What I'd like to see more of on intfiction.org

Maybe this wasn’t the focus of the forum, but it’d be neat to have these kinds of things, or have people feel welcome to do these kinds of things.

  • book progress threads
  • progress threads for playing games/reading works, IF or otherwise
  • work progress threads beyond testing requests
  • work progress threads for nontechnical stuff
  • IFDB review progress threads (yes, I’d love to see it more active)

And I don’t particularly care if they’re boring or whatever. I just like to read what other people are doing and try to support that.

OK, I’m not immediately going to be the change I wish to see, but … is there somewhere else that does this better? Is there any reason we don’t do this here? I think this is incredibly noncontroversial and would make the place feel like home.

Maybe we all have our own weekly progress threads elsewhere. (I do.) But it would be neat to share here too. So people who visit say, yeah, I can drop in and have fun. Maybe not have count up/down threads, but…this is an interactive fiction forum! I’d like to interact!

I’d support book progress threads, but I have nothing much to report because I just bury my head in IF these days. I need to start reading more again.

Tough to do 2 things at once. I’d guess there’s also goodreads for the specifics & people could link up there. But being in a big community can overwhelm you with information.

I know if I go on a DVD watching bender, books fall away for a bit. I’m fortunate enough to be able to read a lot on public transport.

But I’d be curious what other people are reading.

Well, if anyone wants to know, here’s everything I’ve read going back about a year or so, plus some stuff I added sporadically earlier, and not counting picture books, easy readers, or multiple volumes of long manga series:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/25987214

I’m a youth librarian so I just read all kinds of stuff. Favorite authors include include Libba Bray, R.A. Spratt, Carlton Mellick III, Bill Bryson, Gene Luen Yang, and Adam Rex. I don’t keep track of progress through a book, I just add them when I finish.

It’d be fun to be able to do a progress thread for the game I’m working on for the next IFComp, especially to help keep me motivated when it won’t actually appear for almost a year! I’m not sure how to do it without giving away everything that happens in the game ahead of time, though.

I see you like John Scalzi, nice! And I did find Planet Gigantic kinda boring.

I think Redshirts is the only thing of his I’ve read, but I just loved it to pieces, so I definitely intend to read more. Any recommendations?

Old Man’s War! Simply brilliant.

I just made an Intfiction.org Book Club group on Goodreads, because why not?
goodreads.com/group/show/20 … -book-club

I don’t expect it to be an actual book club/forum, mostly just a way for people to find each others’ profiles and peep at their bookshelves. (If there’s some easier way to do that on Goodreads, let me know…)

Oh awesome Doug! I’ll have to have a look.

I’ve gotten sloppy keeping tracks of books I checked out, mainly because the Chicago Public Library does it for me.

I read it and it was! I really liked how it captured the voice and feel of old Heinleinian 60s-style scifi without the lacing of pervasive sexism that’s so common in stuff that’s actually from that era. I was delighted to find out there were five more books in the series. I also read Lock In, which was the only other one of his we had at the library, and it was really good too.