, there are exceptions for historically notable translations like some verse Odysseys or the King James Bible, but for the most part stick with recent translations and you should be fine.
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Nov 14, 2010 23:46
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There's some encyclopedias of translations floating around that you can check. Here's one on The Conquest of Gaul. Personally speaking, my poor man's method of choosing translations is using a combination of this technique and reading online reviews.
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Nov 14, 2010 23:47
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Cartoon Man posted:If you really want see how awful and creepy Piers Anthony is, get Ponucopia for your ebook reader of choice. You don't want to be caught reading it in public... Piers Anthony posted:A reader notified me that the Wickpedia site http://en.wikipedia.org/ carries the charge that I endorse or advocate pedophilia and ecoterrorism. I think this is an example of a person showing more of what's on his mind than what's in my writing. The fact that I may address controversial subjects in my fiction, and have my characters participate in them, does not mean that this is my personal philosophy. Otherwise I would believe in magic, because there is magic in Xanth; be a murderer because murders sometimes occur in my fiction; and be a rapist or pedophile because my novel Firefly addresses those subjects. I did a long interview for Jitterbug Fantasia https://www.jitterbug.com where such questions are addressed, coincidentally. I trust that readers who are conversant with my books and with this column will understand what I actually write, instead of what some anonymous critic wants to claim I write. I defend anonymity, and protect it in my ongoing survey of electronic publishers so that whistle blowers can't be retaliated against. But anonymity also serves to hide those who may have private agendas or confusions that don't relate to the truth, as was the case recently in that same survey. My critics have in the past tended to avoid facing me directly, because I don't suffer rascals gladly, and am not afraid to air their charges in a public forum such as this one. I mention once again the charge that I was being an ogre in fan conventions, spread before I ever attended a convention, and the charge that I wrote to Jerry Pournelle and called him a Nazi, but of course he never produced the letter, because it didn't exist. (Actually, in both cases they are thinking of Keith Laumer, who was one mean man after his stroke. He lived about 40 miles from me.) Less egregious instances apply to persistent rumors of my death (perhaps a confusion with Poul Anderson); every so often I have to assure a reader that I remain alive and ornery, despite the evident preference of some critics. Really, do you think that anyone else could mouth off the way I do in these columns?  
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Nov 15, 2010 03:12
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Soulcleaver posted:I find it hilarious that he just blames everything on Keith Laumer. Or maybe I just find the notion that Keith Laumer was a tremendous rear end in a top hat amusing. Either way!
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Nov 16, 2010 08:08
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I'm looking for the name of a book/author/genre. The only book I know is about Conjoined twins during the Holocaust. It is suppose to be extremely over the top/ridiculous. Any help? Nevermind: rear end Goblins of Aushchwitz by Cameron Pierce
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Nov 18, 2010 16:09
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I was wondering if anyone knew of one or more really good online sources on Lovecraft's works. Hopefully comprehensive and (obviously) legal? I'm not looking for copies of the stories (I already own most if not all of them) but more about the descriptions and such. Pronunciations, overviews, etc.? I figure there are some good ones out there I might miss with a simple google search, so I thought I'd ask the Goons in-the-know. Any help is appreciated, my dad is asking me for links, but I don't know of any.
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Nov 22, 2010 14:39
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I'm looking for the title of a book. Its about a guy whose an aspiring merchant type and finds a roll of cloth that had fallen off a wagon shipment or some poo poo. He starts a business and then bangs a few bitches. Had a pretty baller restaurant/trading post with a big spiral staircase where all the trading shits went down.
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Nov 23, 2010 08:08
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I would like to read Prairie Pimp: Westward Hos! as well.
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Nov 23, 2010 14:27
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I have a very simple question: How the hell can people read and enjoy a Brad Thor novel? I perused through about 40 pages of dreck in "the Last Patriot" and it was pretty poor for a NYT Best-seller heralded by an apparently large fan-base as the next Clancy. His writing is just awful. It's like reading an attempt at a fictional story in an 8th grader's Creative Writing class. His characters are so over the top you might as well be reading "Call of Duty: the Novel". The main character is apparently an Olympic athlete turned NAVY SEAL turned Secret Service member turned all kinds of black ops poo poo and apparently *that* wasn't hardcore enough so eventually the POTUS created some super top-secret clandestine organization for him. The heroine (or so I assume) is a completely lifeless character who apparently got her face melted off by an IED (oh yeah, she was like the top Hurt Locker specialist in Iraq) but through the wonders of plastic surgery she is now a super model. Thor constantly takes pot shots at Muslims, Islam, and Democrats. Take this excerpt of monologue for example: quote:They were knee-jerk reactionaries who mitted out the dreaded Islamophobia slur before knowing any of the facts of a case. I picked this up at my Mom's house; she bought it from the bargain bin at Philly's airport. In my opinion, that's where all of Thor's works belong. /rant
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Nov 27, 2010 06:52
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Looking for the author of a series of short stories about two con men in a weird future, one of whom is a talking dog-man. Can't remember the name or anything about it other than that but the stories were good enough that anyone who's read them should be able to recognize that instantly.
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Nov 28, 2010 21:14
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Cjones posted:I have a very simple question: This sounded awesome up until I got to the stupid politics part. Like Tom Clancy before 9/11 broke his brain. Retardedly over the top technothriller books like this are no fun when the authors start soapboxing.
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Nov 28, 2010 23:35
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Benagain posted:Looking for the author of a series of short stories about two con men in a weird future, one of whom is a talking dog-man. Can't remember the name or anything about it other than that but the stories were good enough that anyone who's read them should be able to recognize that instantly. Wild guess the Darger-and-Surplus stories by Michael Swanwick?
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Nov 30, 2010 03:00
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Charles Bukowski has a lot of loving poetry collections... Anyone have any opinions on which one I should start with?
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Nov 30, 2010 05:31
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KevinHeaven posted:Charles Bukowski has a lot of loving poetry collections... Anyone have any opinions on which one I should start with? Geoffrey Hill's New and Collected Poems.
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Nov 30, 2010 05:48
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ONE TWO THREE TIMES TWO TO THE SIX/JONESING FOR YOUR FIX OF THAT LIMP BIZKIT MIX