Time Travel discussion

Blanche recommended, and the voters on the poll chose, The Shamans at the End of Time by Florian Armas.


Blanche, you'll be leading us off in a couple of weeks. None of my libraries have this book, so I will not be able to contribute to the discussion. I hope the others who voted read and comment!

I bought on Amazon and downloaded it to my Kindle and it marked me as currently reading. Slow your roll Kindle. It isn't May yet so I haven't really started but I don't know how to "unstart" a book in Goodreads. I usually just change the start date when I am done. Is there a better way that anyone knows of? I am looking forward to reading the book. If I could share my Kindle with you I would Cheryl!

I always edit the start date as listed on goodreads to blank. I don't use kindle. Sorry can't help. But I'm glad you're ready!

I had no idea that I had to 'lead', and I have no idea how to do it. Is there any link in the group page about how to, rules, content...?

I started it and so far it is very different than I expected.

The Shamans at the End of Time by Florian Armas

On the plus side, the grammar is very clean; better than mine. I make mistakes. Sometimes intentionally.

Confess I was only able to tolerate reading 10 pages of this. I am a difficult reader to please. I skipped ahead to Chapter 3, page 43, and read to page 45 and gave up. It just wasn’t fun. Reading it was a chore. If fiction isn’t fun, why bother?

I did like the blurb on the back cover: “How to go back in time and reset a world destroyed by a nuclear war?” And a bit later on the back: “The sentient entity overseeing our solar system must find a way to repair its own errors.”

If I were the most disagreeable person in publishing—your editor—I would have some suggestions:
1) Bring more of the “back cover” to the first few pages. Don’t bury the lead: if the fate of the solar system is at stake, at least hint at it up front, otherwise it’s just some special forces guys lost in a field.
2) If actual magic is involved, show a dramatic and unexpected magic spell early.
3) Shorter paragraphs; more dialogue, more action.
4) There is zero dialogue on the first page, zero action. The first page is one huge paragraph of a soldier thinking, and half another long paragraph about a sunrise and some blips on a display. Sunrise and some blips don’t qualify as action; it did not involve me or make me want to read more. (Ray Bradbury could have written a single opening thought-paragraph 3 pages long that made me cry {and perhaps he did—something like 200 of his short stories have never been released to the public—somebody should get on this!}. Tom Robbins could do 5 opening pages of a soldier thinking while dancing the prose backwards in high-heels with a scimitar in his teeth, making me smile or even laugh as I flipped the pages. I wouldn’t even try. Florian’s opening made me turn every page reluctantly.)
5) The best way to differentiate and describe the essence of characters in a novel is to show them in action and dialogue, not through the main character thinking about them.
6) [Suggestion deleted for legal reasons]

I am not able to find anything on the group page about leading a reading discussion.

I close a book if it is only action and action. I don’t think that action is the main point in judging a book.
Others close a book if the opening pages do not bring at least three dead and one rape.

Taste differs.

The first chapter is cinematic and a little philosophic. It feels like being in the head of an unhappy soldier, a pacifist man conscripted in a world war against his will. His dream is to build star ships and explore the universe, not to kill people. And I don’t see any reason to feel ‘fun’ when reading about a world war. People are dying there.

You all are much further than I am. I always enjoy the concept of assimilation into a past culture. It is reminding me of something else I read long ago of a man who time traveled and ended up in the time of the cave men but I can't recall what it was called.

I agree Blanche. He does seem to be a pacifist.

There is one thing that really makes me cringe in this book but I am certain that is just a me thing.

It was fun to find myself in the novel.
It was hard to read the war part, very well done with thoughts revealing the chaos in Vlad's mind but too disheartening. That scene with Vlad staring at his friend’s ‘object’ sitting in his lap, calculating probabilities in a madness loop about the chance of the other way around: his ‘object’ sitting in his friend’s lap. And that ‘object’ becomes me! One more hard scene like this, and I am done with the book; it was too depressing.
I had to rely on a glass of Porto to recover. It worked well with the Panettone.

Yes the "object" was the part that I had the most struggle with. I am glad you had a nice wine available to recover. I knew there had to be something more to that object but it was just "ugh!" for me. And how he had to learn the rules after he broke them or wasn't following them.

Blanche you're doing fine as a leader. You're responding to comments in a way that provokes conversation.

"Fun" is indeed a hard word, Harv, because as Blanche says, it means different things to different people. I guess you, in editor mode, outline what would have made it more, erm, fun, for you.

Did anyone find it Intriguing? Engaging? Satisfying? Enlightening? Exciting?

Intriguing? It was interesting. The premise was not the most original but I did enjoy the execution of it overall. The "shaman" element was unique.

Engaging? My mind did wander a bit during parts so I would say I was sucked down the rabbit hole but I did want to see how it was going to end.

Satisfying? No because I didn't like the ending.

Enlightening? Not really

Exciting? It wasn't exciting but at times a little bit intense.

I am glad I read it and I think the author did a good job creating the shaman world and alternative history with different choices. I just wanted a bit more tension or something.

Fair enough!

Thank you, Cheryl.

“Even my presence here may just be a dream. A strange, long dream, the result of a traumatic coma.”

The quote resumes well the first chapters; you don’t really know if everything is a coma induced dream or something real. When the enigma seems solved, the “object” (Alice’s trademark) appears again. This time, as an intriguing character, nothing horror, flying around and talking with Vlad. It doesn’t feel like a dream. It doesn’t feel like insanity. It’s just strange, in an interesting and perhaps magic way. If this were a movie, the object would win the Best Supporting role.

I tried to get this book from the library but no luck. Then I saw it was $2.99 on Kindle so I bought it. Haven't tried to read it yet. Will report back. :)

Still waiting on my library copy (does one of you have it locked!!), but I just finished All Our Wrong Todays, so I am starting from behind the pack.

Half through it, I think that the novel it’s not what it seems to be. The flying ‘object’ is interesting, but it doesn’t fit in the story, at least for now. There are some pieces in the puzzle which may be inserted only to prepare the reader for something very different; I have no idea what. Like the ‘arrow point’ story, a fine piece of deception: a dead man waving his hand to point that there is no escape.

Just so you all know, these discussions never officially close. If you still mean to finish or read this book, your comments are always very welcome!

But do note, please, that in a week we will also start discussing our June book, the non-fiction title Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos.

This was a hocus-pocus topic. It vanished for more than a week then it appeared again. Black magic it seems; the group should be exorcized.
Hard to continue commenting in such situation, so that's it, no more comments.

It was always here when I looked for it. It was not on the top of the screen? Are you using a mobile device? Goodreads seems to have trouble making the app more useful and less glitchy.

We're sorry to learn of your frustration and wish to read anything you care to share.

Cheryl wrote: "It was always here when I looked for it. It was not on the top of the screen? Are you using a mobile device? Goodreads seems to have trouble making the app more useful and less glitchy.


No, the topic wasn't here, and you know it well. You either deleted it for almost half a month, or moved it in some obscure folders where no one could find it. Blanche said the same in a message you deleted some days ago in Parallel Worlds topic.

That's not true.
I don't know what's going on, but I certainly did not delete a topic or move it. Why ever would I?

And I would only delete a message for two reasons. 1. Spam or something highly offensive. I would flag, then after GR took care of it, I would delete it. 2. Something that is against group rules or off-topic. I would send the poster a PM and give them time to delete it themselves. I do not remember doing anything like that in a long time, certainly not in this group.

I'll go check with other group moderators and see if they're having glitches.

I have noticed that threads that aren't active sometimes disappear and then reappear. I think it is a Goodreads glitch.

I've sent help requests out to GR and to other mods. So, I guess if I ask someone to be 'host' to a discussion, they should at least say something at least a couple of times a week? Who knows! Anyway, moving along. Trying not to get too frustrated by GR's glitchiness.

This is an amusing way to spin things around. 'GR glitch' because ... there was no activity. How could someone be active in a thread that vanished so mysteriously one day after a message was posted? Using magic?

Alice, you are continuing to be off-topic, disruptive, and baselessly accusatory. If you want to discuss this further with civility and with the hope of a resolution, please open a new thread in a more appropriate general folder.

I only reacted to this:

Lizz wrote: "I have noticed that threads that aren't active sometimes disappear and then reappear. I think it is a Goodreads glitch."

The last activity here was on May 14, and the topic vanished on May 15.

And to this reaction to Lizz's message:

Cheryl wrote: " So, I guess if I ask someone to be 'host' to a discussion, they should at least say something at least a couple of times a week? Who knows! Anyw..."

It's strange to blame the 'host' for inactivity. How could the 'host' say something if the topic was no longer here?

Blanche wrote: "I had no idea that I had to 'lead', and I have no idea how to do it. Is there any link in the group page about how to, rules, content...?"

It is actually posted in the nominations thread:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Third paragraph:

“ Remember, too, that if your nomination wins, you will be asked to lead off the beginning of the discussion.”

Alice wrote: "How could someone be active in a thread that vanished so mysteriously one day after a message was posted? Using magic?..."

You can’t delete a topic and all its comments and then make it reappear with all comments intact.

Comments are not static in the threads they were created in. Topics with new comments move up to the top of the thread regardless if the user has read any of the comments on any of the topics.

Are you clicking on the title of the thread “Book Club Discussions?” If so, then you will see 12 topics. If you are only on the group home page, you will see 5 topics showing. The five with the most recent comments will appear first. It even says on the top right corner of the Discussion thread showing 5 of 12 topics.

If you are on your GRs page and click “Community” and then “Discussions” it will show only the four newest discussion threads for each of the groups you belong to. Click on All Unread Posts to see all the threads with only comments you haven’t read. If there are no new comments it won’t appear here.


If you have difficulty finding a thread (large groups with a lot of discussions threads and active meme ER’s can be difficult to navigate), there is a search box and you can type a word or two to find all the threads with that. So you could have typed “shamans” to find all the threads with “shamans” in it to find the discussion thread.

Alice wrote: "No, the topic wasn't here, and you know it well. You either deleted it for almost half a month, or moved it in some obscure folders where no one could find it. Blanche said the same in a message you deleted some days ago in Parallel Worlds topic. ..."

Before you accuse people of deleted things, did it occur to you that Blanche deleted her own thread? Non of the mods deleted anything.

Nancy wrote: "
You can’t delete a topic and all its comments and then make it reappear with all comments intact.

If a Mod has the right authorization, it's possible to bring back a deleted topic, but there are few Mods to have it. The probability to be have been deleted is low, that's why I never used the word deleted (Edited: I used once the word deleted, my bad). Most probably, the topic was moved to some other place (Mods have this authorization).


Nancy wrote: "Comments are not static in the threads they were created in. Topics with new comments move up to the top of the thread regardless if the user has read any of the comments on any of the topics..."

Topics are static if the Mods decide to be static.
'Sources of titles for nominations' is the first topic now, though it was last updated on January 28.

'All Our Wrong Todays' was the first topic for almost two months, though it had only one comment since April 24.

'The Shamans' was the most updated topic during the first two weeks of April, but it never reached the first position.

Alice wrote: "Cheryl wrote: "It was always here when I looked for it. It was not on the top of the screen? Are you using a mobile device? Goodreads seems to have trouble making the app more useful and less glitc..."

Ok, I guess we're discussing this here. I apologize to the folks looking for a book discussion.

Yes, mods can indeed prioritize topics to put them at the top of the feed. I probably forgot to tick that box when I set up the Shamans thread. There's a lot to keep track of when running a group and I could well have missed that. However, that has no bearing on your previous comments.

Yes, discussions can be frozen. Not hidden, though, and not deleted and re-instated. But we've not frozen topics, either.

Again, why would we? We want discussion! We are volunteering a portion of our lives to encouraging group conversations!

Msg 21
Alice wrote: "Cheryl wrote: "It was always here when I looked for it. It was not on the top of the screen? Are you using a mobile device? Goodreads seems to have trouble making the app more useful and less glitc..."

No, the topic wasn't here, and you know it well. You either deleted it for almost half a month, or moved it in some obscure folders where no one could find it. Blanche said the same in a message you deleted some days ago in Parallel Worlds topic.
-----------
... So, yes, you did use the word delete. Twice.
If threads are vanishing, it's a GR glitch as Lizz suggests. Or if they seem to be vanishing, it's because the person looking for them hasn't used the various tools available.

I've updated my message before you wrote this, but I suppose that you were already in edit mode, so you were right to react. I used it once for the topic.
The second one was for Blanche's message not for the topic. Could you please tell if Blanche deleted her message, or it was deleted by a Mod?

We never saw a message from Blanche and therefore did not delete it. We have no access to history; if something is gone it's gone.

I believe it would be best for us all to let Blanche speak for herself, however.

Cheryl wrote: "We never saw a message from Blanche and therefore did not delete it. We have no access to history; if something is gone it's gone.

I believe it would be best for us all to let Blanche speak for he..."

Agree

Anyway, it really doesn't matter. What's done (or not done) is done. Moving along.