The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by hildea

I just came across this list of recommendations of asexual books: https://bsky.app/profile/rainbowcrat.../3l7lz7dsjum2j

Very nice, thank you! Will certainly check them out.

[Renate]

I really enjoyed The Cybernetic Tea Shop, Meredith Katz.
It's a sweet story and no sweaty passages.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Renate

I really enjoyed The Cybernetic Tea Shop, Meredith Katz.
It's a sweet story and no sweaty passages.

Sweaty passages per se don't bother me - I'd just like to have an occasional protagonist who is not interested in sex and romance at all. If they're interested, then it makes no difference to me whether it's a "clean" romance or a smutty one.

[issybird]

No, Audible, I’m not going to pay for an audiobook narrated by “Virtual Voice”. I’m not even going to listen to one for free with Audible Plus. So how about letting us filter them out from browsing/searching results?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

No, Audible, I’m not going to pay for an audiobook narrated by “Virtual Voice”. I’m not even going to listen to one for free with Audible Plus. So how about letting us filter them out from browsing/searching results?

I just had a look at Audible US and UK. There is no virtual voice in the UK (yet).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

No, Audible, I’m not going to pay for an audiobook narrated by “Virtual Voice”. I’m not even going to listen to one for free with Audible Plus. So how about letting us filter them out from browsing/searching results?

That's free on Android and iOS anyway, it's just Text to Speech. Pocketbook works nicely on Android for PD content.

Writing of search filters:
Why not by language?
Also Kindle Only search for books from an author doesn't give all the titles, yet has multiple languages.

Why is default always Most Popular or Featured?

Also I don't want to know things (not just Kindle) are "Best Sellers" or "Amazon Recommended" or whatever. Creates unfair positive feed back loops because it does affect people's choice.

KU price more prominent is wrong,

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

That's free on Android and iOS anyway, it's just Text to Speech. Pocketbook works nicely on Android for PD content.

There's a possibility that it's more "natural" than garden-variety TTS, but I'm not interested.

Writing of search filters:
Why not by language?

You can filter by language.

Why is default always Most Popular or Featured?

World of difference there. "Most popular" may be valuable to some buyers, although not to me because my tastes are aberrant. And it does serve to filter out the absolute dreck, or at least bump it down. "Featured" is of value only to the purveyor. It's not as if it's featured because Amazon/Audible is using the wealth of data available to them about my tastes to make targeted recommendations!

KU price more prominent is wrong,

Yeah. Don't tell me a book is free if you mean "free after paid subscription". That's outright misrepresentation.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

You can filter by language.

I don't see that on Amazon UK Kindle searches. Where?

Also stuff comes up in Search and then on the page "Change your Location / Doesn't ship to Ireland" Not much good for physical items.

On Amazon Germany/DE I can select English for the site. Often for non-Kindle content the DE "works" better for Ireland than UK, but can't be used for Kindle.

[Apache]

I never look at most popular selections. I have never been a part of most popular anything.
Apache

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I don't see that on Amazon UK Kindle searches. Where?

You can for Audible and for Kindle with category searches.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

You can for Audible and for Kindle with category searches.

Yes, but listing all the Kindle ebook only format for an Author or on Kindle store do a title search/author search are the only two things that interest me. They are both differently broken.
Their search is particularly broken. Searching Amazon on Duck Duck Go works better. The search has 100s of non-matching authors or titles (or products) and may not list titles/authors/products they actually have. Also returns results for things that exist but don't ship here, or no longer exist (not just out of stock).

You can't set language on Author list or Kindle Store list. It's even worse for DVD/BD etc.a

[Sirtel]

There is a language filter on the book search page of US Amazon (which I use), but not on the book search page of UK Amazon. There is an option to filter by language on the search results page, though.

[ownedbycats]

1. Prologue
2. Chapter 1
3. Chapter 2
4. Interlude
5. Chapter 3

thankfully that FanFicFare has strip_chapter_numbers:true as a setting.