fiction files redux discussion

Authors write stuff. We read their stuff... and sometimes we like it. This is the place to discuss authors and their work. This is not a list thread. Over the past couple of years I've read books written by people I didn't even know existed thanks in large part to the people here... or simply cool looking covers.

So if you come across a book, and read it, and then feel a need to shout about it, start an author thread (not a book thread) If the author already has a thread, please add to it. I oft times stumble across books that make me want to shout. I'll start screaming soon, I feel it welling up in my gut...

When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proferred dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad ... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.
Jorge Luis Borges

Brian wrote: "start an author thread (not a book thread) If the author already has a thread, please add to it."

Hmmm. You know, I think I may be having an issue with this. I'm not sure yet. I'm just a little worried that author threads, as opposed to book threads, encourage people to talk more about an author's biographical info than about their work.

Thoughts?

well, you know, i thought you couldn't separate an author from his works... but it looks like you can. i agree patty and i'm thinking the solution is creating a book folder. sometimes i do prefer reading discussions about a particular book accompanied with selected passages. whether said author had/has a tendency to sleep with sheep is no concern of mine.

but saying that, it would be nice to keep a discussion on say the sound and the fury under the faulkner heading.

there does seem to be a tendency to discuss the author's biographical info and as an introduction to the author's thread i think it's great. but then the books are not being discussed.

i seem to like authors that no one reads or likes so my threads die quickly. but i'll resurrect them when i read a new work by them by placing a book review in that thread.

good lord... i'm just rambling with no direction. i'm clueless on how to organize the likes of a topic like this. can i just plant some trees that we can all sit under and discuss the possibilities? i'll even add a small waterfeature for soothing sounds.

directions? left? right?

i think it's best to keep book threads and author threads separate. of course there will be some overlap, and perhaps a little confusion, but so what? look at the madness that was myspace... i would vote for erring on the side of too many (book) threads instead one immensely long meandering (author) thread that covers ten thousand bases...

is it possible to create subfolders? like, authors, then books within that?

or, you could just start specific book threads in the author folder and title them "author name: book name" so they alphabetize with the author...

does that make sense what i said?

it makes sense. I don't think we can create sub-folders. it would be great if we could (suggestion to the goodreads gods?). a 'book' folder with author:title thread title structure sounds like the best solution for now.

should i still plant a tree?

one cool thing about goodreads is that we can move things around later. so for instance if this were the times before harry potter, and some twenty or thirty harry potter threads popped up, we could create a harry potter folder after the fact, and move them all into it.

and the other cool thing is that you can actually search. so when someone thinks, gee, i know there was a thread about hemingway in here somewhere, they don't have to try to remember the name of the thread, they can just search the group for hemingway, and bump the thread of their choosing.

yeah, i think at this point, fewer limitations may be better. and we can sort and file things when there are more things to sort and file.

and i think it's a good idea to start planting those trees now. i hear cottonwoods grow quickly, and provide lots of shade...

Ben wrote: "look at the madness that was myspace... i would vote for erring on the side of too many (book) threads instead one immensely long meandering (author) thread that covers ten thousand bases..."

i find this hilarious coming from the owner of "what have you read recently?" thread. :)

anyway, i just pulled the UBIK discussion into a Philip K. Dick thread last week. Should I change it back: or do we just name the next thread in authors Philip K. Dick - Voices from the Street? i do know if you have a naming convention and are consistent with it, it's sometime easier to absorb and sort information. ;)

I think one good thing about having a dedicated author thread instead of a simple book thread is that you can compare/contrast styles between one book to another...see progression, changes, etc. Sometimes studying an author's work as a whole helps us to understand the parts...or maybe that's just me.

Patty wrote: "one cool thing about goodreads is that we can move things around later. so for instance if this were the times before harry potter, and some twenty or thirty harry potter threads popped up, we cou..."

so we let it 'clutter' up a bit more before bringing in another filing cabinet? i'm good at procrastinating so that sounds good to me.

I think authors and books threads should be kept separate. Or rather, I think chaos must be preserved at all costs and everyone should post whatever the hell they want wherever the the hell they want. This whole arranging and systematizing thing irks me.

I get easily confused

I think we can assume that's a pro-chaos vote. Sweet.

my desk is a mess, papers everywhere, some a year old... guess that's a hint on what you should expect of the management of this thread... i'll probably just add the author's name in the thread title where it doesn't exist. when i read the title 'james and the giant writing factory' i keep seeing 'james and the giant peach' and think of roald dahl, not james patterson. they're two different people, not related, different planets.

chaos can be good... order can be confusing.

Speaking of ovisphile, it is either "not baa!" or "ewe!" Okay, now I'll stop. :)

I vote chaos!

I've often wanted to say that, but seldom had the opportunity.

i like messing up your chaos.