Voltaire, lawn chair, anywhere! Sept 2018 book talk and deals. Whatcha reading?

@arielleslie

Link? For us lazy people?

@f00l The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World (Amazon)

@f00l

Voltaire is a hack.
He’s not a real thinker. I am.
— Descartes

@mike808

I am also quite a fan of Descartes.

And all these people tend to be a bit full of themselves (ref your Descartes quote).

Descartes was quite a mathematician. He made an interesting attempt at philosophy and sometimes scored big.

He also tried to make physical evidence in science into a secondary factor; instead he favored trying to reason about the physical world from a selected (selected by him, but not without serious thought) collection of a priori concepts (as fundamental givens or axioms) toward a proposed science of physics. In other words, he and his followers fought against contemporaneous evidence-based Newtonian physics in favor of the intellectualized version he created.

They lost that war, of course; as they should have.

Voltaire was one of many of the ardent champions of the Newtonian methodological insistence that that the simplest theory consonant with known evidence was the only way forward in science, and that experimental results could not be set aside in favor of an almost theological type of “reasoning from the supposed (unsupported and unproven) first principles.”.

For all that, Descartes was a great, subtle, revolutionary thinker. A greater thinker, in historical terms, than Voltaire, probably.

So why is the “Enlightenment”/“Age Of Reason” not called the “era of Decartes”, or the “era of Locke”, or of Bacon, or some other great thinker of the time?

But this era is known among intellectual historians as the “era of Voltaire”, so to speak. The age of the “lesser thinker”. Why dat?

Voltaire is little read today, except for Candide and a few other tracts. (how many today know that Candide was a direct response to the Romanticism of Rousseau and to the philosophies [not the math] of Leibnitz?)
Because most of Voltaire’s writings were directed at the abuses and culture wars right in front of him, not to “the ages”.

Because Voltaire was the consummate and tireless debater, challenger, activist, truth-teller, public shamer, of the so-called “Age Of Reason”.

He heard the sound of cannons, so to speak, in the war for the minds of educated Continental Europe, and galloped toward the battle. Every time.

He was Bastilled at least twice. He was legally exiled repeatedly. He published anonymously again and again in order to avoid arrest, and then made sure everyone knew which were his anon works. He was Jefferson and Franklin and Thomas Paine and Paul Revere and the Bill of Rights all rolled into one.

He fought passionately against torture (still practiced by ecclesiastical courts of the time),
fought for the rights of Huguenots and other Protestants;
personally opposed atheism but fought for the rights of persons to believe that;
built a Catholic Church on his own land and paid the priest out of his own pocket, for the ease of his tenants and persons living nearly, yet usually refused to attend, yet had the priest as a best friend, all while fighting the power of the Church every day of his adult life;
Funded new businesses in Ferney, near his estate; and built and paid for schools there for everyone, including the children of the peasantry;
Opposed Calvinist oppression in nearby Switzerland
Publicly lectured the the French clergy at every opportunity
Railed against aristocratic control of the king’s courts, which had resulted in verdicts based on aristocratic whim;
Fought to restore the reputations and the fortunes of those wrongly convicted by secular or religious courts;
Fought against slavery;
Fought again tyranny;
Fought for rights for women;
Fought against the excessive Romanticism of Rousseau, esp as applied to philosophy, political thought, and science (he feared this Romanticism would wind up controlling the masses if the political stability of France erupted. He was right)
Championed the American Revolution
Passionately fought for the intrinsic rights of individual humans.
Fought against economic exploitation and serfdom
Fought for universal education not controlled by religious authorities
And passionately championed evidence-based science as opposed to untestable and un-verifiable “science” sprung from pure theory

He lived for a while in England when young during one of his exiles. He loved it and was astonished to find a society where persons could speak or publish freely on controversial topics without fear of arrest. He could not learn English quickly enough, he was desperate to read Shakespeare in the original.

He loved the freedoms of the UK, Holland, Scandinavia. But he did not live in those places, except when young; those places did not need him the way France and most of Europe did.

He was a warrior and he did not flee from battle.

He had life-long correspondences with kings and queens, emperors and empresses, peasants and schoolchildren. In the case of rulers, he was the teacher, they the supplicants.

And he changed the culture of Europe. When he was young, he was already a celebrity as a playwright and wit. And the authorities did not think they could get away with executing him, so they kept exiling him instead.
By the time of his old age, the Catholic despots and absolute kings in Europe and the Pope and Catholic heirarchy totally feared him.

He met Ben Franklin. I presume that was an interesting conversation.

He died 3 years before the French Revolution; he already foresaw that if it came, it might go badly. Many of his admirers who supported the Revolution in its early days wound up in exile or sent to the Guillotine, after the politics went toward a bloodbath.

Voltaire. Would. Not. Quit.

He broke the psychological and intellectual and social power of the Catholic Church and of the aristocratic class and of absolute monarchy in France and Central Europe.

So … Someone else can have the pure philosopher’s crown (a worthy thing) for that era.

Voltaire changed an age.

Many intellectual historians credit Voltaire with creating (for all of the West, not just English-counties and Holland) the publicly assumed intellectual climate of civilized free thought and debate.

Some general once said (can’t remember who, trying to find the quote), of success in battle, something like:

“if you hear the sound of cannons, go toward them”

Voltaire did. I guess that’s ok for one life’s work.

look at the length of this! I guess my brain must be on vacay.

@therealjrn Alexa does that too- I’ve thought about trying it. Does it help?

@sammydog01 It helps me keep more centered. Not every day’s paragraph is OMG revelatory, but if I put some effort into it, I can find a way to make it applicable to my little world.

@f00l Reading that now. Plenty of material in there to get you thinking.

Sweet. I grabbed nine new titles in Prime Reading with Audible Narration. IIRC, these titles change from time to time, so I’ll need to remember to check back.

@ruouttaurmind

: (

Linky to changes?

I did like the “podcast” style content of channels.

@ruouttaurmind

Ok now I actually read the context of your post.

Doesnt sound so bad now.

@f00l Not so bad. Shows are now downloadable podcast style content so you can listen offline. Prime Reading books with Audible companion are a much larger, more dynamic selection.

Audible Shows linky.

Prime Reading linky.

@f00l @ruouttaurmind
How are they free audiobooks with Prime? I have and see them as free Kindle Unlimited, and I have Prime, but some are not free with whispersync ready, and others are “audible trial” free.

@mike808 Click linky above for Prime Reading. Look at all the titles which indicate “Prime members listen for free.” (See illustration below).

Once you’ve located a title you want to listen to, look at the purchase options. Note “Included with your membership.” above the big yellow “Read and listen for free” button. (see second illustration below)

@mike808 @ruouttaurmind Selecting by “ebooks with audible narration” on the left narrows the field down a bit.

@mike808 @ruouttaurmind

If you have not listened to lots of audiobooks or you have mostly listened in cassette and cd:

Most/many narrators vocalize at a sightly slower than normal conversational speech rate.

This is a long convention from the beginning of the audiobook era, in the early part of the last venture century after WWI; when Congress created the Library For the Blind.

Narrators still do that, it’s a “professional standard”. Listeners have become accustomed to it, and many listeners prefer it, or need that with rate.
(On the theory that savvy listeners will play with speeding things up, and the listeners who are most challenged, through various disabilities, will find the norm recorded rate most comfortable.)

Digital speed-up tech uses a variety of tricks to make accelerating the recording sound normal (mostly cutting silent intervals between words). And is very good these days. (No squeeky-voice-speed-up tape sounds)

I usually do fiction at 1.25 or 1.5, depending on the book and the narrator. (Faster than that and I sometimes don’t “get into the story”.)

I usually do non-fiction at 1.5 to 2.0. (and slow down for technically complex content.)

I am already using a lot of pausing and 30 second re-winding - my mind wanders, or something happens to distract me. I listen when I drive, for instance.

So, if I don’t understand a bit of the book, due to the slight acceleration; or if I need to “mentally note” something, I just replay it.
If that happens a lot with a given book, I slow down the player settings.
If my mind is wandering (and caused, in part, because the narration is going slowly), I speed it up.

A lot of the pleasure is just about getting used to the player app (the audible app is excellent), and having a great set of headphones or a good car system with great user controls.

@mike808 @sammydog01

Selecting by “ebooks with audible narration” on the left narrows the field down a bit.

The linky already has a filter for audiobooks. Clicking the “ebooks with audible narration” filter on the landing page will eliminate several eligible titles. For me the list went from 52 titles down to 5.

TL;DR? Don’t select the checkbox “ebooks with audible narration” if you use the linky I posted above.

@mike808 @ruouttaurmind And I found at least one by going through the Prime reading list that has free audible and didn’t show up on your list. Thank you, Amazon, for making this such a pleasant and meaningful search experience.

@sammydog01 Little secret for you… shhhh, don’t tell anyone… Amazon’s search tools suck balls.

True story.

@ruouttaurmind @sammydog01

Re Amazon search engine.

Agreed.

/giphy sucks!

@f00l @sammydog01 While I’m on an internal rant about this… WTF is Amazon’s fear about letting me view more than 30 search results per page? eBay will let me view 200 FFS! Thirty?

To make matters worse… last year Walmart followed Amazon’s lead, and I can now only see a couple dozen items per page. Are they afraid if they show me too much at a stretch I’ll become confused and overwhelmed and just skip buying anything?

@ruouttaurmind @sammydog01

I have called Amazon several times over the last few decades to complain about their horrendous search.

They CS people always argue with me, they think it’s wonderful.

I think Amazon keep making their search less precise and less usable, so that we will all become exhausted, and give up, and take what they give us, and STFU.

@f00l The most annoying bit for me is the ever changing search results. If I do a search, and Amz returns, say 250 results, then I sort by price, suddenly I only have 40 items. Ok, what happened to the other 210 items? This is more common than not!

@ruouttaurmind

The hugely changing # of search results that vary by sorting method is one of the things I yelled at Amazon about.

My other largest complaint is the inability of the customer to choose to limit results only to items which have the keyword within the listing title.

I don’t really need to have 58769 results (129 of which, perhaps, are valid results) that mostly include things falling into Amazon’s idea of “what’s related”.

Their search really really sux by any “traditional search” standards.

I think they do it that way on purpose; they want you not to be able to be that precise.
They want you to give up, and just buy “something that will do”.

@mike808 @ruouttaurmind You can only have ten titles checked out at a time with Prime Reading, so make sure you return them when done.

@craigthom I am curious what becomes of the Audible version if I return the Kindle version.

Checking on that now…

EDIT: The “returned” book results in the Audible book being automatically purged from my phone.

Good to know.

Though… if I logout of the app, then return the book on Amazon, the Audible title remains on my device. I can’t imagine a use case for this scenario. Unless maybe when my Prime membership expires in November and I don’t renew, I guess that would permit listening to any books I have previously checked out and downloaded. Other than that, I can’t imagine it would be a useful loophole.

@f00l

My other largest complaint is the inability of the customer to choose to limit results only to items which have the keyword within the listing title.

SO annoying! Again, eBay permits these types of boolean searches. Exact match, all words in any order, etc. in the early days, even Google used to allow very specific boolean inclusive, exclusive and proximity operators.

I miss the old Google.

@ruouttaurmind

eBay has messed with the old search syntax some. They used to allow wildcard characters. They don’t now.

Also ebay uses (or used to use), I think, different search servers for desktop, app, and mobile results. And sometimes, a few years back, (not often) I saw diff results depending on the search server. Have not tested this recently.

Again, I suspect the difference is deliberate.

eBay started as a haven for collectors. Who are often/usually seeking something very specific. That “spirit” (and those customers) are still very important at eBay and this shows in the design of the search servers. If collectors can’t find exactly what they want, they will not only not buy, they will stop visiting the platform.

Amazon’s customer base are rarely purchasing as collectors. They just want something that will serve the purpose of that visit.

And they know you (the customer) don’t wanna go to Walmart or Target or Autozone and buy whatever … Since you are already on Amazon.

And they know that if they don’t get you precise results, but instead hand you 80000+ near matches (according to them), sorted by “most relevant” … And they know that if you then change the sort to “lowest price first”, not only will the result count change, but also the “garbage” results will be the first 38000 results, and you’ll never have the patience to page thru all that and find the cheapest item … And they know you’ll buy one of the “most relevant” listings anyway (if you are ready to buy), because you just wanna get it done …

Since Amazon has data on every aspect of the customer online behavior, somehow they have figured out that offering a legit search/sort is counterproductive to their sales, or slows the customer activity down.
So they make that sort of search/sort invalid or ridiculous or useless. And thus they strongly herd the customer toward “most relevant” searches plus using offered filters.

In some areas (books for instance) their search results are precise. I guess book purchasers are like collectors. Amazon knows they have to deliver precise results to get a sale. So they do.

It’s all pretty cynical.

I also miss the old Google. Once upon a time I had all the syntax memorized.

@ruouttaurmind I have no idea if it’s a glitch or not, but I once purchased the cheap Audible upgrade for a Prime Reading book I’d checked out, and that I kept when the Kindle book was returned.

It wasn’t free, but it was cheap.

Also, sometimes I buy the Kindle book with Audible upgrade because it’s cheaper than the Audible book alone.

@craigthom @ruouttaurmind I guess they can’t take it away from you if you spent dollars. I’ll check it out. Thanks!

@craigthom @ruouttaurmind @sammydog01 They still can take books away. They just mostly don’t because it freaks people out. Remember when Amazon removed – honest – 1984?

@craigthom It sounds like they didn’t have a choice that time.

@craigthom @ruouttaurmind Thanks for the tip! I bought a few two buck audiobooks this way. A couple of them were free Prime audio but who knows when they were planning to cycle them out.

@f00l The first nine of these were in the eGo library, along with the six “Little Wizard” stories.
Not that the last five aren’t still a bargain.

@f00l Boo! No TT in my area.

@mike808

/giphy “bright lights big city”

@mike808

Amazon sells refurbished Kindle Oasis e-readers on a different product page than the new ones.

The prices aren’t as good currently as yesterday’s prices on the Treasure Truck.

But these refurbished prices often drop when Amazon puts the new ones on sale, so this listing is worth watching and bookmarking if you want the waterproof Oasis.

Certified Refurbished Kindle Oasis E-reader - 7" High-Resolution Display (300 ppi), Waterproof, Built-In Audible, 8 GB, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers

https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Refurbished-Kindle-reader-Built/dp/B06XGK39JL/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1536324763&sr=8-3&keywords=refurbished%2Bkindle%2Boasis&th=1

[Actually you can see availability for, and choose any config they have in stock film this page]

You have to search for “refurbished Kindle Oasis” if you want to find this listing easily. They try to direct you to the new ones.

@f00l @mike808 When the Kindle first came out Jeff Bezos said he put his in a ziploc bag to read in the tub. If it’s good enough for Bezos it’s good enough for me. (I was worried it wouldn’t work with the touch screen but it does!)

@f00l @sammydog01 I think you meant to write “an Amazon Basics resealable quart bag” instead of the specific trademarked brand “Ziploc bag”.

@mike808 @sammydog01
: )

@f00l @mike808 @sammydog01 I’ve never taken a bath with Jeff Bezos like sammydog, but the Oasis looks interesting.

@f00l @mike808 It’s actually a quote from a New York Times interview. I wonder if Ziploc saw a spike in sales?
http://teleread.com/jeff-bezos-on-e-books-bathtubs-and-ziploc-bags/index.html

@f00l @mike808 @therealjrn I wish- I bet his tub is way nicer than mine.

@f00l @sammydog01 @therealjrn
NSFW: He likely has his own tub girl.

@f00l @mike808 @therealjrn You warned me and yet I still looked it up.

@f00l

@f00l

Here is the page of Sept 2018 selections

https://mobile.audible.com/ep/audible-originals-member-benefit?ref=a_home-page_c0_banner_img&pf_rd_p=d9819e06-60ca-4ec9-ac47-0681701edbd9&pf_rd_r=WF46H5WZMSNE463TCCRR&

They include
A new recording of Emma
A new book by Michael Lewis
A new X-Files book
And 3 other choices.

@f00l

@f00l

@therealjrn I’ve read nine out of the ten, for reals. The Great Gatsby was the one that got me, although I had a friend who named her car Zelda.

Edit: Six of them were for school assignments

@therealjrn Nine out of ten were required reading in high school. Harry P… never interested me. I saw the movie, and that satisfied my Potter curiosity.

@therealjrn
So far have not read Anne Frank and Of Mice And Men.

Several of the others have been re-read on the last few years: HP. Mockingbird. Tom Sawyer, Gatzby.

@ruouttaurmind @therealjrn

Re HP: don’t let the movies satisfy your curiosity.

[Excepting, perhaps, film #3, the movies don’t come within light-years of the excellence of these books. And even film #3 cant come near touching the richness of the matching booksl.]

Rowling can really write.

And more than that:
she is able to remember and to convey in her fiction exactly what it feels like to be uncertain and stressed and of pre-teen or teenage years.
She is perfectly able to convey the confusion, hope, humiliation, energy, anger, all without getting lost in these emotions or without detracting from the story.

And she has a great sense of humor.

Great great storyteller. The movies give you not even 1/100th (or far less) of the print l-version wonder and richness.

People who bought books these stayed up all night reading because that’s how good these books are.

The first two books are excellent. And not even close to as good as the rest of them.

@f00l I don’t find the HP genre engaging, never had any interest in pursuing the book(s). I read The Worst Witch series in gradeschool if that counts. After all, HP is really just a Worst Witch knockoff, right?

Of Mice and Men… quintessential Steinbeck. As as you describe Rowling’s ability to convey teen emotion, Steinbeck does for the hard scrabble life and challenges of depression era America. TBH, as well read as you are, this surprised me. Surely though you’ve read other Steinbeck? Grapes? Tortilla Flat? I’m not a Cannery fan, but it’s well acclaimed also.

His later work isn’t as interesting for me, but of course East of Eden and The Winter of our Discontent are both exceptional if not very readable. Steinbeck declared EoE his masterwork. I feel like it drags a bit, in places becoming so embroiled in excruciating detail it seems to lose the overall impact. Some readers enjoy that. Cretin that I am, I read for the story, not the picture.

@ruouttaurmind

After all, HP is really just a Worst Witch knockoff, right?

Every piece of lit is a knockoff of some other piece of lit. And some of these “knockoffs” are excellent or are classics; most aren’t.

I am unfamiliar with Worst Witch. Is it good as kiddie or YA lit? Good as adult lit? In the same league as Rowling?

Rowling’s books are not classics in the same sense as Twain or Tolstoy. And they - and that “YA genre” - aren’t for everyone. If someone doesn’t want to read them, that’s fine.

By the end of the series, according to market research, more than half the HP books were purchased by adults for themselves. If those adults had kids in the house, those kids got their own copies.

The first two books skewed a bit young. After that they became increasingly richer and more complex, as the characters grew. But they are still YA fantasy lit.

They are, given those limitations, excellent. And someone who has only seen the films just has no idea. Rowling is so emotionally evocative and so wildly inventive. And missing them kinda means missing out on a lot of common shared cultural material.

But that’s ok too. I’ve never seen a full Marvel Universe film, and I hear some of them are quite good.

Re Steinbeck:. I remember a short story or novella, The Red Pony. I don’t remember reading any of his full novels. Somehow, in school, I mostly missed them.

@f00l The Worst Witch is for kiddies. Well, tweens (maybe 7 to 12). It’s about a girl who discovers she has magic powers and goes off to Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches to get trained up. Except it turns out she’s more like Ron Weasley than Hermione Granger. Bit of a train wreck with a wand.

@ruouttaurmind

Well Worst Witch sounds decent for a “young reader” book.

If you are ever moved to start on HP, and you manage the first two books (which are wonderful but written “younger” than the rest), and keep going, I think you will be very happy you did, and very immersed and entertained.

But if you don’t: we are all gonna miss, or never be attracted to, a bunch of good stuff. Right?

Re the films:. I particularly liked 3 and 4. Esp 3. The rest … They’re not horrible. And the acting/sets/scripts are great. But … They were made because HP was such an insanely popular book series. T

All of the films are nothing compared to the books. They give you an idea of the setups and characters etc. They don’t give much of an idea of how good these books are.

That said, this is “YA” lit. It ain’t Shakespeare or Dante or whatever.

@f00l
The details:

Only one $5 coupon reward for a pre-order per audible account.

I don’t know if you also have to have an audible membership - or not - to get this.

$5 coupon rewards will be received by email around Sept 20-22nd.

The pre-order of a forthcoming audiobook must be made between Sept 9th and Sept 14th.

@Targaryen I recognize the Manticoran Navy uniforms, but that title… not in the Honor series, is it?

@ruouttaurmind It’s part of the Honorverse but it’s a side story involving Honor’s friend Mike Henke. hopefully that was free of spoilers.

@moondrake
I do love Harry Dresden.

I look the Sookie Stackhouse stuff also, but the books tend to run together in my head and I can’t remember if I got halfway through the series, or if I finished it.

Incidentally, I totally love Charlaine Harris’s other works. Esp, perhaps, the Aurora Teagarden series.

I found Harris as a writer thru the tv-ization of Sookie Stackhouse (which was wonderful), then wound up buying everything I could find of hers, I was in that sort of mood.

And then wound up loving Harris’s other stuff far better.
(Nothing against Sookie tho!)

@f00l

Twain was a noted fan of whiskey. He prob would have appreciated -and served - F Scott Fitzgerald’s famous turkey recipe:

Turkey with Whiskey Sauce:

This recipe is for a party of four.

Obtain a gallon of whiskey, and allow it to age for several hours. Then serve, allowing one quart for each guest.
The next day the turkey should be added, little by little, constantly stirring and basting.

@f00l Awe, too bad. It shows preorder for $8.95 for me.

@therealjrn

I suppose an audible account holder has to have a membership subscription (for Audible audiobook credits) to get these for free then.

: (

@f00l Yeah. I was signed in, but no membership for me. It’s OK, let us know how you like the book when you get it!

@therealjrn

I own thousands of un-listened-to audiobooks. So it will prob be a while …

@f00l At those prices, why not? I used to collect OTR and belonged to a couple of active trading groups. If I started listening today, maybe my daughter’s children would be able to finish them all.

/define over-achiever

No exact matches found for the specified word.

@therealjrn

I have bunches in some boxes somewhere on CD and cassette. Plus a few friends owned some - they gave me mp3 copies.

Plus thousands from audible, some from e-stories, some from Google play audiobooks I think, and some from nookaudiobooks.

I don’t think I own any from the apple store. They were always overpriced. Might as well pay retail.

I’ve been listening for at least 25-30 years - ever since I discovered I could borrow unabridged audiobooks on cassette from the library.

So I’ve had time to get some titles into the personal library.

@f00l @therealjrn I bought a pile of mp3 cds full of OTR. It’s all readily available for free now.

@f00l @sammydog01 “We” never charged. Just traded CDs in the mail etc. I was active on Usenet as well. We had some quite active binary groups.

Some assholes though, would take what had been freely given them and sell them on eBay or websites. Assholes!

@f00l

@f00l

@f00l

@f00l

@f00l I listened to The Collapsing Empire a while ago and really enjoyed it.

@Cerridwyn Start us a discussion thread then. I’ll join in.

@Cerridwyn

Whatever people want is fine with me.

(I thought people who didn’t want to purchase from Amazon could just skip the Amazon items : Amazon does seem to put more stuff on sale so they appear here a lot …)

We did two threads in the past (sales and book discussion), and they didn’t get enough traction somehow. They wound up being collapsed into one thread.

But go for it if that’s what people want.

@slydon Our library doesn’t own it, but I’ll keep an eye out for it.

@sammydog01 @slydon Interlibrary loan it is!

@therealjrn Ooh, Lights Out is coming up!

@sammydog01 If you want to get into reading about OTR I have for many years subscribed to the Internet OTR Digest.

“The oldest, largest, and best daily dose of Old-Time Radio talk on the planet, delivered conveniently to your email box every day!”

http://www.oldradio.net/

Over the years, it has been noted that OTR was saved by new technology. Before Usenet, OTR collecting was very fragmented and collectors had a hard time finding each other. BBS’s and stuff like that. Then came some fledgling internet communities like Yahoo groups… And now, it’s so easy.

/get off my lawn

@therealjrn It’s crazy, isn’t it? My mother hoarded her tapes like gold for years, and now all she has to do is type OTR into the search box on her streaming radio app and it’s all there. She lost most of her tapes in our catastrophic flood last summer and she barely even cared. I mean, really it’s the least of what she lost, but my point here is that the same/better stuff is streaming all the time. I bought her the collected Bob & Ray anyway, because it was all on a memory stick, and who doesn’t want the collected Bob & Ray, anyway? Crazy people, that’s who. The bad crazy, not the good crazy.

Anyway, I’m going to tell her about the Antioch Broadcasting Network right now. Actually I’m not, because she is asleep and it would be rude to wake her up.

@mossygreen @therealjrn Alexa will play OTR for me. I like that!

@mossygreen @sammydog01 Back in the 1970’s, CBS radio produced new shows called “CBS Radio Mystery Theater” I started recording those off the air onto cassettes and I too, guarded them over the years. That’s what got me started.

Collecting the “best” versions of all 1,399 episodes was a big project we did awhile back. Every now and then, somebody will come up with a smattering selection of episodes somebody recorded on reel-to-reel with the local news, commercials, and the closings. Most people did like me and didn’t record the news and commercials because it made it harder to fit on a cassette tape. The news and commercials are a hoot.

Here’s a website run by a guy who sells some stuff, but basically at cost:

https://www.cbsrmt.com/

@mossygreen @sammydog01 If you want to hear really new radio plays and shows you can look no further than our friendly neighbors to the North, Canada. Something about the large, wide, desolate terrain lends itself well to modern radio for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. There is no FCC up there so people can drop a curse word here or there and nobody has conniptions over it.

I started collecting some modern shows from the CBC, but frankly, I don’t have time for that. But they’re interesting to me, mainly because of the novelty that radio entertainment shows are alive and well and being produced daily.

@sammydog01 @therealjrn I am two years younger than Chuck Schaden’s Those Were the Days radio show (still being broadcast every Saturday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm over the air and the internet at wdcb.org). I’ve been lightly steeped in OTR since the womb, so never really felt like it was being lost, although pretty much no one ever knows what I’m talking about when I start babbling about The Chicken Heart. And what with vat-grown meat in the news periodically, it comes up more often than one would think.

http://www.nostalgiadigest.com/those were the days.htm

@mossygreen @sammydog01 There’s also a radio network in England that interestingly enough, broadcasts just for a hospital network.

I guess the idea is as long as you’re lying on your ass you may as well have some entertainment. heh. I don’t have the link for it off the top of my head but I’m sure it can be found easily enough.

@mossygreen That’s a cool story. I’ve listened to Those Were the Days but we don’t get it locally. We did at one time, but that station is long gone.

@sammydog01 @therealjrn That sounds really cool, the only British OTR I know is The Goon Show, and I just assume everything else is horrible. But is it? Anyway that’s a terrible assumption on my part because the BBC still supports radio. It seems like a typical comedy career trajectory is: live show at The Fringe, one or two radio series and then a tv show. At least, I think that was true for both The League of Gentlemen and The Mighty Boosh in the '90’s. Seriously–state-supported radio comedy in the '90’s. So strange.

@mossygreen @sammydog01 There’s some good OTR from Australia too. I can’t recall any specific titles though because like most US citizens, I pretty much stay with the US shows.

@sammydog01 @therealjrn I think the 24-hours-a-day Goon Show streaming station I used to listen to constantly is out of Australia, so that makes sense to me.

@mossygreen @sammydog01 Right on.

@mossygreen @sammydog01 @therealjrn

I also did tiny bits of Usenet binary collecting back then.

Here are some sources for old media material (including radio), and other legally available material, much of it audio.

I also used to collect some of this sort of stuff now and then, tho I don’t now know if I still have it or where I stored it.

There archives are there for the listening:. Good stuff.

https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/

https://archive.org/details/bittorrent

https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/finding-legal-and-free-torrents.htm

https://archive.org/details/oldtimeradio

http://www.otr.net/

http://www.oldradioworld.com/

Above are just a few of the many sources

If you are looking for something specific, there are many more places to try.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1&ei=9qCfW82_EYS6tQXepqaABA&ins=true&q=old+time+radio&oq=old+time+radio&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.3..0i131i67j0l2j0i67j0.25766.31549..32145...0.0..0.244.2757.0j19j1…0…1…0i71j35i39j30i10j33i10j33i21j33i160j0i22i30.HS__3P4jFRU

Is one potentially useful search

(Search Google for “old time radio” or “old radio shows” or similar)

@mossygreen @therealjrn
I used to listen to CBSRMT in bed. I usually fell asleep before it was over and never found out the ending. I bought the set when I was given an ipod for my birthday and filled it up.

Now my computer doesn’t have a cd drive so i should probably repurpose them as coasters.

I do like the news and even the old Budweiser ads.

@mossygreen @therealjrn I remember Chicken Heart- it was so scary! I grew up close to Canada and we listened to The Royal Canadian Air Farce on Saturday mornings. They have a really scary series from the 80s called Nightfall.

@f00l @mossygreen @therealjrn I also used to listen to BBC iplayer- it’s still available. There is a Dr. Who series just starting!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/categories/drama?sort=popular

@f00l
Yes, I use Bookbub
I have subbed to categories and authors I enjoy and get an email every day.

@Cerridwyn

Would love it you posted here some choice offers of whatever you think is “the good stuff” that Bookbub throws up.

@f00l
example, this is not going to be a cheap book. if an author I like has a new book out, it will tell me it is available for pre-order and where. (I said only BN, so it will not tell me if BN doesn’t offer, but you can pick whose offers you want to see.)

Here is one I got today.

@f00l
they also tell you about deals from a favorite author or category.

Does that make sense?

@Cerridwyn
Yeah.

I don’t mess with Bookbub much because I am completely allergic to email.

Maybe I’ll check if they have an app.

PS

I don’t know if you like physical books much.

I used to, but I would get too many and have to start giving them away. Now I but e-books unless a book is special to me. Or is especially cheap.

For me, a visit to HPB (Half Price Books) is somewhere near heaven. Until I look at my bank account the next day, that is.

Don’t know if you are near an HBP location. But I find those stores loverly.

Also the local library has a bookstore for his removed from shelves (I assume extra copies they no longer need), and they have seasonal astonishing sales.

@f00l
i love books
however, i’ve had to divest myself of thousands now twice.
a couple years ago, the second time (first was divorce) i moved from a 3 bedroom house to a 1 bedroom apartment because it was time. I kept just enough for the shelves I put in my 1/2 extra room, no more. So it’s ebooks for me, i have thousands of those too.

they have a website, i figure you could use it as well, app, well, i dunno, never looked, cause i live on email

@Cerridwyn @f00l

cause i live on email

I bet your grocery bill is very low then.

@f00l @therealjrn
LOL

yep, i also photosynthesize

/image ent lady

@sammydog01 This sounds a little like a first world problem.

@sammydog01 Yeah, I got the email, too. I think this sucks.

@Barney @sammydog01 I support you both in your protest. When you chain yourselves up to the front doors of Audible, I’ll bring sammyiches to y’all. With some purple drank.

@sammydog01 @therealjrn

Nope, my protest is that I will no longer buy any Audible books. And I’m cancelling my Prime when it expires in February.

I’ll show 'em. That’ll put a big dent in Amazon’s profits. They’re really going to be hurting without me.

@therealjrn Bring tuna and I’ll do it.
@Barney I’m gonna show them too and stop buying my five bucks of Audible books a month. They’ll be sorry.

(Keeping my Prime though. I’m hooked good, dammit.)

@sammydog01 I think the one thing I will really miss about Prime is the $1 credit for books/videos that I get when I don’t use 2 day shipping. Yep, I’m gonna miss that a lot.

@sammydog01

Sux. Wow ouch for non-subscribers.

This was a way to get people into audiobooks.
I think they might be making a mistake. But they are the ones who know their customer behavior. Not me. I’m just an addict.

If they are really doing this, I hope they offer some sales and deals over time to people who don’t have subscriptions.

The way to get a deal on a subscription would have been the 2-week offer of a “12-credit annual membership” for $99 (usually, and now, $149). But that sale on that membership ended Sept 15.

They should have announced this change while the annual subscription offer was still active. That might have gotten more “expired subscription” and “never had a subscription” people interested in signing on.

Oh well. I fancy they will survive and do fine and they will try new things over time. Tho I don’t like this.

FWIW nookaudiobooks.com (BN) and e-stories.com both have daily deals, both open to all customers.
There is clearly some coordinating between the two stores, as these daily deals are always the exact same book at the exact same price.

Sometimes these deals are too expensive to bother with (they let the daily deal price float up to around $10, tho usually under $5) -
since if one has a credit membership at audible; I can purchase extra credits and get any audible book I want for $10 + tax.

But I own quite a few books from both places.

Nookaudiobooks has been open some years. The audio book files are encrypted so you have to use their player. The player was not great when they started the audiobook store. I’m sure it’s better now.

If I want a book on these daily deals, I now purchase from e-stories.com. These are straight mp3 files, no encryption, so I could use their player or whatever player I might want. I think their player is supposedly decent?

The Google play bookstore now offers audiobooks. Once in a while they have deals and coupons. I own some audiobooks from them. Have never used their player.

If you participate in various Google polls and whatever, you might be able to apply your “earnings” to book purchases. I have no idea. I don’t do this.

I have no easy means of checking the sale offers there except to check the site every day. Which I’ve never started to do.

The Apple iTunes media store has been selling audiobooks for something more than a decade. I don’t check then and don’t own any audiobooks from them. When I’ve looked, I have not seen bargains.

If they are running sales, I need to start taking a look.

I don’t know if the Kobo store offers audiobooks. Same for books-a-million.

Walmart is going into ebooks and digital audiobooks, in partnership with someone else I think. I have not checked this out.

Rakuten perhaps has an ebook and audiobook store.

There might be a central place somewhere to follow specifically the audiobook sale market.
I haven’t found such a place.
Bookbub perhaps? I haven’t gotten way into it yet.

Most of the audiobook deals mentioned on Slickdeals and Dealnews are for audible/Amazon, unfortunately (at least to those of us who want more deal sourcing diversity.)

@f00l I have a feeling they may change their minds when people go to the library instead of committing to a membership but what do I know?

@Barney I use Amazon Prime video a lot, especially on my Amazon Echo Show in the kitchen. And I use Amazon Prime music in my car. So it’s worth it to me. I get disappointed when I get a coupon for Prime Now or Dining instead of my dollar book credit so I know what you mean.

@sammydog01

Re coupon

Call and bitch when you get the wrong coupon. You might be able to get CS to do something to your settings so that you get the coupon you want.

Or not. : (

Re audible

Dunno.

If people start going to estories or or Google or apple or Walmart instead, they will change.

I like the membership/subscription thing - since the 1990’s?. I think, with audible. But not everyone does.

@f00l A half hour of speaking to CS for a dollar coupon-
/giphy ain’t nobody got time for that

@sammydog01

Re coupons.

I was hoping you could get a permanent change to your account settings. And always get the coupons you want.

If they are using the alt coupons to push you toward dining and now and fresh, then they will stick with that “pressure” tho.

@f00l I just get fast shipping instead. Stick it to the man!

@f00l @sammydog01 If you need a dollar that badly, I’ll send you a dollar. You won’t have to treat AMZN like a reverse adult chat line to get them to send you money.

“Here lady, have this dollar coupon and get off my phone. Raahithya–my supervisor–is staring at me.”

@sammydog01 @therealjrn

Hey! I only call Amazon when I’m in the mood to “waste The Bezos Man’s CS payroll money”.
; )

(Or when I have a actual real problem.)

However I have heard of people managing to get Amazon CS to do certain hidden account settings for the customer that specified certain preferences in perpetua or something.

Dunno if that could happen for “types of bonus reward coupons received”. Thought it might be worth a try just to find out. But since I don’t bother much with coupons other than automatic ones (always forget to use them), it’s gotta be someone else other than me who messes with this.

Don’t make fun of me, or I’ll call all the swimming pool and plumbing Gremlins and send them to that residential complex you have something to do with.

@f00l @sammydog01

@f00l @therealjrn The screen on my Prime day Echo Show just crapped out and I had a looong conversation with CS. She said she was supposed to have me send it to a repair place and wait until they fixed it but instead she sent me a new one and I just dropped the busted one off at UPS. It may have helped that she noticed I had an extensive list of devices on Alexa. Anyway I can’t complain.

@f00l @sammydog01 It must have been Raahithya’s day off. :snark:

I’ve called in as well and have had good results. They (actually the shipper) lost a $90 cabinet I ordered for my office. No sweat, no problem, they sent a new one out that day.

@sammydog01 @therealjrn

This trick doesn’t always work, if you are talking to the Kindle store, the music mp3 store, or whatever specialty Amazon store.

But … For general Amazon CS, if you are not getting satisfuxtion ™ from them, you can always req a xfer to US-based CS.

I usually give whatever CS agent I first connect with a decent shot at fixing things first, tho. Usually, they do.

@f00l

Google play books is pushing some audiobooks under $10, appear to be on sale.

Around $4-6 each, usually?

https://play.google.com/store/books/collection/promotion_1002977_sale_abooks?clp=sgIpCiMKHXByb21vdGlvbl8xMDAyOTc3X3NhbGVfYWJvb2tzEAcYASICCEA%3D:S:ANO1ljI1bPI

@f00l Was he the guy who cried during their Behind the Music while remembering their fan with cystic fibrosis who died after meeting them?

@mossygreen

Never saw that.

@f00l Subject Line:

Don’t lose access to our Daily Deals!

@f00l Content:

We noticed you’re subscribed to our Daily Deals and wanted to let you know that as of October 1, these deals are becoming a benefit just for members. This means you will need to sign up for membership after October 1 in order to access Daily Deals. Don’t worry, all books you’ve already purchased are yours to keep.

Our upcoming Daily Deals are better than ever before, including exciting titles selected by our editors, so this is the perfect time to become an Audible member. In addition to Daily Deals, our other exclusive benefits include:

•   30 days of membership free, which includes 1 audiobook and 2 Audible Originals.
  

•   After trial, you'll get 3 titles each month: 1 audiobook and 2 Audible Originals of your choosing, plus access to members-only prices and deals.
  

•   Exclusive audio fitness programs (a $95 value).
  

•   Easy exchanges. Don't like your audiobook? Swap it for free.
  

•   Cancel anytime—your audiobooks are yours to keep forever.
  

If you have any questions or want to learn more about Audible membership, please feel free to contact us. We’re here to help 24/7.

@sammydog01

Much thx.

@sammydog01

I guess I’ll let people know what some of the new daily deals look like.

So that you non-subscribers have some idea how much better they get than they are now. (Or don’t)

@f00l I’m expecting Audible to continue sending me links to the Deal of the Day and then explaining why I can’t buy them.

@sammydog01

Ouch.

I works think that would be “anti-marketing”.

Yeah. Piss people off her lots of negative commentary in Twitter and in book forums.

Then audible issues the great corporate apology and changes their ways?

Seems an odd strategy to me.

@f00l You were saying?

(The price is $12.99 because I apparently bought the kindle edition.)

@therealjrn Fifty Shades of Grey was banned in school libraries? But it’s literature!

@sammydog01 @therealjrn

Yeah

Read - or vocally “perform” - it aloud in Starbucks!

@f00l… remember when I suggested the “changes are coming to Audible” would not likely be welcomed by me? There ya go…

@ruouttaurmind

Yeah. Not too thrilled re the Daily Deal limitations.

However yesterday’s selection was excellent:. A superb book and a much bigger seller than the normal daily deal offering.

The Daily Deal prices have always varied. If they do consistently charge more, it had better be for offerings of expensive audiobooks and true bestsellers.

I really hope they continue to offer some form of frequent deals to the non-members. Keep them coming to the site. Convert some of them …

The thing is, a member can always purchase extra credits and thereby get any book for the credit price. So they can’t raise the daily deal price price to be too close to the cost of a credit.

@ruouttaurmind

Oct 1 daily deal was a book by Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling.

Oct 2 book by David Sedaris.

Looks like they are offering “commercially bigger” books and writers as the Daily Deals offering, so far.

You could prob buy these from abroad if you used a commercial VPN (such as PIA) with a US based exit point.

Or don’t you have a work-based VPN?

PS
Re trip

Very envious! Hope you are having the best time!

@f00l I have a VPN/RAS set up to access my office and home PCs so I do have access, though it’s slower than molasses in Alaska. Slow wifi combined with the overhead of VPN, and then the remote connection on top of it all is proving to be barely usable. I had planned to have better bandwidth here but that didn’t pan out.

So, yes, I’ve been able to keep abreast of the deals, though actually getting any is an exercise in patience.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I did mange to get in on the Amazon Kindle deals last week though. 3 OG Kindles, current generation, for $30 total and two current gen Paperwhites for $80 total. Those are all new, not refurb.

@f00l I got one on the first (posted a screen shot up there ) but have not since. So I guess it was either a mistake or people got really pissed off.

@sammydog01
Ouch

@f00l @sammydog01 I’m not getting them anymore either.
/image unloved

@f00l I got another daily deal email today- it’s for today’s book for $12.99. I apparently own the kindle book and that’s the whispersync price. But I’m pretty sure I can get it for that price any day.

@sammydog01

Prob, yes, that is the regular price. Audible is being an asshole if they don’t make completely clear (that is the the regular price) to persons without monthly or annual credit subscriptions.

Here is what I see:

@f00l From the reviews that seems to be just the first “book” of the two books included in the original volume and that the second isn’t available. If you buy the next Kindle book in the series you get the next volume. Or something like that.

@f00l Heads up- it’s October.

@sammydog01
Been busy so did not yet create Oct topic.