I find I don’t enjoy review-summaries unless I have a sense of why the reviewer is reading, what their own larger project is. If their larger project is just something like “read 100 books on X” I get bored. That shtick was interesting 5 years ago.
Conversation
This is one of my “I’m probably the asshole here” opinions
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Looks like I last did a review/summary myself in 2011. I think I just got bored of doing these even when they are inline with my projects. I don’t have the requisite community service mentality.
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Yeah definitely feel like an asshole posting this thread especially since I drafted off the benefits of writing about books back when there were far fewer people doing it and they had way more cachet than they do today.
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In 2009 nobody ever said of a book, “this should be a thread at best”. Even the fluffiest faddish business book was given benefit of doubt of having a decent essay’s worth of content to it. Books meant something beyond just being an intellectual calling card for “thought leaders”
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I think the book as a mainstream medium is possibly dead. Now new books are of the following types:
1. Personal brand calling card
2. Scholarly specialist things
3. B2B middleware for movies/TV, incidentally also read by nerds
4. Reactionary memberberries for waldenponders
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Replying to
noob-level writing procrastination: I'll do the dishes
basic-level writing procrastination: I just need to THINK about it more
expert-level writing procrastination: let me explain how books are dead
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Replying to
heh touche, though at least in my case, I'm not procrastinating right now. I'm writing portions in a fairly risky way that may not lend itself to being eventually cast in a book form :)
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That's genuinely exciting. It's a really limited form, which I think is very useful for taming a certain kind of creativity, and stifling for others. The format really hasn't been disrupted yet and I'm sure it will be.
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I moved the early part of my manuscript development from Scriverner to and it actually helped break out of procrastination and get me writing, which tells me something is going on both with me and my project, and the medium (recommend if you are a serious writer)
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Oh I see you're a YA author... yeah, definitely try out Roam. Might give you interesting new ways to think about plots, series bible and stuff.

