Morning Coffee – 16 September 2019
Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning.
- While I’m glad that Slate is covering librarians' campaign against library ebook restrictions, I wish they hadn’t used an insulting stereotype in the subtitle.
- A Catholic school in Tennessee removed Harry Potter books from their library because they believe the spells in the book actually work. If I lived in the area I would set up an amp outside the school and start reciting the spells at them, just because.
- Mike Elgan argues that AI bots that write should be rejected outright.
- David Gaughran’s latest post delves into a scam where Publishers Weekly, IBPA, Lulu, and other companies fleece authors out of hundreds of dollars to have their books displayed at book fairs.
- Is everything broken on Goodreads? Angela Lashbrook thinks so.
Comments
Steve H. September 16, 2019 um 9:18 am
Nate,
If can, please post a link to the American Library Association petition for library books.
S. September 16, 2019 um 11:01 am
Lashbrook’s article is disappointing. She makes an excellent point about the functional weakness of the Search capability in Goodreads. Amen. But then she spends paragraphs on her desire to turn Goodreads into a social media site, presumably with review moderation to filter out the spammers (dishonest reviews both positive and negative). I was attracted to the reviews on Goodreads precisely because they are so honest. Even Amazon, which at least identifies reviewers as "verified customer", does not give you a filter so that you can see just the verified customer reviews and stats. And the indie author community is rife with stories of Amazon removing legitimate reviews for no reason. The final blow, according to Lashbrook is the unappealing appearance of GR. The site recently experimented with teal and pink page backgrounds… I fervently hope that is not the direction she advocates… but honestly, content should trump appearances. Let’s focus on adding useful functionality to GR. For example, how about adding the ability to search for books by the name of the shelves to which they’ve been added? How about adding an optional "fuzzy" search, which would allow searching for books on readers' DNF, Did Not Finish and Didn’t Finish selves. How about an option that lets you search for books by 5 star reviews given by reviewers who have posted at least 100 reviews, or reviewers who have at least 500 books on their "Read" shelf, or readers whose average review is 3.5 stars… in other words, give users the ability to actually use the review database to search for books.
Disgusting Dude September 16, 2019 um 11:45 am
So far, it looks like the only people signing are library employees. Just about.
Steve H. September 16, 2019 um 3:08 pm
I signed
Xavier Basora September 17, 2019 um 7:13 am
Nate
In fairness to that Catholic school,banning Harry Potter isn’t a bad idea when the series has crowded out much better books like the pulps, edgar Rice Burroughs, Lird Dursay etc.
Kids really need to read much more books than Harry Potter.
I enjoyed the series but golly can we highlight other books please?
xavier