the host

i am gonnba be in 8th grade next year and i kinnda wanna read the host but im only 13 and i doint kno if im gonna really lik it and if im gonna understand it what do u thank i should do?

I just finished The Host a few days ago, so I'll weigh in. If you liked the Twilight series, I suspect you'll like this one. Meyer's style isn't that different in The Host. It's not that complicated, so I don't think you'll have trouble following it. In spite of its reputation for being more "grown-up", it's not much different from what I've seen of Twilight.

By the way, this group is for discussion of the LibraryThing site, so you'll probably get more response by posting in the Book Talk group or one of the Twilight groups.

Welcome to LT!

Shouldn't we go easy on flagging this sort of post? Wafflez has entered 11 books: whatever you may think about the Twilight series, she is a reader. We can, surely, afford to be a broad church?

Usually when there's a complaint about a post being flagged I agree with the flaggers, but in this case I see no reason at all. Flaggers, please step up and state your reasons.

Agreed - though this is the wrong group for it, there was nothing really wrong with the post as such.

yes, the little yellow box has 3 reasons for flagging, and everyone here can read, no where does it say 'wrong group'

Click to flag this message as abuse

What is abuse? (1) personal attacks, (2) commercial solicitation, (3) spam. See terms of use.

We need a flag to flag flagging abuse. :-)

This probably came under "It annoys me." Not one of the valid reasons for flagging.

I hope the poster is 13 or older.

She(?) said she was 13.

#8

Oops. Sorry, WAFFLEZ. By the time I'd read everything else, I'd forgotten that you said that.

And welcome to LT.

There's a place to click to ignore a topic.

And it takes twice as much effort to flag as it does to ignore.

WAFFLEZ,
Welcome to LT, I hope you find lots of good books and some good company as well.

and why did people flag lorax's post? It was a bit harsh, but not flag worthy. If it's because of her saying "illiterate crap".... well, look at the OP's post. I think that qualifies. Just because they are speaking about a book doesn't mean they get to speak like that.

I don't think you can deny that what Lorax posted was abusive and an attack against a 13 year old who is new to this site.

>14 Heather19:

I think the post in question was borderline. While it didn't occur to me to flag it the first time I saw it, I did think it a bit strongly worded, especially after checkng the OP's profile.

Like so much on the internet, it is very easy to post comments which no reasonable person would ever actually say to someone face to face: I think #10 is in that category.

The OP had an unusual style AFAIAC, but isn't it just young peoples text-speak?

>14 Heather19: I flagged it for consistency. While it is only a borderline personal attack, the initial post wasn't even anywhere close to abuse. So by the standards set in this thread, borderline abuse should certainly be flagged. If the OP comes back to the site and sees that her post was flagged inappropriately, she should at least see that posts considerably worse* than hers are flagged as well.

*Where "worse" is defined in terms of the site standards for abuse, not in terms of writing quality. The latter has nothing to do with flagging.

Wafflez, I want to read The Host. I have heard a lot of good things about it. I am almost done with the Twilight series. It was good, nothing wonderful but an easy read.

The flagging of the OP's post is uncalled for. So what if it was posted in the wrong group and it was in young peoples 'text speech' I understood what the OP was asking and it was a legitimate question. Quit being so hard on the new young people of this site.

This is a site about books.

There is a time and place for "text speak", but certainly a site devoted to books isn't it.

>20 lorax: The thing is, if you disagree with the current rules of the site, you should convince Tim to change them rather than just choosing to ignore them. As it stands, nothing forbids text speak.

> 20

There is a time and place for "text speak", but certainly a site devoted to books isn't it.

Who says? Sorry, lorax, you don't get to decide that. Personally, I abhor text speak. I also abhor the failure to use proper capitalization and punctuation. But I don't flag posts that don't meet my literary and grammatical standards, because they do not constitute "(1) personal attacks, (2) commercial solicitation, (3) spam", which are the allowable grounds for flagging a message on this site. "Text speak" doesn't fall under any of those grounds, either.

Your message (#10) was very close to falling under "(1)", and those persons who flagged your message had far better justification for doing so than you did for flagging the OP's.

You might want to have a look at this.

22>

As it happens, I didn't actually flag the OP's post, though I do admit to having sympathy with the people who did, and I did consider doing so. I'm not sure whether an accurate description of a post -- which, now that I look at it, seems to be more "sloppy" than "text speak" -- while text-speak is non-standard, it is fairly consistent, and while there are some similarities ("u" for "you", no capitalization) a lot of what's in the original post isn't the sort of keystroke-saving shortenings of text speak but just plain typos -- is a personal attack. An attack on the post, yes, but not the poster, and thus, I think, not personal. I'm sure wafflez is a literate and intelligent person, but her post was neither of those things.

I was one of the flaggers! I thought it was another spam post in the vein of others with poor grammer posted to Site Talk lately, and thus flaggable. I didn't check out the account until afterwards, at which point I realized it was a legitimate account but couldn't (or didn't know how to) unflag it.

I'm sorry! It has nothing to do with a rabid hate of Twilight, the OP, or a desire to impose my own personal biases on the site. I thought it was spam, and it was a mistake I couldn't undo once I'd done it.

How does a reader distinguish between "sloppy" writing and mistakes made by someone who is learning English, someone with poor motor control, by someone with a learning disability, or by a deaf person using non-standard syntax? None of these people should be afraid to post because someone doesn't like the way they write.

Anyway, "sloppy" posts are easy enough to ignore, and will be quickly buried by those that interest the most readers.

I think that the OP was asking a perfectly legitimate question in language that she was comfortable with.

I hit the red 'x' when I first saw this post. (I'm back here because of http://www.librarything.com/topic/65047 .) But I do that for lots of posts. That's what we do here for topics that don't interest us, or that are being conducted in languages (like text speak) that we aren't comfortable reading.

Before the flags appeared there was already a very good answer to the OP's question. One that gave a legitimate poster an idea of how to do it better next time, and that didn't make a big deal of how such posts get some people's goats.

Flagging this was not appropriate, and also counterproductive.

>26 MarthaJeanne:

For the record, I flagged /before/ anyone posted.

Good lord.

On features:

1. Bad grammar, spelling are not flagable offenses. You don't have to like them, but they are not violations of the Terms of Service. Flagging someone without cause is a violation of the Terms of Service. (No, we don't go after someone easily for violations of this.)
2. Flagging will remain private. It's a valuable protection to the flagger.
3. When I have a chance I'll add un-flagging, a feature in Reviews, to Talk.

On manners:

1. Be nice, people. Nastiness between regular members is much more poisonous to what makes LibraryThing great than a message in lowercase.
2. LibraryThing is not and will not become a Twilight-free zone. From where I sit, 75% of the books on LibraryThing are boring crap. That's the nature of human taste. The world will keep on spinning whether you like Twilight or not.
3. LibraryThing staff don't patrol the site, and, like the Supreme Court, we don't review cases unless we're asked. So if you see a TOS-violation, let us know.

On children:

1. LibraryThing is for anyone 13 and over. That is all.
2. The minimum age is a legal requirement, not a grammatical one. It stems from the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Being under 13 is, in theory, a flaggable offense, but it's much more important to send LT staff a note so we can get the user off the site.

Oh sure, you post here, but nothing on the critical question of whether Edward Cullen is HOT and SEXY.

You can't dodge the big questions forever, you know.

>29 MrAndrew: - That will probably be the next thing the LT staff works on after Collections comes out.

On another note, I'm a bit disappointed that, since flagging will continue to be anonymous, there will be no MrA-led posse of flaggers. It could have be called the A-team and there could have been some sort of button to click to call the posse when someone was spamming or being abusive. It would have been great.

Thank you, Tim.

I suggest putting your first point into the TOS under How to deal with abuse.

>#30: Watch the skies for my signal.

#28: you said, "2. LibraryThing is not and will not become a Twilight-free zone. From where I sit, 75% of the books on LibraryThing are boring crap. That's the nature of human taste. The world will keep on spinning whether you like Twilight or not."

Only 75%??!!
.
.
I'm glad you didn't say "worthless crap" because "most" everyone here would say that there isn't a book that exists that could be "worthless crap"... but I'm sure others will chime in with their opinion on "worthless crap". In my opinion, no book is considered "worthless crap" ... at least to the person who wrote it & to the person who found it either entertaining &/or informative.

But "boring crap"... oh, yes... lots & lots of "boring crap"... even in my own library!!

#29 - I believe he is actually COLD and SPARKLY.

>33 skittles:

Clearly you didn't get my point. My point was, the people who hate Twilight so much should get over it. We all like some books and dislike others. I don't go flagging posts about—oh, let's say, knitting books, because I like knitting books. You couldn't pay me to read one. Rather, I don't flag them because my disliking them is unimportant, and irrelevant to the fact that many people do. We need not pretend we like everything, but we should insist on tolerance and good manners.

Thanks for the new feature Tim.

C'mon, let's unflag WAFFLEZ

Incidentally, this whole incident (and the 200+ message post that followed) got me thinking about the problem. So I made some changes:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/65287

T

> 36: Yes, I already counter flagged.

ETA : Yay - she's back.

I've counter flagged too - five more to rub out all the flags, yes?

>36 bernsad: I've done my part.

>35 timspalding: Just for that Tim, I'm adding still more knitting books to my catalog. :-P

I'm gonna flag it again, just so everybody gets a chance to unflag it.

I wonder just how much money it would take to get Tim to read a knitting book? Maybe we could take up a collection?

If you can find a knitting book in ancient Greek, that might work.

Didnt' Aristotle have a tract pondering which came first "Knit one? Pearl one?"?

I think it's been revised and updated lately as "Knit one? Pearl one? and Zombies"

>45 bernsad: You're premature. The update is in progress, we're not done yet. We're hoping for a midsummer release.

#35: My comment was also given with a bit of sarcastic humor, not to be taken at all seriously.

There are books that I have read that some very close friends & family consider extremely boring &/or uninteresting... but then I see them reading books that I'm not at all interested in, too.

No book is worthless... someone somewhere will be interested in it... the challenge is to get the books people do find interesting into the right hands that would find them interesting!!

Twilight ? I haven't read it yet.... a friend loaned me a ARC of it... it is sitting by my front door waiting for me to read it... either I should read it or I should give it back. I will probably at least start it... just to find out what the fuss is all about.

>#43/44: "First, take your golden fleece..."

Just stop right there Andrew. The rest of need to be spared the details of you unravelling your golden fleece AGAIN. This is a nice family friendly site.

Besides, I can only imagine what sort of cozy you plan on knitting this time.

And, since I've been following this thread and the other one Tim wrote about updating the flagging feature... I have to comment about something.

I'm embarrassed that Tim had to come on here and remind us to be nice. I don't really care what book someone is asking/talking about, there is no justifiable reason for behaving like a intolerant book bigot. I personally would rather be breaded and deep-fried than be forced to read anything by S. Meyer but I imagine that there are even more out there who would prefer that to my reading choice, Life's Matrix: A Biography Of Water. Last time I checked this whole site was dedicated to "books", not "books I like because the rest are poorly written drivel". Or did I miss a memo?

Maybe I'm delusional (pipe down Andrew) but I like to think readers are better than this. And I dearly hope that young readers like WAFFLEZ stay long enough to find out that there's a whole world of books out there that don't involve sparkling vampires.

Go Wendy!

#50 The Host has a fish planet.

Umm.... is that a code?

What does that mean? Or are you just trying to confuse me? Because, ya know...not really that hard to do.

I guess you'll have to read it to understand.

I think it must be something to do with A Fish Called Wanda.

Oh no no no no no..... nice try Donna!
I also wonder what a moth grub tastes like broiled over an open fire in the outback but that doesn't mean I'm gonna partake!

If it makes you feel any better we have a house guest right now that is reading "Twilight" and I think I've been very well behaved about the whole thing. I haven't "accidently" thrown it in the fireplace even once. I haven't stopped offering her other books either but... you know... baby steps.

> 56 I also wonder what a moth grub tastes like broiled over an open fire in the outback but that doesn't mean I'm gonna partake!

You don't have to. Roast the moth grub in the fireplace and I'll bet you can get a close approximation without ever leaving home.

Mmmmm, creamy!