Goodreads Is Broken • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#251

Post by Marsymars » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

okasaki wrote: post #241

Marsymars wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my phone listening for key phrases. This was a solved problem years ago. Windows Phone let you pin nav directions to any address you wanted directly on your home screen.

They probably copied it from Google? https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291823?co=GENIE.Plat...

I don't know which came first, but that does appear to work in the same way. (Notwithstanding that you can't navigate to "Home" on the Android widget without enabling location history, but inputting the address manually seems to work fine.)

This seem like it should work around the poor "Home" search the previous poster was referring to.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#252

Post by cowsandmilk » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #231

CydeWeys wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you up until the last point. Reading is decidedly not niche in the US. Books (across all formats) are a huuuge market. They're roughly 2/3rds the size of the entire videogaming industry in this country, by revenue. The total annual revenue of the US book publishing industry is greater than YouTube's (but just barely).

To be fair, even if your claims about the market are true, books could still be niche. The reason is that books cost $20 and take a few hours to read, so let's conservatively say publishers are making $5/hr of reading time. YouTube is making pennies per hour of video watch time. So if it's true that the revenue of the book publishing industry is approximately equal to that of YouTube, then the average person is spend…

> let's conservatively say publishers are making $5/hr of reading time

except a huge portion of the reading market is from libraries and other free sources of content. Few people buy every single book they read new.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#253

Post by ryloric » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

qrv3w wrote: post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

I like the recommendations it spits out, but what's up with the font. I'm curious.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#254

Post by angry_octet » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #216

remcob wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A book like the "Neuromancer" really needs to be understood in it's time. If you read it now, it will look very clichéd. But that's because it introduced and popularized those very clichés! A lot of really significant cultural works have become so absorbed in our common culture, and sometimes improved upon, that the original starts to look cliché and even naive. Is there a name for this effect?

I read Neuromancer in the early 90’s and thought it was very cliched at the time. Granted that’s ~10 years after publication, but it barrows heavily from earlier works. I suspect people like it for the same reason they liked their first Anime, it’s an unusual style that seems very original unless you have been reading other stuff written in the same vein by say Philip K. Dick.

I'm curious as to what aspects seemed cliched. What earlier works are you talking about? I thought I'd read them all...

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#255

Post by angry_octet » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

elorant wrote: post #192

lsc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, all recommendations lists fail compared to freely-available experts. Like, if you like literary fiction, go through the Pulitzer prize for fiction, and just read. (I'm not even half way through that list, but everything I've read on it has been really, really good.) - there's all sorts of awards for smaller niches... the nebula, the Hugo, etc... (Actually, that's a question. What is the award fo…

Because we don't always like awarded books. I read "The Three Body Problem" a couple of years ago which had won a Nebula award and found it to be mediocre at best and much overhyped. Last year I read the "Neuromancer" which had won both a Nebula and a Hugo and was for me one of the worst SF books I've ever read. And then there are books which are brilliant, but have never won an award, like "The Martian".

The writing in the English translation of The Three Body Problem is stilted and dull. Maybe it's better in Chinese? Some languages must be more expensive than others to translate well. Gave up half way through the first book; when I eventually read the synopsis on Wikipedia it sounded exciting.

I'll have to read Neuromancer again. At the time I read it I was skeptical that hacking decks and exploits would ever exist, but that was before JavaScript, internet connected critical systems, rop gadgets and nation state 0day exploit chains. The need to do scene setting for these concepts perhaps weighs on the story.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#256

Post by angry_octet » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

jknoepfler wrote: post #204

ses1984 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't like neuromancer...?

I had a very hard time finding things to like in Neuromancer. It was a long time ago, but iirc the prose is pretty clunky, the characters are made of cardboard, and the plot has all the depth of a Ridley Scott movie. The world building was on point, but there's only so much 80's zeitgeist ("everything is awful, you'll be replaced piecemeal by machines, faceless megacorps rule over vast slums of pleasure junkies bathe…

Lol as opposed to 2019? An idiotic narcissist grifter as President, the planet on fire (southern hemisphere burning in winter), epic climate change storms, megacorp Vicodin, bikies selling crystal meth, block chain powered dark money drug markets, middle east savagery hitting new lows, internment camps in Europe and the US? China govt deploying ios 0day against their Muslim ethnic minority, and millions in camps already?

The only disappointing part is that we don't have vat grown assassins, if you want a transplant you have to go to China or Iran.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#257

Post by ivalm » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

qrv3w wrote: post #129

ivalm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searched "The Glass Beads Game" got "did you mean The Everything Classical Mythology Book: Greek and Roman Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters from Ares to Zeus by Lesley Bolton" couldnt find Hesse in additional results. Searched Inferno, could not find Dante. Kind of strange that this site misses some super important classics (well 2 of like 5 searches I tried)

What exactly did you search? It worked when I typed that in. [1] Edit: I see you wrote beads. I have to improve the fuzzy search. Thanks! [1]: https://nowwhatdoiread.com/?q=The+glass+bead+game

You're right, I misspelled the title! Still, an errant s should not foil the search!

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#258

Post by qrv3w » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

ivalm wrote: post #257

qrv3w wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did you search? It worked when I typed that in. [1] Edit: I see you wrote beads. I have to improve the fuzzy search. Thanks! [1]: https://nowwhatdoiread.com/?q=The+glass+bead+game

You're right, I misspelled the title! Still, an errant s should not foil the search!

Agreed. Its fixed now [1] as I added in another fuzzy search. (I was using fzf which missed some small things and I've now added Levenshtein as well to compensate).

[1] https://nowwhatdoiread.com/?q=The+Glass+Beads+Game

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#259

Post by laurex » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #199

sohkamyung wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My preference is to rely on the judgement of reviewers whose taste kind of matches mine. I'm into SF and Fantasy. In the past, I would read the reviews featured in Locus magazine by the various reviewers. Nowadays, I occasionally read Locus but also reviews from other places like tor com, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Interzone magazine.

> My preference is to rely on the judgement of reviewers whose taste kind of matches mine. I wish there were a website where I could put in all of my favorite video games, books, movies, anime, etc. And it would recommend me things based on what people with similar tastes liked. Then, I could try out the recommendation and then either like or dislike it. I would slowly acquire a recommendation network of people like…

This used to be what Last.fm did before they turned into a MySpace-like mess. Reviews are great but in a world of access to a monumental volume of content, a way to discover obscure things is still difficult to find, and apparently, to monetize. When Netflix started streaming, they tried the long tail approach, but soon changed to only licensing a few things and then serving them up in endless configurations, which must be far more business-friendly for them.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#260

Post by kzrdude » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #108

kzrdude wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's a social network, but since this is hacker news — I'd love if your front page would not be just a login screen. The front page should say something about specific books, something that draws you in! Something from the site itself. And put that book recommendations button higher up (it's not visible on first view for me). :-) Something that makes you begin browsing and using the site to get recommendation…

I like your idea. This may be something you’d like (more HN style - HN was actually the inspiration for the feature): https://www.helloreads.com/recommendations/new But I think your right, should open it up a bit on the main page. You don’t need to log in but I think your right, it could be more appealing on the home page. If enough interest, we may fire up the development again and see where it goes now that we know…

I didn't intend to say the site should be inspired by HN, and that's not what I mean. I just wanted to say, since this is HN, here comes the drive by well intentioned but shallow critique. Good luck with the site. I hope it gets a more engaging first experience, and I don't hope it ends up looking like HN ;)