The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Leave any thoughts, comments, questions, concerns, comments, suggestions, and what-nots below.

Also, feel free to start other discussion threads within the "General Discussion" part of this group if you'd like to.

This group is a kind of transplant of a forum I started back in 2012 here. I'm curious how people from there like it here.

Also curious about any way to help this be a good place, so it is open to any and all discussion.

How about adding tags to the group?
At the moment a search of GR groups for "BTBA", for instance, produces no results. (Whilst, as you'd expect, there are loads for "Booker".)

Thanks! Will do.

Over the next little bit I'm going to be putting some of the more general topics from the old forum here. In doing this, I'll be reposting some of my posts from there. For example, I did this already with the "Booker Memories" thread.

I'd welcome you to join in and either post something new or copy and paste something from there, to place some foundation here.

In the prize threads, another possibility would be linking to Goodreads lists. The pictorial format can be more lively to browse, but they are also another click.

Lots of Booker ones, and more recent years the long & shortlists are on: https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8...

BTBAs: https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8...

Not sure if you want to bother with old IFFP lists: https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8...


There are also the Awards pages within Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/...
https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/...
https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/...
https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/...

(these are what you will get if clicking an award name on a book record. The search function within Awards is broken at the moment and always returns a blank result.)

Nice -- a lot of ready-made resources here!

My first action as a moderator has been adding the MBI Longlisted books to the group shelves.
As there were so many of them, I added them all as "read" so that there wouldn't be the block of four books at the top of the page if they were in currently reading.
Open to other ideas on how to deal with this too.

I'd also like to add that, in the same way that employees might say on their blog or Twitter, "all opinions my own", my more opinionated off-topic posts and asides elsewhere on GR shouldn't be taken to be reflective of the group, of anyone else, or as an indication of what I might post here. The old forum concentrated on the books - and sometimes films - and it had a great balance of people expressing what they thought about what they were reading, each to their own, without its becoming confrontational.

I'm only a moderator because I've a bit more time than Trevor has to do admin like adding books to shelves, and I've spent a lot of too much time on Goodreads and know how various things work on the site, and am happy to explain stuff to anyone.

Thanks Anto!

Re. lists of unpublished, unread books in 2017 BTBA thread, what about a thread called "forthcoming translations you're looking forward to" or similar with slightly better wording, which may appeal to those with less interest in awards, - and could include any interesting retranslations & reissues?

Sounds good! Let's do it! Feel free to set it up as you see fit.

I liked the addition of an author thread, Anto, on Pascal Garnier. I was thinking of starting a folder where folks could go into authors more generally (and can link to the other threads as fitting), so I moved that from "Book Chat" to a new "Author Chat." Folks should feel free to add threads on authors. It might be nice, though, to put a bit of biographical information in the top thread (brief biography, bibliography, etc.).

Ah, minor crossed wires - I eventually added a short description at the top of my first post, then after refreshing the thread, saw you'd already edited yours and added a list of books.

I'd had notifications set to email me instantly about every single new post in the group - there were getting to be rather a lot of them, and everything seems to be staying civilised here so I just changed that to a daily digest - hope that's okay. [?] I would often see new posts if I'm on here during the day anyway.

As we approach Booker Season 2016, I'm delighted that Ang, who has been a part of the Booker discussions I've been following for a decade, has accepted my invitation to be a moderator!

Thanks Ang!

Just letting you know that I unpinned the 2016 MBI ranking thread and pinned the 2017 speculation one. I left 2016 general discussion up as that has recent activity, but won't object if anyone else unpins it.

Putting this here so I remember to create these:

-Soseki Thread
-Nobel Folder

Feel free to make similar suggestions/reminders.

A suggestion: Put the name of the award in each thread title. I get a lot of notifications that say "So and so has commented on the thread 2016 Longlist", but I don't know which Longlist it refers to. The name of the award is in the folder name, which doesn't show up.

Seconded.

So for each book thread? I'm feeling that would be cumbersome and that the book title is enough. We must have different perspectives, so give me an example of what you'd like. I know people use various methods to access and read these goodreads forums.

My interpretation of Sara's post was that it relates to general threads named "2016 Longlist", "2016 Dynamic Rankings" etc (not those for individual books) and that they could be renamed "2016 Man Booker Longlist" and so on.

Though, talking of book threads, it would have been good IMO to integrate the discussion of titles that were on both the MBI and BTBA lists rather than having two separate ones. However, that is not exactly a pressing issue in July!

Sounds good! I can get behind all of that!

I think we could improve the blurb at the beginning of the group, but
a) I usually take loads of drafts to get the wording of little things like that right
b) at the beginning stage I always want to include too many things for it to be succinct and punchy. After all it needs to work in terms of the line or two that gets displayed on the Groups page: https://www.goodreads.com/group
as well as on here when people click through.

But basically I think it needs to start with what the group is about, to interest people who've only seen it on here. (Then when I try and work out what to say, I get bogged down because of the negative feelings some people have about the "literary fiction" category although they read books that booksellers categorise that way. etc etc, and that there are people who don't like the booker but might like BTBA type titles etc. Need to cut through all that.) The bit about the old forum can come after a short intro about the main focus of the group.

Antonomasia wrote: "I think we could improve the blurb at the beginning of the group, but
a) I usually take loads of drafts to get the wording of little things like that right
b) at the beginning stage I always want ..."

I agree. I wanted to keep it as it was for a time so old forum members knew what this was, but that has passed. That said, I run into problems when I sit to draft a new one. I'm really not entirely sure what we are! If folks have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

In the Man Booker folder, what about unpinning the non-2016-specific threads for the moment? (i.e. Ranking the Winners, News and Publicity, Index - they can always go back up after the current season.)

When looking at the group front page, it's not immediately obvious to new people that there are threads for the different books as well as the general discussion and rankings - whereas if a few were visible, they'd figure the others must be there.

Done!

What I have not done yet, as you can all see, is change the group description. I cannot figure out who we are! It's not a complete existential crisis, since I feel we are definitely something, but it would be nice to pin it down. If anyone has some suggestions, please share!

Thanks Trevor!

thinking about moving the longlist into the "currently reading" shelf, which would mean there are four books at the top before the forum posts. It seemed a bit much when both the MBI and BTBA longlists were on the go, but am rethinking having seen other groups do this, and they don't seem crowded out by it.

It may also mean it's more likely people click through to see other members' reviews of the books.

Any objections?

None from me.

I added a superfluous shelf which I was going to delete. It sounds as though there should be a link called "edit group shelves" on the left on the shelves page, but I can't see it, so I can't delete that (or rename shelves). Is that a permissions thing, and only you (Trevor) can edit those at the moment?

Antonomasia wrote: "I added a superfluous shelf which I was going to delete. It sounds as though there should be a link called "edit group shelves" on the left on the shelves page, but I can't see it, so I can't delet..."

I can see an "edit" button next to list of "group shelves " option which would enable me to delete shelves and I think I have same permission as you. Or I can delete if you prefer (I assume man-booker-longlist-2016 (0) is the spurious one?)

Just realised what it was. It was caught by one of the Adblocker elements I've been using to modify the homepage. When I've seen other things missing on GR I figured that was the reason, and switched the adblocker off, but this time I forgot.

All done now - and yep, it was that shelf.

Yesterday evening I finally looked at the spoiler threads after not doing so since a few hours after starting the first one.

My view is that a duty to preserve other people's content is more important than tidiness so, if the second thread is still to be removed, as a compromise I would like to suggest putting the content of MisterHobgoblin's post into the other thread as a quote with date + time, particularly as it is a longer post with some effort put into it.

As there are so many contributors to the rankings now, perhaps a new and separate thread for the shortlist when the time comes?

That's how the old forum worked, so I think that's what Trevor will do here too.

Trevor, The Year of Reading Henry Green seems to be languishing a bit. Could it be flogged on Mookse and Gripes again?

That's my fault! I am not entirely sure why I got sucked into a funk at the end of 2016 -- I usually don't let that kind of thing happen -- but I did. I've been meaning to get back in there and straighten up some things, including my own participation! Thanks for the reminder and the note of interest!

No apologies necessary, Trevor. I've enjoyed Henry Green, and I've been looking forward to more participants and more spirited discussions.

I think there might be too many pinned threads at the top of the Man Booker Prize (i.e. English language Booker) folder. It stops browsers seeing other, often more recently, active threads on the front page.

I've just unpinned the 1978 shortlist discussion as that hadn't been active for 2 months and it has now been succeeded by the 1980 discussion (which remains at the top), but was also wondering if everyone thought "Publicity and News" should always be at the there as well, given space constraints.

Moderators, this is to follow up on the suggestion in the Booker longlist thread that we make the rankings threads in such a way that 1) the top posts are the compiled rankings and 2) that perhaps in general those threads be cleaned of any posts that do not include rankings.

Here's my suggestion, but let me know what you think:

1) We do our best to make these and lock them until each of the rankings compilers have a chance to get a top post for their compilations. I do not know if you can unlock a thread that I have locked, but let's try it. I'll go make a thread for the shortlist rankings and lock it. You three go ahead and try to unlock it and add your post.

2) My top post will lay out the rules of the thread -- only ranked lists, one per person, the compiled rankings at top. Any posts that do not match that criteria will be, with no ill-will, deleted.

Let me know what you think!

Here is my stab at a top, instructional post. Please feel free to make suggested changes. I will use this going forward.

Welcome! This is a Dynamic Ranking thread for the 2017 Man Booker Prize Shortlist! This thread will remain locked until the shortlist is announced.

Please read and follow these rules to keep this thread easy to read and use.

The moderators will use the top few posts below to compile the rankings data from the group. These posts will be edited periodically. Please refer to them to see how we, as a group, rank the books.

All other posts below should be rankings posts only. Please limit these to one per user. When you need to change your rankings, just edit your post rather than adding a new one.

All discussion posts or duplicate rankings posts will be deleted, though with no hard feelings. We're just trying to keep this readable for all time!

Okay, mods, I have posted the new Shortlist Dynamic Rankings thread here. It is locked, so see if you have the ability to unlock it and add a comment placeholder for your rankings compilations, which will be different from your actual rankings.

I think a nice addition to my top post will be the links to your rankings compilations (along with, perhaps, an explanation of your methodology??)

Thanks Trevor - that sounds like a good solution.

Yep. I knew better. Mea culpa. No excuse. Thanks for your work on this.

I've laughed at others who didn't take the hint about deleting their irrelevant thread posts, and then I did it.

No worries, Ctb! My preference is always to make this welcoming and hopefully not make any one feel they did something wrong!

Sounds great, Trevor, and I have unlocked and added my tallying post and relocked.

Should we say in your top post that they can rank any way they like. e.g. 1 2 5 8 13 or sequential. That became quite a discussion in the longlist ranking thread.

Sorry I haven't been very attentive this last week - I have been roaming the streets of Dublin.

I have added links to Hugh's and Paul's rankings in the longlist ranking thread. I can paste the actual link but I can't figure out how to have the link show as text, i.e. link shows as "Hugh's table" instead of www.goodreads....................

I thought the issue was probably that I was trying to do it on my tablet, so I moved to my desktop and still can't see how to do it.

https://www.goodreads.com

then
Hugh's is

"/topic/show/18756562-2017-booker-longlist-dynamic-rankings#comment_169077342"

Mine is

"/topic/show/18756562-2017-booker-longlist-dynamic-rankings?page=2#comment_169344860"

(very difficult to stop Goodreads turning details of a link into a URL then only showing part of it!)

Shall we delete all the non-rankings posts on the longlist dynamic ranking thread?

Hugh's explanation of his system could be added to his rankings post.

We could also add to Ang's top post (or to the last post?) the instruction to edit comments rather than post new ones

Most of the rest are debating the 1,,,m or the 1,4,7,13 system which was a useful debate but not one that really needs to be recorded for posterity