Authors are as individual as any other group of humans. Some of them love interacting with fans and some don't. Some are active on social media on a daily basis, and some can't stand it and either hire someone to deal with it for them or just ignore it entirely. I would start by looking at what kind of public contacts they put out there. Do they have a website or social media presence? Do you see them regularly engage with readers online? Do they list a public-facing email address? If you can't track any of that down these days, probably the author doesn't do a lot of direct interaction with fans, but as a last resort you can always contact their publisher or agent and ask.

I disagree.

If it's going to be a detective story with some sex in it, I expect it to lead with exposition, plot points, and character development related to the detective story. I expect the sex scenes to be introduced later, organically, as the story develops. And I expect a story that is presented as a detective story to follow this pattern.

On the other hand, if it's going to be a sex story with some detection in it, I expect it to lead with sex scenes, etc. And I expect it to be presented as a sex story.

I don't think it's judging a book that's presented as a detective story to instead open like a sex story. That's a bait-and-switch, in my opinion. And a weird one, too.

I'm sure it'll be great!

Not American but my heart breaks for you. Library's and librarians are treasures of the community.

The movie was so different from the book they are only tangentially the same story. If you read the book thinking it would expand on the movie, I expect you are disappointed. If you read the book expecting a comic spoof on American life, you were probably pleased.

He might! It’s actually likely that he does considering the nature of his works. But I was definitely thinking of the Asimov quote and for some reason thought it was Vonnegut who said it….

Hey, Vonnegut’s a very quotable guy, I just figured he had a quote floating around I haven’t seen before!

Presumptuous of you to assume the non college educated person is insecure because they don't have a degree.

To each their own, I guess.

Years ago I wrote a fan letter to my favorite best selling romance novel and not only did she write me back, she sent a signed copy of her newest paperback with a personalized note (her sister spells her name the same way I do apparently:). Go for it!

I respect him a ton. Tolkien did what no one else did: he crafted a universe based on a career of linguistic expertise and cutting edge 20th century philosophy. No one else will do that. Nevertheless, I think the movies are boring as hell and I have no interest in reading the books. :/ Sorry not sorry

“Your definition of rights is arbitrary”

I’m finished with this.

If OP thinks Fellowship is hard to read. Don't make them read Silmarillion. It. Is. Worse. I mean it's basically Tolkien's magnum opus. And language is even more descriptive than in the earlier books.

I got a third of the way through before putting it down for the same reason. I don't want or need to know what every single blade of grass looks like JRR to the power of 9. It did nothing to move the narrative along and in the end I just couldn't do it.

I did enjoy The Hobbit though.

Don’t they have library cards that has age restrictions so kids couldn’t check out when it was not appropriate for a child to check out? I know I use to have that when I lived in Nashville, TN when I was a kid.

Not structurally speaking? You'll have to elaborate if not.

You said:

>Rights are negative, not positive.

I think this is as arbitrary as defining a reference point or normalizing chosen constants to 1. Maybe even more arbitrary than that. Your focus on that structural definition implies to me that we have very different focus in the first place.

It's also outside of the point I was discussing, and I didn't claim you defined rights (edit: fair, i did use the word definition initially), just that we have different positions on what little we've discussed on them.

And so the conversation veers further and becomes further confused...

You do know that it's probably because he did his world building from scratch, right?

Prison or a long illness, like consumption.

I read Cometierra ('Eartheater') by Dolores Reyes recently and absolutely loved it. It touches on themes of the plague of femicide through magical realism -- the protagonist is a psychic of sorts who can solve the mystery of a disappearance or murder by eating the dirt from the place that the victim was discovered or last seen. Heartbreaking but so incredibly well done.

Just finished Gravity’s Rainbow for the first time. Incredible book, loved so many different aspects. Love the way this article brings in the AI discussion, it’s really incredible Pynchon wrote this thing when the internet wasn’t even really an idea yet:

> need no longer to be run by the Invisible Hand, but now could create itself—its own logic, momentum, style, from inside

Highly recommend it to folks. It has a difficult reputation but honestly most of it is pretty approachable.

In Poland we have a novel "The Doll" which is often compare to Great Gatsby. I read them both although I didn't see resemblance and I wasn't really impressed by GG.

I didn’t give a definition of rights.

No, I don't make myself a homework list for my hobby.

I came here for the madeleine comment, nice

Yes! Most of the time. I've even become friends with a couple of them just by frequently interacting with them on social media.