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Where to Find More / All FT Book Reviews?

B

BulgariasGhost

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Nov 21, 2001
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Hello all, I was looking on the Fortean Times website for book reviews of either their own work or that of others but there is a limited selection available.

Does anyone know if there is another place the previous reviews are stored or where the pre-webiste reviews from the magazines can be found.

I think it would be useful to have a list of the books which have been reviewed along with their scores ( or at least those with top marks ) to help give us a "shortlist" of worthy books to give as suggestions to relatives who keep asking what we want for Xmas.

I would be willing to compile a list of the top mark books from my back issues collection if this cannot be found elsewhere.

Would FT have any issue with the copyright of this? I mean it is your site after all and since you are not promoting them would you have an issue with it?

I have a large collection of fortean books built up over the years which I am still adding to, and love car boot sales / charity shops / book fayres as ways to add to the collection for miniman price. Most of what I have is ghost / poltergeist oriented but I have quite a lot of other bits including the original release of the "Unexplained" magazines from the 70's

There is a thread already on the go for peoples personal favourite books, but I wanted to have a list from the journalists here or at other sites of good repute.

Thanks

Uncle Bulgaria
 
UncleBulgaria said:
Hello all, I was looking on the Fortean Times website for book reviews of either their own work or that of others but there is a limited selection available.

Does anyone know if there is another place the previous reviews are stored or where the pre-webiste reviews from the magazines can be found.

I think it would be useful to have a list of the books which have been reviewed along with their scores ( or at least those with top marks ) to help give us a "shortlist" of worthy books to give as suggestions to relatives who keep asking what we want for Xmas.
Click to expand...


Top idea, even if it would end up costing me an arm and a leg:D
 
Definitely something that would be useful. There used to be a Fortean Book Reviews list (and still is, I think) at Yahoo Groups but it didn't get a lot of posts as I remember. Maybe that's something that could be added here? I know there is the reader's review column in FT, so perhaps it could be incorporated into this site or here on the forum (moderated). I bet between us all, we could cover quite a huge selection of books, both old and new. What do yer think?
 
I'll get my back issues together over the weekend and see what I can scan in to process later.

It would be an interesting sideline for FT to offer a compenium of their reviews by email for a small fee, which if tied to someone like Amazon.com for links to the ones still available could help finance the project.

I'm only missing a few back issues for the last 5 years or so but will see what I can put together.

Does anyone know where the current crop of FT books can be bought? I tried looking for the casebooks on Amazon.co.uk but drew a blank - only a few of the many books seem to be available.

thanks

Uncle Bulgaria
 
Awww, come on you lot! I think it's a good idea anyway! It could just be another section on this board where we can post reviews of books, or anything else Forteana-related really. It would have to be on a submission basis though I think, to prevent it getting clogged up with spill into other threads.
 
Yes, Uncle B., a list of the reviews and scores from FT would be useful. I'm not so sure about including reviews from all and sundry though, because in reading a review we take our perceptions of the reviewer's knowledge and experience into account. A review from a well-known FT contributor would probaly carry more weight than one from 'Disgusted, of Tunbridge Wells' unless we have a little biography of DOTB.

This is the way of the world, fair or not. (DOTB might be the world expert on whatever, but we would need to know it to rate his reviews.)

But you're safe with me - I know everything about everything.
 
Which is entirely why I said that it should be on a submission basis. Not just somwhere that anyone could post a review, but more akin to the reader's review column in FT. OK, forget about it being in this forum, and think of it more like 'It Happened To Me' on the main site.
 
Fortean Book Reviews

Originally posted by UncleBulgaria
Hello all, I found the Yahoo groups link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/forteanbookreviews

The lsit mentioned above is till alive but it depends upon people writing reviews. So far two people have been responsible for writing the majority of material - Loren Coleman and me. If you wnat to join and contribute please do. The archives have all of the material reviewed so far. Some of the reviews are ones that originally appeared in FT. The more people contribute to this list or a board of this type here the better it will be for everyone - searchable book reviews so we can get an indication of what is worth buying!

Gordon
Click to expand...
 
Hello all, I have ran the first batch of back issues through my scanner / OCR software and after a couple of hours have the reviews from issues 132 to 137.

I'm just waiting for approval from FT to publish them here but I don't think it will be an issue.

For now I will just post the ones which achieved the full 4 out of 4 marks in the old scoring system ( it is now out of 10 ). Interestingly many of the back issues have not got any rating system at all but I'll deal with these last and try to prioritise them in future weeks / months.

I'll ask for a new forum to be set up if we can publish these and call it something like "book reviews" or similar.

I should be able to do about 5 issues per week as there is a lot of manual adjustments need to be made to get all the columns and dodgey character interpritation sorted out.

Once the top rated ones are published I'll move on to the "also rans" in case anyone comes across the books and is interested in an opinion before parting with their cash.

thanks

Uncle Bulgaria
 
Hello all, I've just had an email from FT with a bit of a result.

I will produce the reviews from scans of the originals and publish them freely here and FT will also host them on their website to add content.

With luck this will make them more accessible to people who do not have the time to trawl through the messages to find any ideas for books.

I will probably produce a weekly series of articles from around 5 issues of FT which have something like "Top Choices", "runners ups" and "also rans" for the 4/4, 3/4 and others.

So enough of this idle chit-chat, I'll get on and try to produce the first proof-red "Top Choices" one for tomorrow.

thanks for your support

Uncle Bulgaria

"Giving back in the spirit in which it was given to me"
 
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