Alfaniel Aldavan > Recent Status Updates

If people wrote their reviews on paper and put them into a real, physical library, I am sure that the Goodreads administrators would be very reluctant to pull them down from shelves and burn them. When you can get rid of a piece of writing just by clicking on a few links, there’s a temptation to believe that it’s less serious. But it isn’t. It’s just less clear what you’ve done.

Heads-up... I voted for the community protests book (Off-Topic) for GR Non-Fiction awards :)
https://www.goodreads.com/choiceaward...

"From the beginning, Goodreads was designed to aggregate capital, to become a desirable object for purchase/take-over. The policies which management began to implement in September would also have been eventually implemented even without Amazon’s interest in Gleichschaltung."

Reviews deletions continue! The apparent slow down was not real. https://www.goodreads.com/user_status...

I've read this book years ago, and it's as impressive as ever. This time I'll actually write a review...

A second Salon article on the GR/Amazon enforcements of their new policy: http://www.salon.com/2013/10/23/how_a...

"We The Readers".. Perhaps we need a constitution?
- [Ruby]

"Final warning" from GR, for Manny.
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

My Hydra reviews were removed. Hydra reviews are copies of removed-or-prone-to-removal reviews.

http://alfaniel.booklikes.com/post/58...

Eh, Platonism of mathematical entities comes into discussion.

If one had to summarize, in just one sentence, 'What's been happening since the Big Bang', the best answer might be to take a deep breath and say: "Ever since the beginning, gravity has been moulding cosmic structures and enhancing temperature constrasts, a prerequisite for the emergence of the complexity that lies around us ten billion years later, and of which we are part."

"I'm optimistic that if I were writing in five years' time, I would be able to report what the dark matter is."
Well... what is it? :)

"All the major theories of physics are about parts of the universe—a radio, a ball in flight, a biological cell, the Earth, a galaxy. When we describe a part of the universe, we leave ourselves and our measuring tools outside the system. [...]
When we do cosmology, we confront a novel circumstance: It is impossible to get outside the system we’re studying when that system is the entire universe."

Fun quote of the day:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9076...

Ceridwen has found interesting hard data on GR deletions last week. See http://soapboxing.net/2013/10/by-the-...

This world would make a very enjoyable universe of a RPG. Healing side, with its natural remedies, temples, plants. Magical side, with its unpredictability and wearing effects on sages, starwood spell platforms, and bottled or boxed ingredients. Apothecaries serving both.
Humans. Golems, steampunk machinery. Souls.

Civil disobedience: protest against GR's meaningless and overbroad review policy:

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3...

Interesting secondary character. At this point, the author still creates a shade of mystery around it, very sketchy, non-obvious. Slightly repetitive.

Well done, Goodreads. Just saw that Manny is taking down preemptively his reviews (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...).

Which prompted a rambling from my part:
http://sftomorrow.wordpress.com/2013/...

It's official: I'm protesting against the new review policy.

I agree that a review should ideally be about a book, and not the author, unless in relation with the book. However, I consider this to be a common-sense guideline.

Recent history attempts to mold common sense into corporate rules result in stifling creativity, chilling common sense itself, and work against a vibrant community.

And it starts... "My name is Michael Bishop".
The "aah" that follows the scene when we're witness to his memory loss. MC starts telling stories, to remind himself who he is, reason for the title.

Beautiful writing. It flows just right. Sometimes almost musical in its round up.
Only now we find out - actually we probably will soon - the reason for the title. I fear that the blurb is actually a bigger spoiler than I would have liked. The realization is very very nicely woven in the story, save that I expected it already because of the blurb.

Editing errors, more than a few. Way too awkward, childish, sentences. The world is not believable; the book is not interested in plausibility or even compatible elements of the world (characters "strengthen a gene" with "modern technology" and thus "cure the curse"; that, in the same phrase with no background).

We're told early how bad is the bad guy, early enough to care for Michael to succeed. Very interesting support character.
Colorful and entertaining paragraphs of the golem's struggles with its rough golem nature.

We're told early how bad is the bad guy, early enough to care for Michael to succeed. Very interesting support character.
Colorful and entertaining paragraphs of the golem's struggles with its rough golem nature.

Quick start, well written and convincing. A world of holy, technology, and magic.

A few repetitions, a phrase repeating the previous idea, as if to be sure we got it. Not too much, though.