I’m listening to J. G. Ballard’s High Rise for the second time. It’s insane. I recommend it. At least I recommend you get a copy from the library because it may not be your thing.
@sammydog01
Read this decades ago. Yeah. Insane. If you are into weirdness or modern lit or SF or destruction of culture, this may be for you (if I remember correctly).
@f00l@mossygreen I picked up a couple of his other books on audible for long car rides and painting walls. Apparently this is the last book in a trilogy with Crash and Concrete Island. I bought Concrete Island but Crash sounded just too twisted for me.
@f00l@mossygreen Hmmm, James Spader and Holly Hunter, NC-17, on the list of 10 kinkiest sex scenes in movie history. Dunno. I may need puppy photos after. Lots of puppy photos.
Right now I’m reading a Marc Cameron book but I’ve recently started reading from the beginning John Sanford’s “Prey” series. Main character is Lucas Davenport. If you like cop shop books, with a tough, sometimes womanizing, sometimes ruler breaking, always gets his criminal cop, you’ll love this series. I have read a bunch of them but decided I wanted to start from the beginning. He has another series, a spin off from the Prey series with a completely different main character, Virgil Flowers. I just love him, he’s funny and smart. Of course he loves women as much as Lucas but that’s life.
Right now and for a long time, I’ve been in a “doom and gloom” it’s the end of the world book mode. Whether the world ends by plague, blowing up, or alien invasion, I don’t care. I’m not even too upset when some of the major characters survive.
@Barney Don’t read High Rise if you’re looking to avoid doom and gloom. I’m reading The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde right now- I listened to the book on a trip but it’s worth re-reading. It’s an alternate reality book with a lot of literary references- I miss a lot of them but get enough to make it fun. Plus the main character has a pet dodo.
@sammydog01 I’m not trying to avoid doom and gloom. I LOVE doom and gloom. Hmm, High Rise is only 208 pages. How about a book with some meat (ha ha) in it? 200 pages is hardly worth my time.
@Barney@sammydog01 This is probably way off base and another example of my lifelong, unsuccessful attempt to force people to read Edwardian literature, but have you ever read The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford? Nothing too terrible happens in it, but some people’s marriages and lives are slowly destroyed by corrosive, self-serving lies over the course of a decade at a German spa! At the end, while the world does continue to exist, no one is happy or has ever been happy. Also it’s pretty funny and has a completely unreliable narrator! I myself enjoy a good, unreliable narrator.
@mossygreen@sammydog01 It’s not the Edwardian literature that I’m against. It’s audible books. I just can’t get used to listening to them (although I have a bunch of them).
I find the voices, in my head, far more interesting than listening to some person read to me.
@Barney You’re in luck, the kindle version of The Good Soldier is free. FREE!
And the only reason I bought High Rise on audible is because I find Tom Hiddleston’s voice to be pleasant and relaxing. So nice, soft, wait, did he just say that guy is barbecuing a dog on his balcony? Whatever. I’m getting sleepy now.
@mossygreen I’m part way into it and really enjoying it. I don’t understand how a boat trip can give you heart problems though. (That’s at the beginning so it shouldn’t be a spoiler.)
@sammydog01 Man, it’s been awhile since I read it and I accidentally elbowed my Kindle to death about a month ago, but, NO SPOILERS:
If I recall correctly, the story is sort of a queasy, imbalanced combination of what the narrator: 1) thinks we want to hear and 2) makes him look good/innocent, 3) is socially acceptable and 4) would himself like to believe is true. These are all different and sometimes contradictory motivations, and they change the impact of the story as you read it.
There’s probably an element of dismantling Victorian hypocrisy in it, too, but I haven’t done any research on it.
@sammydog01 Are you far enough along to discuss these spoiler-y points (I’m about halfway through):
Is Dowell mildly austistic and unable to pick up on social cues or is he a manipulative liar? Does he have what would be considered today a cuckoldry fetish?
Does Florence have Borderline Personality disorder? Is the Prussic acid she carries some sort of pun about their being in Germany, or just a name? Did you remember it’s cyanide? I had to look it up.
Could Edward possibly really be that stupid? And why in the 1981 tv movie did they cast Jeremy Brett instead of a light-haired, blue-eyed, red-faced man as described in the novel?
Most spoiler-y:
The wikipedia page mentions an interpretation of the novel that I’ve never considered: that Dowell, rather than passively floating through his own life as the hapless bystander he portrays himself to be, in fact murdered Florence and Edward. And the whole narrative is him absolving himself of responsibility.
While I find the idea that Ford Maddox Ford secretly wrote a thriller about a man killing his wife and her lover after discovering their infidelity, I think it’s maybe too much of a stretch. But, again, I’m only halfway through.
@mossygreen I’m only about a quarter of the way through- I need to step it up. The whole unreliable narrator thing is throwing me. I’ll get back to you soon.
@sammydog01 You do need to step it up! I’m done! I’ll have to read it AGAIN by the time you’re through! [Actually, I totally want to read it again, but maybe find some literary criticism or a biography first.]
It’s funny, because if it were a guy in real life telling me an endless, repetitive, discursive, totally self-absorbed story, I’d be like I HATE YOU SO MUCH. But it’s a book and not my friend’s boyfriend who has no idea how to mentally edit a story before he starts telling it, so I love it.
@mossygreen ok, I finished the book, skimmed the sparknotes, and watched the 1983 movie. I really did enjoy the book. The thing I found most interesting were the changing views of the narrator. I think he said he wrote this over several months but it was after everything happened so it’s odd that early on he talks about how perfect it all is then later seemed to realize that it was all crap. I guess he was trying to make himself look good? Or maybe when it was down on paper he realized how sad it all was? Some of it was just crazy, like Leonora being upset when Edward wanted to ship Nancy off to India. I wonder if John didn’t just make a lot of the story up.
The murder thing you read about is an interesting idea. A lot of the book didn’t add up which I assume was on purpose.
Florence does appear to be a giant bitch. The characterizations of everyone else I’m not sure I believe. Was Edward this amazing human being or a total horn dog? And John and Florence never consumated their marriage? Really?
The movie was pretty crappy in my opinion. It doesn’t really have as much impact as in the first person. And it was crazy watching Sherlock Holmes and Cliff Clavin as ladies’ men, Ross Poldark as a dweeb, and Athena as a cold bitch. OK the last one was perfect but I have the other actors too stereotyped in my head.
@sammydog01 It’s great, isn’t it? You start out thinking, “He can’t possibly be that stupid,” and then the whole is slowly revealing that no, he’s not that stupid. And simmering under the surface of the narrative is an old fashioned, trashy, Jaqueline Susann-style potboiler that could have been excerpted in Cosmopolitan back in the day. But we never really see it, we only sense it.
I think John lied constantly, about everything at some point or other. Edward was definitely not the paragon of humanity John painted him as, he was kind of an idiot (amazing stirrup patent excepted). I couldn’t decide if he admired Edward because he wanted to be him, or if he was in love with him. In any case, he pretty deliberately left him alone to commit suicide. Probably so he could marry Nancy without worrying about another wife sleeping with Edward.
Thanks for the sparksnotes recommendation! I totally forgot that was a thing. I went to the quotes explained first (probably not a good idea). I disagreed with almost every interpretation, but I did realize that the bowl of caviar quote is about his life, and Nancy. Nancy is the bowl of caviar he’s worried will be emptied by the time it comes around to him.
I only saw the movie once, and I liked it to the point that I went to the library to get the book as a mid-teen. I’d probably hate it now, in the same way that reading The Forsyte Saga ruined the tv show for me (Damian Lewis is great but he is not Soames!).
Anyway, I’m so glad you liked it. It’s a weird book. Very old-fashioned and modern at the same time, and deliberately off-putting.
@sammydog01 Also: did Florence’s aunts not want them to get married because they knew something was wrong with her, or because they thought something was wrong with him? I feel like there’s a whole other book there.
@mossygreen I wondered the same thing. Maybe they knew she was sleeping with Jimmy? But if they knew why would they send him along on the trip? Or maybe they just knew she was marrying him for his money and promise to buy her an estate in England. And how coincidental was it that her family came from the place Edward owned? Maybe that’s a lie too.
@sammydog01 He does seem to have a near photographic memory for stuff of which he claims he never understood the significance, doesn’t he? The aunts could have realized there’s something wrong with him, in addition to whatever’s wrong with Florence.
The whole thing with him casually mentioning beating his black manservant in like it’s no big deal? “She had this crazy idea I’d kill her if I found out she wasn’t a virgin, just because I beat my long-time family servant with a cane in front of her for dropping her bag. But that’s just what we do in Philadelphia.” That was just dropped into the narrative once and never mentioned again. Assuming it’s true (I know), if he didn’t think that was a problem or worth hiding, how did he act while courting her?
@mossygreen That was out of place too. Did he make it up to look tough? He seemed like a push over to me. Her comitting suicide seemed out of place too- she seemed scrappier than that.
On an entirely different note, have you read Picnic at Hanging Rock? I just watched the remake on Amazon- it’s set in 1900. Now I wish I had read the book first.
@sammydog01 I mean, it could have been some weird slam by Ford against Americans, or Quakers? Maybe he hated Quakers.
It sounds like you’re starting to lean towards the JOHN MURDERED THEM ALL hypothesis…
I have never read Picnic at Hanging Rock or seen the movie, even though I have wanted to since I read about it in the late '80’s in some cult movie book. I read a review that the new version is just OK but Natalie Dormer really holds the whole thing together. I just checked my library catalog, they don’t have the book but do have the Criterion dvd. Now I don’t know what to do, request the novel through interlibrary loan at this time when the greatest number of people will want to be reading it, watch the first movie, or watch the amazon series on the theory it’s the weakest version and will make the other two look even more amazing. Sigh.
@f00l This is one of my favorites. No scandals, lots of traditions explained. Resources available to White House conservators, restrictions on what inhabitants can change or keep. Reassuring.
Audible Editors Choice sale, now through May 10th. Several selections in various categories for $6.95, so just a bit cheaper than buying member credits.
Notable titles include Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse Five, Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring (the newer Rob Inglis version), PKD’s The Man in the High Castle and Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream…), and dozens more.
Then your “audible library” winds up scattered among a bunch of email addresses.
There are ways to deal with this for tech heads (ripping the audiobooks to mp3 is not all that easy if someone wants to create a local library) but most people find either ripping or dealing with scattered accounts to be a major pain.
Audible does allow that particular door into free books. I suppose the activity is trackable by ip and other identity clues if someone really abuses it continuously.
Amazon has an excellent track record of spotting people who have been banned or sanctioned when they try diff locations and devices and internet origins and browsers.
Create a burner email address and sign up for a free trial, buy the book, cancel free subscription. You’re welcome.
PS. I think this practice (where people with existing accounts would create freebie accounts and gift books to their main account) may be why audible changed its book gifting procedures in order to make gifting into a pain.
Now if you wanna gift a book to someone, and they already have an account, the thing to do is prob just give them a gift card.
Which means you can’t use credits for purchasing gifted books.
@f00l I actually suggested purchasing the desired title (not using a loophole to get one over on the man), then canceling the trial. Note I did not recommend using the free book cred before canceling.
@f00l My Audible library is fractured among 3 accounts. Sometimes at work I’ll forget to logout of my work accounts and login with my personal account before buying the Daily Deal. So then I’ll have to login to the Audible app with my business account credentials before downloading the book, then log back in with my personal acct. Fortunately the app “device” library doesn’t keep track of which login I’m on, so everything downloaded to the device is available.
I have two Amz business accts and one personal, so three Audible libraries. But since everything is stored on the phone, there’s no need to keep track of which books are from what account.
I didn’t know the app would let you essentially be logged into more than one account at once.
Good to know.
On the other account i have a few writers, I try to remember and keep those books/writer together over there. Fewer than 100 books in that account, i think.
Contents:
Compiled and Edited by Charles W. Eliot LL D in 1909, the Harvard Classics is a 51-volume Anthology of classic literature from throughout the history of western civilization. The set is sometimes called “Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf.”
This e-book is all 51 volumes, the equivalent of over 20,000 printed pages in one e-book. It is fully searchable with a completely linked table of contents.
@therealjrn Or about $0.000045 per page. I tried to find a word count, but couldn’t turn one up, so maybe @f00l will keep track and update us next week after finishing the series.
Neil Gaiman’s perennial favorite, The Graveyard Book, has sold more than one million copies and is the only novel to win both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal.
Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place—he’s the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians’ time as well as their ghostly teachings—such as the ability to Fade so mere mortals cannot see him.
Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead?
The Graveyard Book is the winner of the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, the Hugo Award for best novel, the Locus Award for Young Adult novel, the American Bookseller Association’s “Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book,” a Horn Book Honor, and Audio Book of the Year.
I’ve been on a hard science fiction kick for a couple of years now.
I’ve read some great ones and some not so great ones, let me know if you’d like some recommendations or critical opinions.
Currently reading “Quantum Void”, which is the 2nd in a series by Douglas Phillips, with a 3rd book due before the end of 2018.
I’m enjoying it, but too soon to say if it’ll be a favorite.
The first book I read for free with the Kindle lending dealie and the 2nd book was only $2.99.
One of the things I really liked about the first book was the afterword in which the author explains exactly what the real science is and what he made up, in a way that is humorous, slightly self-deprecating and interesting, and almost as much fun to read as the story itself.
My favorite hard sci-fi that I’ve read recently is “The Expanse” series, which I started reading while waiting for season 3 of the excellent TV series based on the novels.
There are 7 novels (with an 8th in the works) which I devoured faster than anything else I’ve read, still leaving me with a long wait, jonesing for the TV series to return.
By the 3rd or 4th book, there’s a clearly recognizable formula to each story - reluctant heroes find themselves in impossible life or death situation, with plenty of intrigue and mysteries to be solved, only to save the day (and possibly the Solar system) by the end of the book (grossly over-simplified, but that’s the gist).
But the characters are so well developed, deep and likable, and the vision of humanity’s future interplanetary society and technology so believable that it doesn’t matter that the series becomes formulaic - each book is still a great journey even if you know roughly what the destination will be.
Oh! Almost forgot another favorite I recently read - “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Chose this one pretty much at random when I was looking for a new book and ended up loving it.
It is a very clever and fascinating commentary on the human condition (sorry if that’s trite or cliche - I’m not a book critic!), taking place over the course of millennia with refugees from a ruined Earth seeking a new home and one protagonist who is periodically woken from suspension to witness the thousands of years of struggle for the one habitable but occupied and fiercely defended planet that holds any hope for our species’ future.
The part I found particularly clever is the choice to use one of the most alien of Earth species as the sympathetic defenders of the planet whom over the millennia we get to see evolve human-like intelligence, society and customs. (How this non-human Earth species got to the extra-solar planet and evolved so rapidly is a part of the plot I won’t spoil, but it makes sense in the end, I promise.)
Best of all is that it’s a single novel with a satisfying end, and not a part of a series just trying to sell the next book, which seems so common with even the most mediocre sci-fi these days.
@f00l Thank you for the suggestion. I just cannot get into non-fic or bios. I’ve tried, but just don’t enjoy them. Love that stuff as TV documentaries, can’t seem to get anything out of it as an audiobook.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Was looking at my Hugo ballot both current and retrospective and even though I bought some of the nominations for the 2018 awards, few stood out as good like they used to.
Am I jaded? Do I just not like how the next generation writes?
On the awesome side, I got to vote for Asimov’s Foundation in the retrospectives. I actually met him once, back when I was too young to know how awesome that was.
For those of you who like British humor fantasy - read Lost in a Good Book
If you are down to one credit remaining, usually there is a link to purchase 3 more credits if you want them.
For me, this time there was no link. So I called audible CS (a quickie call, press 2 and you get a human), and asked for the the credit. I got them.
CS told me that sometimes the link for purchasing extra credits shows on the site, sometimes not.
But you can always call and get them that way. And if you are really hungry for audiobooks, you can purchase more every half hour or so (wait 30 min or so between more credit purchase). You can do this s at any time, not just during sales.
I might need some. I have a new addiction. I started listening to my first Jack Reacher book.
What a guilty pleasure! Let’s see. 22 books, a bunch of novellas, and counting. I already own some of them.
But I’m gonna need me some more credits!
(I already have an addiction, so to speak. My library seems to be among the top 10 among Audible customer libraries, according to the CS rep, measured by count of titles.).
@f00l I’ve seen the “need more credits?” linky before. Right now I have 9 credits in the book bank. Been saving them up for a 2-fer sale. Unfortunately this one isn’t it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And… I just this second realized I neglected to preorder a book by the “preorder any book, get a $5 credit” offer deadline (which was just a couple days ago dang it).
@f00l Never could get into Reacher… or as a generality that genre. Though only similar, I really enjoyed that Stuart Neville book I posted about a couple weeks ago, Slow Horses. Remotely similar to the Reacher series maybe.
My error. Although the Neville books are exceptional, I intended to write “Mick Herron” in reference to the Jackson Lamb series (aka Slough House series) I was on about in the April book thread. Herron has a similar writing style to Neville and the first book at least was very well crafted.
The general topic is vaguely related to the Reacher type books.
I think it’s about time for Audible to change up the book selections on Channels. They’ve been offering the same titles for… a year maybe?
The 100 Year Old Man was fun, as was Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death. Jaws was Jaws. I listened to The Decendants out of desperation (if it truly is better than the movie, that must be one stinker of a film). I started on H is for Hawk but it just sort of rambles (kinda like me, right now).
I’m listening to J. G. Ballard’s High Rise for the second time. It’s insane. I recommend it. At least I recommend you get a copy from the library because it may not be your thing.
@sammydog01
Read this decades ago. Yeah. Insane. If you are into weirdness or modern lit or SF or destruction of culture, this may be for you (if I remember correctly).
Ok thx may re-read.
@f00l @sammydog01 Anything by J.G. Ballard is insane. Everything. Interesting writer, to say the least.
@f00l @mossygreen I picked up a couple of his other books on audible for long car rides and painting walls. Apparently this is the last book in a trilogy with Crash and Concrete Island. I bought Concrete Island but Crash sounded just too twisted for me.
@mossygreen @sammydog01
Yeah. Crash is twisted.
@f00l @sammydog01 When Cronenberg’s Crash came out, I said, “I have to read the book before I see the movie!” I have still not seen the movie.
@f00l @mossygreen Hmmm, James Spader and Holly Hunter, NC-17, on the list of 10 kinkiest sex scenes in movie history. Dunno. I may need puppy photos after. Lots of puppy photos.
@sammydog01 Book club is dead? I was almost ready to post there!
@therealjrn @sammydog01
Perhaps this is a better format for us than a standard book club.
Instead of choosing a book to read, we can just talk about what we are reach reading, and what we think of it.
Perhaps we will inspire others. Perhaps they will inspire us.
@therealjrn Then pick a book and make a thread! I’ll try to read it.
@f00l @sammydog01 @therealjrn I love it because I haven’t wanted to read most of the books chosen so far. Great idea @sammydog01!
@mehbee It wasn’t my idea but I’m too lazy to look up who suggested it.
@sammydog01 Well kudos to whoever’s idea it was
Right now I’m reading a Marc Cameron book but I’ve recently started reading from the beginning John Sanford’s “Prey” series. Main character is Lucas Davenport. If you like cop shop books, with a tough, sometimes womanizing, sometimes ruler breaking, always gets his criminal cop, you’ll love this series. I have read a bunch of them but decided I wanted to start from the beginning. He has another series, a spin off from the Prey series with a completely different main character, Virgil Flowers. I just love him, he’s funny and smart. Of course he loves women as much as Lucas but that’s life.
@mehbee Sounds good!
Right now and for a long time, I’ve been in a “doom and gloom” it’s the end of the world book mode. Whether the world ends by plague, blowing up, or alien invasion, I don’t care. I’m not even too upset when some of the major characters survive.
Ready for a new book to read. Any suggestions?
@Barney Don’t read High Rise if you’re looking to avoid doom and gloom. I’m reading The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde right now- I listened to the book on a trip but it’s worth re-reading. It’s an alternate reality book with a lot of literary references- I miss a lot of them but get enough to make it fun. Plus the main character has a pet dodo.
@sammydog01 I’m not trying to avoid doom and gloom. I LOVE doom and gloom. Hmm, High Rise is only 208 pages. How about a book with some meat (ha ha) in it? 200 pages is hardly worth my time.
I already have a pet dodo. Her name is Lady.
@Barney Well if you like doom and gloom buy the Audible version of High Rise read by Tom Hiddleston. Even if you don’t like audible books, that voice!
@Barney @sammydog01 This is probably way off base and another example of my lifelong, unsuccessful attempt to force people to read Edwardian literature, but have you ever read The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford? Nothing too terrible happens in it, but some people’s marriages and lives are slowly destroyed by corrosive, self-serving lies over the course of a decade at a German spa! At the end, while the world does continue to exist, no one is happy or has ever been happy. Also it’s pretty funny and has a completely unreliable narrator! I myself enjoy a good, unreliable narrator.
@mossygreen @sammydog01 It’s not the Edwardian literature that I’m against. It’s audible books. I just can’t get used to listening to them (although I have a bunch of them).
I find the voices, in my head, far more interesting than listening to some person read to me.
@Barney You’re in luck, the kindle version of The Good Soldier is free. FREE!
And the only reason I bought High Rise on audible is because I find Tom Hiddleston’s voice to be pleasant and relaxing. So nice, soft, wait, did he just say that guy is barbecuing a dog on his balcony? Whatever. I’m getting sleepy now.
@mossygreen It’s next in line on my kindle.
@sammydog01 Thank you. Locked and loaded!
@mossygreen I’m part way into it and really enjoying it. I don’t understand how a boat trip can give you heart problems though. (That’s at the beginning so it shouldn’t be a spoiler.)
@sammydog01 Man, it’s been awhile since I read it and I accidentally elbowed my Kindle to death about a month ago, but, NO SPOILERS:
If I recall correctly, the story is sort of a queasy, imbalanced combination of what the narrator: 1) thinks we want to hear and 2) makes him look good/innocent, 3) is socially acceptable and 4) would himself like to believe is true. These are all different and sometimes contradictory motivations, and they change the impact of the story as you read it.
There’s probably an element of dismantling Victorian hypocrisy in it, too, but I haven’t done any research on it.
@sammydog01 Are you far enough along to discuss these spoiler-y points (I’m about halfway through):
Is Dowell mildly austistic and unable to pick up on social cues or is he a manipulative liar? Does he have what would be considered today a cuckoldry fetish?
Does Florence have Borderline Personality disorder? Is the Prussic acid she carries some sort of pun about their being in Germany, or just a name? Did you remember it’s cyanide? I had to look it up.
Could Edward possibly really be that stupid? And why in the 1981 tv movie did they cast Jeremy Brett instead of a light-haired, blue-eyed, red-faced man as described in the novel?
Most spoiler-y:
The wikipedia page mentions an interpretation of the novel that I’ve never considered: that Dowell, rather than passively floating through his own life as the hapless bystander he portrays himself to be, in fact murdered Florence and Edward. And the whole narrative is him absolving himself of responsibility.
While I find the idea that Ford Maddox Ford secretly wrote a thriller about a man killing his wife and her lover after discovering their infidelity, I think it’s maybe too much of a stretch. But, again, I’m only halfway through.
What do you think?
@mossygreen I’m only about a quarter of the way through- I need to step it up. The whole unreliable narrator thing is throwing me. I’ll get back to you soon.
@sammydog01 You do need to step it up! I’m done! I’ll have to read it AGAIN by the time you’re through! [Actually, I totally want to read it again, but maybe find some literary criticism or a biography first.]
It’s funny, because if it were a guy in real life telling me an endless, repetitive, discursive, totally self-absorbed story, I’d be like I HATE YOU SO MUCH. But it’s a book and not my friend’s boyfriend who has no idea how to mentally edit a story before he starts telling it, so I love it.
@mossygreen I’m halfway through. It just got way more interesting. I’ll finish it, I promise.
@mossygreen I just finished it! Now I’m working on the spark notes. The change from the beginning to the end was crazy.
@mossygreen ok, I finished the book, skimmed the sparknotes, and watched the 1983 movie. I really did enjoy the book. The thing I found most interesting were the changing views of the narrator. I think he said he wrote this over several months but it was after everything happened so it’s odd that early on he talks about how perfect it all is then later seemed to realize that it was all crap. I guess he was trying to make himself look good? Or maybe when it was down on paper he realized how sad it all was? Some of it was just crazy, like Leonora being upset when Edward wanted to ship Nancy off to India. I wonder if John didn’t just make a lot of the story up.
The murder thing you read about is an interesting idea. A lot of the book didn’t add up which I assume was on purpose.
Florence does appear to be a giant bitch. The characterizations of everyone else I’m not sure I believe. Was Edward this amazing human being or a total horn dog? And John and Florence never consumated their marriage? Really?
The movie was pretty crappy in my opinion. It doesn’t really have as much impact as in the first person. And it was crazy watching Sherlock Holmes and Cliff Clavin as ladies’ men, Ross Poldark as a dweeb, and Athena as a cold bitch. OK the last one was perfect but I have the other actors too stereotyped in my head.
@sammydog01 It’s great, isn’t it? You start out thinking, “He can’t possibly be that stupid,” and then the whole is slowly revealing that no, he’s not that stupid. And simmering under the surface of the narrative is an old fashioned, trashy, Jaqueline Susann-style potboiler that could have been excerpted in Cosmopolitan back in the day. But we never really see it, we only sense it.
I think John lied constantly, about everything at some point or other. Edward was definitely not the paragon of humanity John painted him as, he was kind of an idiot (amazing stirrup patent excepted). I couldn’t decide if he admired Edward because he wanted to be him, or if he was in love with him. In any case, he pretty deliberately left him alone to commit suicide. Probably so he could marry Nancy without worrying about another wife sleeping with Edward.
Thanks for the sparksnotes recommendation! I totally forgot that was a thing. I went to the quotes explained first (probably not a good idea). I disagreed with almost every interpretation, but I did realize that the bowl of caviar quote is about his life, and Nancy. Nancy is the bowl of caviar he’s worried will be emptied by the time it comes around to him.
I only saw the movie once, and I liked it to the point that I went to the library to get the book as a mid-teen. I’d probably hate it now, in the same way that reading The Forsyte Saga ruined the tv show for me (Damian Lewis is great but he is not Soames!).
Anyway, I’m so glad you liked it. It’s a weird book. Very old-fashioned and modern at the same time, and deliberately off-putting.
@sammydog01 Also: did Florence’s aunts not want them to get married because they knew something was wrong with her, or because they thought something was wrong with him? I feel like there’s a whole other book there.
@mossygreen I wondered the same thing. Maybe they knew she was sleeping with Jimmy? But if they knew why would they send him along on the trip? Or maybe they just knew she was marrying him for his money and promise to buy her an estate in England. And how coincidental was it that her family came from the place Edward owned? Maybe that’s a lie too.
@sammydog01 He does seem to have a near photographic memory for stuff of which he claims he never understood the significance, doesn’t he? The aunts could have realized there’s something wrong with him, in addition to whatever’s wrong with Florence.
The whole thing with him casually mentioning beating his black manservant in like it’s no big deal? “She had this crazy idea I’d kill her if I found out she wasn’t a virgin, just because I beat my long-time family servant with a cane in front of her for dropping her bag. But that’s just what we do in Philadelphia.” That was just dropped into the narrative once and never mentioned again. Assuming it’s true (I know), if he didn’t think that was a problem or worth hiding, how did he act while courting her?
@mossygreen That was out of place too. Did he make it up to look tough? He seemed like a push over to me. Her comitting suicide seemed out of place too- she seemed scrappier than that.
On an entirely different note, have you read Picnic at Hanging Rock? I just watched the remake on Amazon- it’s set in 1900. Now I wish I had read the book first.
@sammydog01 I mean, it could have been some weird slam by Ford against Americans, or Quakers? Maybe he hated Quakers.
It sounds like you’re starting to lean towards the JOHN MURDERED THEM ALL hypothesis…
I have never read Picnic at Hanging Rock or seen the movie, even though I have wanted to since I read about it in the late '80’s in some cult movie book. I read a review that the new version is just OK but Natalie Dormer really holds the whole thing together. I just checked my library catalog, they don’t have the book but do have the Criterion dvd. Now I don’t know what to do, request the novel through interlibrary loan at this time when the greatest number of people will want to be reading it, watch the first movie, or watch the amazon series on the theory it’s the weakest version and will make the other two look even more amazing. Sigh.
Two decent Kindle book deals. Today only, until midnight PDT.
Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion
$1.99
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B072HMBLSN/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1525403574&sr=1-8&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=51U68HSYIML&ref=plSrch
Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies
J B West
$2.99
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00F3QYL06/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1525403574&sr=1-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=51-Usrw7RFL&ref=plSrch
@f00l This is one of my favorites. No scandals, lots of traditions explained. Resources available to White House conservators, restrictions on what inhabitants can change or keep. Reassuring.
This one is on the list of the Kindle daily book deals for today.
Thru midnight Pacific time.
A Fire Upon The Deep
Vernor Vinge
$2.99
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000FBJAGO/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1525419670&sr=1-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=51sC8gPxGQL&ref=plSrch
Free today at Audible. You may only have 1-1/2 hours left. Not certain. Do don’t wait if you want it.
American Pharoah
The story of the Triple Crown Winner.
https://mobile.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/American-Pharoah-Audiobook/B01E6AAYU0?ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=6J7HB9TYG2BZR1J6PP73&
@f00l It’s good through May 9th.
Audible Editors Choice sale, now through May 10th. Several selections in various categories for $6.95, so just a bit cheaper than buying member credits.
Notable titles include Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse Five, Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring (the newer Rob Inglis version), PKD’s The Man in the High Castle and Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream…), and dozens more.
@ruouttaurmind Subscribers only. Bummer. I want the Neil Gaiman one.
@sammydog01 Create a burner email address and sign up for a free trial, buy the book, cancel free subscription. You’re welcome.
@ruouttaurmind @sammydog01
Then your “audible library” winds up scattered among a bunch of email addresses.
There are ways to deal with this for tech heads (ripping the audiobooks to mp3 is not all that easy if someone wants to create a local library) but most people find either ripping or dealing with scattered accounts to be a major pain.
Audible does allow that particular door into free books. I suppose the activity is trackable by ip and other identity clues if someone really abuses it continuously.
Amazon has an excellent track record of spotting people who have been banned or sanctioned when they try diff locations and devices and internet origins and browsers.
Better to just try to get it through ILL perhaps?
@ruouttaurmind @sammydog01
PS. I think this practice (where people with existing accounts would create freebie accounts and gift books to their main account) may be why audible changed its book gifting procedures in order to make gifting into a pain.
Now if you wanna gift a book to someone, and they already have an account, the thing to do is prob just give them a gift card.
Which means you can’t use credits for purchasing gifted books.
@f00l I actually suggested purchasing the desired title (not using a loophole to get one over on the man), then canceling the trial. Note I did not recommend using the free book cred before canceling.
@ruouttaurmind
Yeah I know. I should not have left the impression I did not understand what you suggested, and that I thought you suggested something else.
Was just tired. Apologies.
Most people to find it a pain to gave books scattered among various accounts though.
I have two, due to historical reasons with audible going 20 years back. I can’t remember why anymore.
Two accounts are a pain. Hard to remember what’s on the little used account.
Even tho we (most excellent friend and I) do try to keep it all organized.
@f00l @ruouttaurmind I’m a rule follower. Mostly.
@f00l My Audible library is fractured among 3 accounts. Sometimes at work I’ll forget to logout of my work accounts and login with my personal account before buying the Daily Deal. So then I’ll have to login to the Audible app with my business account credentials before downloading the book, then log back in with my personal acct. Fortunately the app “device” library doesn’t keep track of which login I’m on, so everything downloaded to the device is available.
I have two Amz business accts and one personal, so three Audible libraries. But since everything is stored on the phone, there’s no need to keep track of which books are from what account.
@ruouttaurmind
I didn’t know the app would let you essentially be logged into more than one account at once.
Good to know.
On the other account i have a few writers, I try to remember and keep those books/writer together over there. Fewer than 100 books in that account, i think.
@ruouttaurmind @sammydog01
Btw it is not against the rules to have more than one audible account.
Not afaik. They know I have more than one. I have asked them to merge the two accounts. There is some technical reason why they can’t. They tried.
Just against the rules to game the system endlessly.
Ok. Kindle Daily Deal for today.
How often do I say
“just get this book alreadt”?
Ya got three hours from now. . Price good till midnight Pacific time.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B007A4SDCG/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525664994&sr=1-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=41ET8OFVFCL&ref=plSrch
The War of Art - Kindle edition
by Steven Pressfield, Shawn Coyne.
$1.49
How to get yourself to do the thing you most fear and most deeply in your soul want to at least attempt.
This book is not by a “self-help guru” who is a rich industry in himself off of other people’s insecurities.
This book is by a novelist who gets himself to write books.
@f00l I wish I had seen this deal. This book has been on my wish list for a while because I gave my copy to someone else. It’s a great book!
51 volumes of great boojs, all Harvard approved.
$.99
Kindle
No idea how long this price will last.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076PKKZ22?tag=slickappfp-20&ascsubtag=a83b123451ae11e8b66f9277d926bb460INT
The Complete Harvard Classics (Eireann Press)
@f00l That’s only 20 cents a foot!
@therealjrn Or about $0.000045 per page. I tried to find a word count, but couldn’t turn one up, so maybe @f00l will keep track and update us next week after finishing the series.
@ruouttaurmind @therealjrn
Get the other book, above. You have a bit less than 2 hours now.
The complete works of Billy Shakespeare, Kindle for $0.49. 37 plays, 160 sonnets and 5 Poetry Books With Active Table of Contents.
Got distracted from books this week by Preet Bharara’s excellent podcast.
https://slickdeals.net/f/11586615-neil-gaiman-s-the-graveyard-book-for-kindle-or-epub-2-99?src=SiteSearchV2Algo1
@f00l I own that- still need to read it.
Amazon has some pretty attractive (to me) Kindle books on sale thru midnight Pacific time tonite.
2 pages worth.
https://www.amazon.com/s/browse/ref=gbps_img_s-4_f804_e28e0342?ie=UTF8&node=6165845011&smid=A2TMTTMKNY2N1U&pf_rd_p=9fe1e03e-0327-4457-b6c2-97cf2a85f804&pf_rd_s=slot-4&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_i=gb_main&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=DQ1DNM8A43RGGHNPAVRD
Op
@f00l
@f00l
I’ve been on a hard science fiction kick for a couple of years now.
I’ve read some great ones and some not so great ones, let me know if you’d like some recommendations or critical opinions.
Currently reading “Quantum Void”, which is the 2nd in a series by Douglas Phillips, with a 3rd book due before the end of 2018.
I’m enjoying it, but too soon to say if it’ll be a favorite.
The first book I read for free with the Kindle lending dealie and the 2nd book was only $2.99.
One of the things I really liked about the first book was the afterword in which the author explains exactly what the real science is and what he made up, in a way that is humorous, slightly self-deprecating and interesting, and almost as much fun to read as the story itself.
My favorite hard sci-fi that I’ve read recently is “The Expanse” series, which I started reading while waiting for season 3 of the excellent TV series based on the novels.
There are 7 novels (with an 8th in the works) which I devoured faster than anything else I’ve read, still leaving me with a long wait, jonesing for the TV series to return.
By the 3rd or 4th book, there’s a clearly recognizable formula to each story - reluctant heroes find themselves in impossible life or death situation, with plenty of intrigue and mysteries to be solved, only to save the day (and possibly the Solar system) by the end of the book (grossly over-simplified, but that’s the gist).
But the characters are so well developed, deep and likable, and the vision of humanity’s future interplanetary society and technology so believable that it doesn’t matter that the series becomes formulaic - each book is still a great journey even if you know roughly what the destination will be.
Oh! Almost forgot another favorite I recently read - “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Chose this one pretty much at random when I was looking for a new book and ended up loving it.
It is a very clever and fascinating commentary on the human condition (sorry if that’s trite or cliche - I’m not a book critic!), taking place over the course of millennia with refugees from a ruined Earth seeking a new home and one protagonist who is periodically woken from suspension to witness the thousands of years of struggle for the one habitable but occupied and fiercely defended planet that holds any hope for our species’ future.
The part I found particularly clever is the choice to use one of the most alien of Earth species as the sympathetic defenders of the planet whom over the millennia we get to see evolve human-like intelligence, society and customs. (How this non-human Earth species got to the extra-solar planet and evolved so rapidly is a part of the plot I won’t spoil, but it makes sense in the end, I promise.)
Best of all is that it’s a single novel with a satisfying end, and not a part of a series just trying to sell the next book, which seems so common with even the most mediocre sci-fi these days.
Audible.com members only 2-fer sale through May 24th. Select titles.
TBH, the selection is pretty bleak for my tastes. Hopefully you’ll find a couple appealing titles.
@ruouttaurmind
Remember to look thru the non-fiction and the bios. Usually I find something there.
And then I spend more money.
Otoh I then own more books.
@f00l Thank you for the suggestion. I just cannot get into non-fic or bios. I’ve tried, but just don’t enjoy them. Love that stuff as TV documentaries, can’t seem to get anything out of it as an audiobook.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Was looking at my Hugo ballot both current and retrospective and even though I bought some of the nominations for the 2018 awards, few stood out as good like they used to.
Am I jaded? Do I just not like how the next generation writes?
On the awesome side, I got to vote for Asimov’s Foundation in the retrospectives. I actually met him once, back when I was too young to know how awesome that was.
For those of you who like British humor fantasy - read Lost in a Good Book
@Cerridwyn I recommended The Eyre Affair up there a ways.
Great minds, am I right?
@sammydog01
yep, been thinking about lost in a good book because i like the title
@Cerridwyn @sammydog01
I suspect that perhaps artistic and literary innovation often come in waves?
If everything seems like something you read last year, surely that will change soonish, when something with a new flavor “hits”.
And in the meantime it’s not like we are short of good books. When I get overexposed to something and start to feel weary, I switch genres.
Right now I’m into a Cold War hiatory binge and some Oscars… But something else will catch my attention soon enough.
@Cerridwyn That was actually the first one I read- I just put it on hold again. I hope to make it through the whole series.
@Cerridwyn @sammydog01
Ouch.
@f00l said:
That was supposed to be “some bios…”
I used a swipe keyboard. I am terrible at it.
If i type too much, I injure my wrist. So I swipe, badly.
And then I am too impatient or too tired to proofread, and that is a PITA task in any case.
So instead I post random illiteracy.
Apologies. Sort of.
@ruouttaurmind
Re audible and the two-fer sale
If you are down to one credit remaining, usually there is a link to purchase 3 more credits if you want them.
For me, this time there was no link. So I called audible CS (a quickie call, press 2 and you get a human), and asked for the the credit. I got them.
CS told me that sometimes the link for purchasing extra credits shows on the site, sometimes not.
But you can always call and get them that way. And if you are really hungry for audiobooks, you can purchase more every half hour or so (wait 30 min or so between more credit purchase). You can do this s at any time, not just during sales.
I might need some. I have a new addiction. I started listening to my first Jack Reacher book.
What a guilty pleasure! Let’s see. 22 books, a bunch of novellas, and counting. I already own some of them.
But I’m gonna need me some more credits!
(I already have an addiction, so to speak. My library seems to be among the top 10 among Audible customer libraries, according to the CS rep, measured by count of titles.).
@f00l I’ve seen the “need more credits?” linky before. Right now I have 9 credits in the book bank. Been saving them up for a 2-fer sale. Unfortunately this one isn’t it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And… I just this second realized I neglected to preorder a book by the “preorder any book, get a $5 credit” offer deadline (which was just a couple days ago dang it).
@f00l Never could get into Reacher… or as a generality that genre. Though only similar, I really enjoyed that Stuart Neville book I posted about a couple weeks ago, Slow Horses. Remotely similar to the Reacher series maybe.
@ruouttaurmind
I loved the Neville books.
The Reacher books are a kinda “beach read” for me. Have to be in the mood.
But Lee Child is a good writer. Economical. Original phrasing, but terse. Can turn a phrase.
@f00l @ruouttaurmind Nice review. A little short. Appreciated.
@f00l
My error. Although the Neville books are exceptional, I intended to write “Mick Herron” in reference to the Jackson Lamb series (aka Slough House series) I was on about in the April book thread. Herron has a similar writing style to Neville and the first book at least was very well crafted.
The general topic is vaguely related to the Reacher type books.
@ruouttaurmind
I have Slough House loaded. I’ll get to it.
Free on Kindle
A Very Simple History of The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Quickest and Easiest Way to a General Understanding of the 13 Days in 1962
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D8P1ZFK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_VlbcBbMCKQKPX?tag=slickdeals&ascsubtag=ebb2bd9a60e111e8b233a2d0325ecb310INT
Audible Daily Deal
https://mobile.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/West-with-the-Night-Audiobook/B002V8H2VY?ref=a_home-page_c11_dd&pf_rd_p=71ba1fb1-ed3d-4a18-a8ed-a980cfd175d0&pf_rd_r=2QK3FWEV5YF1CQ7G0PA5&
West With The Night
Beryl Markham
$3.95
The pioneering pilot’s classic memoir of flying and life in Africa before and during WWII.
I think it’s about time for Audible to change up the book selections on Channels. They’ve been offering the same titles for… a year maybe?
The 100 Year Old Man was fun, as was Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death. Jaws was Jaws. I listened to The Decendants out of desperation (if it truly is better than the movie, that must be one stinker of a film). I started on H is for Hawk but it just sort of rambles (kinda like me, right now).
Anyhoo… come on Audible! Change it up!