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Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
31–40 of 92 posts
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#32Firstly, I love the idea. Part of the reason I've stopped reading fiction is because of the unknown quantity to whether it will waste my time — amazon reviews can be hit and miss, and often missing.
http://idreambooks.com/newbooks/19-Moonwalking-With-Einstein reckons that the NYTimes review is negative, but reading it (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-m...) it appears to be positive? How do you work out which are positive and negative?
Also, could you make it possible to blacklist certain reviewers? Is that what the thumbs up and down do, personalising your result? Say, if I went to the review page of 50 shades, and downvoted all the positive reviews, will those reviewers stop counting?
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#33cough Goodreads. Already has network effects going for it, and a very vibrant author community. It does pretty much what all the comments on this HN page suggest you should add/change. Also, your site took almost 5 minutes to load. That is simply unacceptable.
Goodreads is nothing like this site.
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#34Firstly, I love the idea. Part of the reason I've stopped reading fiction is because of the unknown quantity to whether it will waste my time — amazon reviews can be hit and miss, and often missing. http://idreambooks.com/newbooks/19-Moonwalking-With-Einstein reckons that the NYTimes review is negative, but reading it ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-m... ) it appears to be positive? How d…
In the case of Moonwalking with Einstein over 70% of critics gave it a positive.
If 7 out of 10 critic reviews are positive, the rating is 70%. We recommend a book if it scores over 70%. More info here: http://idreambooks.com/toread_or_nottoread
Thumbs up/down doesn't personalize yet...
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#35You know what I like about books? They're printed using black ink on white pages. I have to believe that other readers prefer this high contrast approach or we'd see more variations after centuries of printing. Do your visitors a favor and use black text for your main content. The light grey on white surrounded by light grey makes me reach for my glasses, then I realize I'm already wearing them.
Other than that, I really like the site and added it to my bookmarks. I would like to see the number of reviews without having to hover over the cover, though. It helps put the score in perspective.
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#36You know what I like about books? They're printed using black ink on white pages. I have to believe that other readers prefer this high contrast approach or we'd see more variations after centuries of printing. Do your visitors a favor and use black text for your main content. The light grey on white surrounded by light grey makes me reach for my glasses, then I realize I'm already wearing them. Other than that, I re…
Books are constrained as much by medium as readability. If you want the book printed cheaply, you're relegated to black text on an off-white background. Also, there's a big difference between text on a back-lit display and text on a page.
I think dark gray text is a good choice for text on computers.
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#37Your search is... awkward.
I'm searching for "Count of Monte Cristo" (no quotes), and I get barely-related results (starting from "The Pregnancy Countdown" to "Fifty Shades of Grey" - please tell me that "of" is a stop-word in your search algorithm!).
Sidebar: Is your review aggregation automated or curated?
EDIT
When a cover image is not available, the results are meaningless as you must hover over each coverless result to see the title. I think the text should be always visible for images with no cover:
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#38Very cool. One feature that RT has that you don't have yet is the ability to see all reviews by a reviewer/institution. Actually, being able to see all books by the author would be especially useful. And it's a view more particularly essential than it is for RT (since an author has a more singularly important role in the quality of a work, compared to the actors/studios/directors/writers/producers/financial backing t…
To put a slightly finer point on it: sites like this are incredibly relational. Everything (almost) should be clickable for a collection view.
That's taking it a bit far, eh? Tasteful user interfaces answer relevant questions - not just any question at all.
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#39Seems like search tool needs some work. I can't find books that I am looking for 3 out of 3.
Re: Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books
#40You know what I like about books? They're printed using black ink on white pages. I have to believe that other readers prefer this high contrast approach or we'd see more variations after centuries of printing. Do your visitors a favor and use black text for your main content. The light grey on white surrounded by light grey makes me reach for my glasses, then I realize I'm already wearing them. Other than that, I re…
Books are constrained as much by medium as readability. If you want the book printed cheaply, you're relegated to black text on an off-white background. Also, there's a big difference between text on a back-lit display and text on a page. I think dark gray text is a good choice for text on computers.
What the dark grey (it isn't really super dark) text actually achieves here is to allow your attention to be drawn to the pictures of book covers.
This, of course, makes the site prettier, because book covers are colorful.
Personally though, I'd rather just have a list of [book name - author(s)]