[ecshafer]

Goodreads is a pretty bad site overall. Its good for tracking which books you've read I guess, but I don't think its better than a google doc sheet. The average reader there doesn't really have good taste in books. You are honestly better off just using a google doc to track your books, and use /lit/ for discussions and recommendations, since /lit/ has much higher quality reviews, and discussions than good reads. Maybe a federated good reads will be better as it filters out a lot more people and might get rid of a low brow stuff.

[OfSanguineFire]

Goodreads isn’t just for fiction or popular-interest non-fiction like /lit/. You can also use it to track any book with an ISBN. I’m in academia and am constantly reading specialized literature, and I keep track of it on Goodreads because why not. I’ve had a lot of great interactions with other users who are similarly learned and perhaps working in parallel fields to my own. If you aren’t limited to the mainstream part of the website where mob behavior rules, you will be interacting with very different – and frankly much more worthwhile – people.

[geoffdunbar]

I'm probably being dumb here, but what do you mean by /lit/? I can't figure out how to turn that into an Internet thing (website? social? what is it!), and searching for /lit/ is predictable not helpful. Always looking for a good source of book discussions and recommendations!

[ecshafer]

/lit/ is the 4chan board. If you aren’t actually familiar with 4chan past rumors, it has decently good and varied tastes.

[huggingmouth]

4channel, a place where surprisingly good discussions are often held. I use it as s complement to hn, especially for topics that upset hn downvoters.

For people who want to have an honest discussion with a fun dose of rudeness and name-calling, it's great.

[tech_ken]

IDK, I enjoy the occasional spicy conversation but the intermittent, casual slurs are a big turnoff for me

[moneywoes]

4chan I believe

[smcleod]

And it’s owned by Amazon, who have no incentive to make it any better than it is.

[merdaverse]

I mean, they kind of do, they own Kindle, so you would think it would be in their interest make it non shit to promote the books on their stores

[bamfly]

> The average reader there doesn't really have good taste in books.

Massive problem everywhere. Sometimes I'll read some well-reviewed book-club sort of book, and it's usually somewhere between middling, and really bad. I once encountered one of those from a major publisher and aside from not being very good to begin with, it didn't even seem to have had a test-read done before it went to print—there were multiple parts, and one egregious chapter, where it looked like the author had done a major re-organizing edit then never gone back to iron out the wrinkles, such that the text would contradict itself line-to-line, like two or three versions of a scene describing different action, sequence of events, and circumstances re: things like which characters were present, had been hastily mashed up then never fully reconciled. This was plainly not a some intentionally-ambiguous literary device, but an oversight that left the reader unable to know what was supposed to have occurred. You'd never know what a mediocre story and technical mess it was from reading online reviews, though, unless you dug deep into the one- and two-star stuff (and found a reviewer of that sort who hadn't DNF'd it after the first couple chapters), plus other people I know who read it didn't even notice—one did, and we both got to stop feeling like we were taking crazy pills when we compared notes. WTF.

All I can figure is a lot of people just skim everything, so are used to filling in lots of narrative gaps in their head or accepting the gist or outcomes of bits that don't make much sense to them and moving on, which would also explain why the quality of the story, characters, and writing aren't something they really notice, if it's all coming through to them rather impressionistically anyway and they're painting the rest of the picture any way they like. I dunno.

TL;DR I find book recommendations nearly useless unless I've got a good sense of how a reviewer's quality-o-meter is calibrated. Star ratings from a broad, general audience are entirely useless.

[ecshafer]

This touches on things I notice in modern literature, it’s not really about books. There’s a lot of these “book club” books that suck. I am 99% certain it’s just pay to play. The books are kind of melodramatic and not good, with basic prose and themes that are overdone, but will be well regarded as you say. I think it’s because there’s a lot of this culture around “being someone that reads books” so you have people that post memes or wear book t shirts or whatever. But they read the books npr and Oprah recommend.

[9erdelta]

what is /lit/?

[raybb]

I assume OP is talking about the 4chan message board. Here's Reddit thread talking about said board https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/6ghfe5/have_you_guys...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The reddit discussion for /lit/ is hilarious. It's sad how even reading books has become some political thing. God forbid I like an HP Lovecraft story because it's creepy.

Some of the comments have this "I like how honest and unrestricted /lit/ is, but why can't we have that without all the Nazism and patriarchy" vibe that's just so incredible, I sort of stare at them in amazement.

[ecshafer]

It really just shows how Reddit often “doesn’t get it”. If you don’t want that stuff then just don’t look at it. But Reddit also due to the voting system just kind of tends towards this lowest common denominator malaise of mediocrity. /r/books, /r/literature or even something like /r/fantasy just tends towards talking about a few popular easily digestible books or meta topics.

[huggingmouth]

In case someone needs it spelled out to them: 4chan became such a great place precisely because your allowed to say what you want there. Participating is easy because you can be honest and don't have to police yourself, and as a result posting there becomes FUN.

[michaelmrose]

Can you give an example of a thread on /lit that is of notably higher quality than what can be found on reddit and call out specific comments that wouldn't have been made without benefit of anonymity?

I was put off by the gross fire hose of drek on other boards on 4chan when I looked at it initially but note lit seems to have actually reasonable discussions. That said it doesn't look to my eyes notably different from say reddit save for the intermittent random gross like slurs tossed about which add nothing whatsoever. If folks were banned for calling each other slurs one would hope the same people who had something to say could just say it without including the slurs.

Do you have a counter argument?

[siegecraft]

I don't have specific examples as I am not a regular reader of lit, but I can comment on "it doesn't look to my eyes notably different from reddit." The anonymity, lack of up/downvotes, non-hierarchial layout, lack of moderation, and heavy focus on images creates a very different experience from reddit. Some say this leads to better and more organic discussions (I agree for the most part), but I think they're only going to be as good as their community. Anyway, there's no reason you can't use them both.

> specific comments that wouldn't have been made without benefit of anonymity

Open any thread and you will find tons of examples, no reason to post them here. But I expect you meant specific comments that are valuable and insightful? Probably a matter of taste. On reddit it is at least much easier to find highly-rated comments, which is a plus for voting.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> If folks were banned for calling each other slurs one would hope the same people who had something to say could just say it without including the slurs.

You'd hope that, but it doesn't work that way.

In a place where you can be banned for the gross slurs, you might be banned for relating some personal anecdote in which you speak of some other person making a gross slur. Why, when you didn't type in the gross slur yourself?

Who knows. Maybe they think you're secretly a klansman, trying to pollute people's brains with the slur without actually saying the slur. Maybe they think you're not sufficiently progressive enough because you actually have a personal history where you were proximate enough to a bigot that you could hear what they were saying. Maybe it really is Orwellian, and you thought the word though you didn't put it in the comment.

But considering the extra effort it would take to post in such a place, always wondering if the next comment will get you banned, why would you bother?

People with interesting things to say will find it difficult to exist, belong, or remain in such a forum.

I don't think you get any of the good, without accepting that some of the bad has to be present too.

These people who do that sort of banning, somewhere in their shriveled little brains actually believe they're making the world a better place.

[beowulfey]

I think it’s just a matter of taste, honestly.

I don’t enjoy 4chan (I mostly browsed /mu/ when I visited) probably for the same reasons that you do. And that’s perfectly fine!

[tiltowait]

r/books is a disappointingly bad sub. I subbed there for a while, but it was filled with the same recommendations over and over (which is the problem with any recommendation subs).

The kicker for me, though (and the reason I unsubbed) was when the mods barred any posts complaining about the casting of Roland in the Dark Tower adaptation that was made several years ago, on the grounds that the only reason for anyone to disagree with casting Idris Elba was racism. People pointing out that changing Roland's race fundamentally changes his relationship with Susannah (and possibly even has implications for Susannah's relationship with Eddie) had their posts removed.

[edgyquant]

Thats why I don’t use Reddit and would never take any opinion on something from there seriously.

[lukas099]

I use /lit/. It definitely does have Nazism and patriarchy plastered over it. If you dig around, there are great posts there. But it is a valid complaint.

I'm wondering, do you take more issue with the Redditors saying they don't like the far-right stuff on /lit/ than you do with the actual far-right stuff on /lit/? Or are you commenting on the political nature of the entire (/lit/ + Reddit) system?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> I'm wondering, do you take more issue with the Redditors

I joined a subreddit a few years ago, printSF, I think (not sure) thinking that it might be more to my liking. The regular science fiction subreddit seemed to be more about Marvel movies (it's not just reddit that does this, scifi.stackexchange might as well be harrypotter.stackexchange).

I tried to like it. I saw books and authors that were unfamiliar (that should be good... it's difficult to find new stuff I enjoy). But then I started digging into the comments, and it was complete drek. There was one day when I must have read through two dozen, and "Bechdel" was in every single one of them. I don't think I knew what it was at the time, but one of them was a comment haranguing someone else about it, and so I enedd up learning that day.

Another time, someone mentioned Asimov's Foundation in a recommendation thread. The replies were bizarre.

It's clear that whatever they were after is nothing like what I want to read. We're not wanting the same genres. And I don't know why. It'd be one thing if these same sorts of people who were concerned with all that bullshit were happy and well-adjusted. Then it would mean that I was just some old fuddy-duddy and that the world had moved on without me. But they're not happy or well-adjusted, and they seem as if all they want out of this (and everything else) is to ruin and trash what they can.

I suspect that too many literature classes in public schools and community colleges are to blame. They can't listen to or read a story and just enjoy it for what it is. Everything must be deconstructed and hidden meanings revealed, the sort of hidden meanings only they're clever enough to see. And that opens up the cracks for their weird-assed politics to be inserted into it. Then every interaction between every two characters is homoerotic, every dystopia is a critique of capitalism, and the only horror permitted is how conservative modern governments are.

So yeh, I guess you could say this is a bigger problem for me than some halfwit in mama's basement trying to be an edgelord on 4chan and failing. And I hesitate to say that too loudly most of the time, because even though none of my words here are offensive, having described my personality there are those who would seek to make sure I'm not allowed to post ever again.

[lukas099]

So I guess the differentiator for you is that the 4channers are trying to be edgy, meaning they do not take their extremist positions seriously, whereas the redditors are more serious about their political statements?

[dri_ft]

https://4chan.org/lit/catalog

[bitdivision]

I'm guessing the 4chan board?