@f00l thanks I went back to look at it and noticed that it says “customize and check out” and inside there is where they have moved the without special offers, for the paperwhite it’s $20.
@f00l@thismyusername If you want the basic model kindle it’s $69.99 w/out ads today. It’s weird, because it’s like you called it into being with your question/complaint.
Also: I just learned that through the instant kindle trade-in I can send them my damaged, unusable 2010 kindle keyboard and they will give me $5 credit and a 25% discount on a new kindle. So I’m doing that, because why the hell not? $67.89 after everything for the paperwhite (I don’t mind the ads, I actually found some good offers in the past).
@f00l me too. I’ve read almost all of alison weirs books. Last one i read was about MQS. it was so convoluted and confusing i had a heckuva time making it through. Read marie antoinette by antonia fraser too. That was kind of a slog to get through too. I have read most extensively about middle ages England and France, ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and China.
@KMakato I listened to Stephen King’s Desperation (a story about people who, while traveling along a desolate highway, are abducted by the deputy of the mining town of Desperation. The captives realize that something is wrong as they observe his bizarre statements and mannerisms, which soon escalate to brutal assaults and murder) while driving the desolate highway between Austin and El Paso. I drove on Christmas day and the road was empty, and shortly after the passage where the characters pass an abandoned rv (the deputy had abducted the family driving it) I passed an rv sitting on the side of the highway just outside Ozona. It was pretty danged disconcerting.
I like a good horror novel when I find one but they’re hard to find. Otherwise, there’s lots of interesting non-fiction: among my favorites, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s autobiographical stories A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, etc.
I don’t really care about the genre as long as it’s interesting, and preferably funny. I tend to find an author I like, burn through their back catalog, and then move on to the next. For this summer, I’ll probably stock up on Bill Bryson and Mary Roach.
I bring multiple novels. That’s why I have ebooks. Probably Sci-Fi/Fantasy (favorite go-tos are Curse of Chalion and Sunshine), but I read my fair share of romances. Looks for Sue London and Christi Caldwell.
@dptalia Love love, love Lois McMaster Bujold and Robin McKinley. Anything they write. There’s a new Ekaterin Vorkosigan story that’s just been released.
I met this guy back a few years ago while he was shooting a safety video at my place of employment who said he was an author. I said I’d check him out, all the while thinking he was “an author” like 90% of the crap you can find on Amazon. This guy, John Gilstrap, undersold himself!! Turns out he’s a NY Times bestselling author as well as an all-around swell guy. His books are intense…usually involve rescue of hostages by his bad-ass character he’s developed, Jonathan Graves. Check out any of his books…John Gilstrap Books if you’re looking for a WILD RIDE & are not offended by people who deserve it, losing their lives. Scorpion & Boxer don’t pull any punches! Newest book (June 2018) is Scorpion Strike.
I am late to the game, but I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman recently, and it was like I was on vacation. It’s a buddy traveling story with ancient gods! Going to the house on the rock this year just because of the book. I suppose I will be disappointed when I’m not transported into another dimension, but going to give it a shot anyway!
You forgot Murder Mysteries! My kindle is loaded with the last Sue Grafton, Y is for Yesterday, but I keep drifting off to sleep while reading the W Post.
Whatever is current/next on my Kindle. Right now, it’s All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire. According to Goodreads, the last several were:
Made in America by Bill Bryson
Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Basketball (and Other Things) by Shea Serrano
@llangley I couldn’t read books about animals while traveling, I get way too emotional. I will never forget sitting in the airport terminal in Tokyo reading Dan Simmon’s Summer Of Night. There’s a desperate flight from horrible monsters thru a dark cornfield, a beloved elderly dog can’t keep up and the boy that owns him is struggling to carry him and run and the dog dies in his arms. I just busted out crying. It freaked the hell out of the restrained Japanese people around me and I had to go hide in the bathroom till I got myself together. I had to put the book aside till I could continue reading in private.
@moondrake@moonhat yeah, that’s me too usually. But ADP was different to me, I guess because of the way the dog made his way back. A definite tear jerker and I seldom cry out loud bit it did it in a way that felt cathartic. BTW I’ve never seen Turner and Hooch or Marley and Me either
Back before I had a kindle I had a stash of paperbacks to read and discard while traveling (frequently duplicates of stuff I already owned). I still have a stack of back-up Roger Zelazny Amber novels somewhere, waiting… Half the time I ended up bringing them back home, anyway. Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad has come back from the West Coast at least twice.
I end up loading a bunch of weird, free stuff on my kindle now. Vacation reading has included books from the complete Studies in the Psychology of Sex by Havelock Ellis (so disturbing!) to the Grace Harlowe novels (by, I don’t remember, somebody?), about a teenage girl who wins people over through her good nature, clean living and basketball skills. I recommend both, if you’re patient and like stuff that’s over 100 years old.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an all-time classic. If you get a taste for old school psychical research Andrew Lang had some good books, including Cock Lane and Common Sense, and if you get a taste for Andrew Lang’s writing you can download ALL his color-title fairy tale books.
Other stuff is same-old same-old you’ll always get from me: Saki! Arthur Machen! Algernon Blackwood! E.F. Benson! There’s loads of old horror and fantasy in the public domain. Someone, maybe archive.org has Weird Tales issues you can download (just remember most of the writing is deadly dull and was paid by the word).
For mysteries, Conan Doyle is good, Wilkie Collins is good, Mary Roberts Rinehart is better than you’d think.
If you like books about people with romances and court cases: Jane Austen is better than you probably remember, Anthony Trollope is amazing, Edith Wharton is amazing, John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Chronicles is amazing and much longer than you’d think if you watched the PBS version (there are another three books about their kids, and I like them better).
So, yeah, I recommend The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny, mostly, and I have a set I could send you.
@mossygreen Adding that I started rereading A Wizard of Earthsea and it’s so good. I forgot, which I would feel badly about, but it’s so good I’m glad I don’t really remember any of it.
Also: The His Dark Materials trilogy is really good. I haven’t read Pullman’s latest yet, but I imagine it’s good as well.
I’ve cheated for years. A Sony e-ink, back in the day.
A nook color - the first color e-reader
and am currently on my 4th, well 5th, cause I broke one.
I like it better than the tablet app, although I have that too
What’s a vacation?
I cheat.
/image kindle
@dave @thumperchick why is this poll here? The watch poll is on the front page. Oops?
@RiotDemon we’ll fix it… Probably
@RiotDemon I have no idea what you’re talking about. I only see one poll. Yep. Just one question for opinions. Who’s asking about watches? Not us…
Speaking of kindles… my old kindle with keyboards battery is getting pretty lame… so I went shopping for a replacement… but…
do they not make a kindle e-ink without special offers?
I can’t seem to find one without special offers.
@thismyusername
You can pay Amazon extra and make any Kindle that contains advertising into an ad-free Kindle.
I think $30-40?
One time only payment.
Btw the special offers appear only on the lockscreen and perhaps at the bottom of menus and stuff?
Never ever while reading a book.
I never even notice them unless I want to.
@f00l thanks I went back to look at it and noticed that it says “customize and check out” and inside there is where they have moved the without special offers, for the paperwhite it’s $20.
@thismyusername I believe you can do it at any time in the future from the Kindle itself also.
@f00l @thismyusername If you want the basic model kindle it’s $69.99 w/out ads today. It’s weird, because it’s like you called it into being with your question/complaint.
@f00l @mossygreen @thismyusername buying a kindle paperwhite today
@mossygreen enough of us put them in the list/looked at them for the algorithm to snap into sale mode
@thismyusername We need to remember this.
Also: I just learned that through the instant kindle trade-in I can send them my damaged, unusable 2010 kindle keyboard and they will give me $5 credit and a 25% discount on a new kindle. So I’m doing that, because why the hell not? $67.89 after everything for the paperwhite (I don’t mind the ads, I actually found some good offers in the past).
My favorite books are humor books, so I will say those. The best series is Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. I have a bunch of them.
Welcome to Night Vale is a good one.
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes is possibly my favorite, but a young reading level.
Lately, history history, history.
@f00l me too. I’ve read almost all of alison weirs books. Last one i read was about MQS. it was so convoluted and confusing i had a heckuva time making it through. Read marie antoinette by antonia fraser too. That was kind of a slog to get through too. I have read most extensively about middle ages England and France, ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and China.
@ivannabc
I go on binges.
I was on a Cold War 40’s-80’s history binge, which got interrupted by a Jack Reacher binge.
(Had never read Jack Reacher books until this week. They are amazing thriller “beach reads”. Love them.)
Friend me on Goodreads… I have lots of recommendations
Last vacation, meaning last month, I took the NYPD RED series and the Richard Castle written Heat series. I’m a sucker for cop drama!
@ptando I have the first NYPD RED book, looking for the others.
@callow so silly, so good!
Airframe by Michael Crichton.
Read it on a plane, and it’s based around investigating the cause of a plane crash/accident. Go figure
@KMakato i LOVE crichton. I thought prey was good too.
@KMakato I listened to Stephen King’s Desperation (a story about people who, while traveling along a desolate highway, are abducted by the deputy of the mining town of Desperation. The captives realize that something is wrong as they observe his bizarre statements and mannerisms, which soon escalate to brutal assaults and murder) while driving the desolate highway between Austin and El Paso. I drove on Christmas day and the road was empty, and shortly after the passage where the characters pass an abandoned rv (the deputy had abducted the family driving it) I passed an rv sitting on the side of the highway just outside Ozona. It was pretty danged disconcerting.
@KMakato @moondrake @ivannabc I recently listened to the Audiobook of Cell by Stephen King. Pretty crazy!
Reading for pleasure is a foreign concept to me; much like vacations.
I like a good horror novel when I find one but they’re hard to find. Otherwise, there’s lots of interesting non-fiction: among my favorites, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s autobiographical stories A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, etc.
Mystery, suspense, thriller, horror. Currently enjoying Trespassing by Brandi Reeds
I don’t really care about the genre as long as it’s interesting, and preferably funny. I tend to find an author I like, burn through their back catalog, and then move on to the next. For this summer, I’ll probably stock up on Bill Bryson and Mary Roach.
I need to finish The Selfish Gene.
I bring multiple novels. That’s why I have ebooks. Probably Sci-Fi/Fantasy (favorite go-tos are Curse of Chalion and Sunshine), but I read my fair share of romances. Looks for Sue London and Christi Caldwell.
@dptalia Love love, love Lois McMaster Bujold and Robin McKinley. Anything they write. There’s a new Ekaterin Vorkosigan story that’s just been released.
@StGermain I know!!! I just started it today!
Have you read her Penric novellas?
@dptalia I have all the Penric novellas! I will admit to being a bit disappointed in Gentleman Jole. What did you think?
And Sunshine! Isn’t it just meant to be made into a movie?
Wildlife guides for the area.
I always read Cryptonomicon while traveling. I don’t necessarily ever finish the book. It’s got a fun beginning.
I met this guy back a few years ago while he was shooting a safety video at my place of employment who said he was an author. I said I’d check him out, all the while thinking he was “an author” like 90% of the crap you can find on Amazon. This guy, John Gilstrap, undersold himself!! Turns out he’s a NY Times bestselling author as well as an all-around swell guy. His books are intense…usually involve rescue of hostages by his bad-ass character he’s developed, Jonathan Graves. Check out any of his books…John Gilstrap Books if you’re looking for a WILD RIDE & are not offended by people who deserve it, losing their lives. Scorpion & Boxer don’t pull any punches! Newest book (June 2018) is Scorpion Strike.
Vacations are supposed to be a getaway from everything, that is why I stay in bed and sleep until I have to go to work again.
None cause I’m going on vacation
@carolinaclassic Agreed! I can’t believe there’s not an option for “I’m on vacation doing fun stuff, not reading!”
I am late to the game, but I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman recently, and it was like I was on vacation. It’s a buddy traveling story with ancient gods! Going to the house on the rock this year just because of the book. I suppose I will be disappointed when I’m not transported into another dimension, but going to give it a shot anyway!
comic books! or a trade paperback.
faves right now (i.e. stuff that’s currently releasing) are paper girls, descender, and southern cross.
i also have a twin peaks book on loan from my dad as well as ‘S’ to read.
You forgot Murder Mysteries! My kindle is loaded with the last Sue Grafton, Y is for Yesterday, but I keep drifting off to sleep while reading the W Post.
Vacation (or anytime flying) are Magazine catch-up time.
I read foreign language books on vacation to help keep my skills up, specifically Italian. Beppe Severgnini is the current “autore del giorno”.
Whatever is current/next on my Kindle. Right now, it’s All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire. According to Goodreads, the last several were:
Made in America by Bill Bryson
Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Basketball (and Other Things) by Shea Serrano
Also have bios of Springsteen and Delbert McClinton waiting for me.
Stephen King once upon a time. Lately it’s dog books, the latest being “A Dog’s Purpose” which was (as usual) waayyy better than the movie
@llangley I couldn’t read books about animals while traveling, I get way too emotional. I will never forget sitting in the airport terminal in Tokyo reading Dan Simmon’s Summer Of Night. There’s a desperate flight from horrible monsters thru a dark cornfield, a beloved elderly dog can’t keep up and the boy that owns him is struggling to carry him and run and the dog dies in his arms. I just busted out crying. It freaked the hell out of the restrained Japanese people around me and I had to go hide in the bathroom till I got myself together. I had to put the book aside till I could continue reading in private.
@moondrake crying now…
@llangley Sorry. It’s one of my favorite books, but it has a few heart wrenching parts.
@llangley @moondrake I refuse to read any book where an animal gets hurt or dies. No can do. Nope.
@moondrake @moonhat yeah, that’s me too usually. But ADP was different to me, I guess because of the way the dog made his way back. A definite tear jerker and I seldom cry out loud bit it did it in a way that felt cathartic. BTW I’ve never seen Turner and Hooch or Marley and Me either
Stephen King is my favorite.
Last time I read a book on vacation was the twilight series, soooo, I’m probably not the best for recommendations.
@RiotDemon The Stand
A positive life changing novel, like a John C Maxwell book, good stuff!
By all the different titles shared, am I to assume the Meh bookclub is now meh? ‘Android’ is still on my list, haha.
@elimanningface It became the monthly book discussion thread. Oh well. Go and read Android’s Dream and report back there. It’s a fun book.
Back before I had a kindle I had a stash of paperbacks to read and discard while traveling (frequently duplicates of stuff I already owned). I still have a stack of back-up Roger Zelazny Amber novels somewhere, waiting… Half the time I ended up bringing them back home, anyway. Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad has come back from the West Coast at least twice.
I end up loading a bunch of weird, free stuff on my kindle now. Vacation reading has included books from the complete Studies in the Psychology of Sex by Havelock Ellis (so disturbing!) to the Grace Harlowe novels (by, I don’t remember, somebody?), about a teenage girl who wins people over through her good nature, clean living and basketball skills. I recommend both, if you’re patient and like stuff that’s over 100 years old.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an all-time classic. If you get a taste for old school psychical research Andrew Lang had some good books, including Cock Lane and Common Sense, and if you get a taste for Andrew Lang’s writing you can download ALL his color-title fairy tale books.
Other stuff is same-old same-old you’ll always get from me: Saki! Arthur Machen! Algernon Blackwood! E.F. Benson! There’s loads of old horror and fantasy in the public domain. Someone, maybe archive.org has Weird Tales issues you can download (just remember most of the writing is deadly dull and was paid by the word).
For mysteries, Conan Doyle is good, Wilkie Collins is good, Mary Roberts Rinehart is better than you’d think.
If you like books about people with romances and court cases: Jane Austen is better than you probably remember, Anthony Trollope is amazing, Edith Wharton is amazing, John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Chronicles is amazing and much longer than you’d think if you watched the PBS version (there are another three books about their kids, and I like them better).
So, yeah, I recommend The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny, mostly, and I have a set I could send you.
@mossygreen Adding that I started rereading A Wizard of Earthsea and it’s so good. I forgot, which I would feel badly about, but it’s so good I’m glad I don’t really remember any of it.
Also: The His Dark Materials trilogy is really good. I haven’t read Pullman’s latest yet, but I imagine it’s good as well.
I’ve cheated for years. A Sony e-ink, back in the day.
A nook color - the first color e-reader
and am currently on my 4th, well 5th, cause I broke one.
I like it better than the tablet app, although I have that too
/image nook color
The 1st Man of Rome series by Colleen McCullough and/or the Camulod series by Jack Whyte.
Katherine by Ana Seton