Author |
Message |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 12:14 pm: | |
Please suggest a Kindle book that you think will be to my taste and that I can buy via Amazon UK - as I want to try out my real-reviewing reviewing 'skills' on an ebook, so that I am fair in my approach to this phenomenon. Once I have a few to choose from I shall buy one or more and review one or more. |
Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 12:32 pm: | |
I don't know if it's available as an e-book, Des, but I'd strongly recommend Nick Jackson's "The Secret Life of the Panda" from Chomu - you'll love that one! But what about one of the Ash Tree Press e-books that have been mentioned here on the RCMB? They seem to be releasing a lot of them. |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 12:38 pm: | |
Thanks, Caroline. I have already real-time reviewed the Nick Jackson book. I've long been a fan of his work. Can you get he Ash Tree Press ebooks from Amazon Uk? |
Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 12:57 pm: | |
Ah, I must have missed your review of the Nick Jackson book! I won't read it till I've finished the book. I bet you loved it though! Here's the link for the Ash Tree ebooks: http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/eBooks.htm It *says* they're available in Kindle format from Amazon sites, so I guess you can get them there as well as direct from the site? I'm not really the best person to tell you, having never bought an ebook in my life! |
Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.204
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 12:59 pm: | |
Des - I've so far bought one ebook from Ash Tree, but I did it via their webpage. If you do that, Christopher then emails the file. If you check your email via your iPad you can then open this file and it'll automatically add it to your Kindle software. As for books in general to test out the Kindle software, I suggest you search the Kindle store on Amazon, sorting low price to high price - this way you'll see many books that are free. There's a lot of rubbish, but also the classics, and authors such as M R James, William Hope Hodgson and many more. |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 02:00 pm: | |
Thanks, Mick. My intention is to choose an ebook or two specifically to real-time review. My taste is reflected in what I have reviewed so far: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/ |
Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 02:14 pm: | |
Or there's the Steve Rasnic Tem collection which he mentions here: http://www.knibbworld.com/campbelldiscuss/messages/1/5471.html?1327427032 I guess, from his first post on that thread, that that book will soon be available via Amazon on Kindle (once the 30 day Nook agreement expires)? |
Tems (Tems) Username: Tems
Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 68.164.105.83
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 02:33 pm: | |
Hi Caroline, Yes--after the 30 day period IN CONCERT becomes available in all the other ebook formats, including Kindle. Best, Steve |
Barbara Roden (Nebuly)
Username: Nebuly
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.188.106
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 04:20 pm: | |
Des: Steve's "The Far Side of the Lake" is available from Amazon.co.uk, and I think you would like it a good deal. Glen Hirshberg's "American Morons" is also available there now, and I think it's another that would appeal to you. Or, as Mick says, you can purchase either book directly from the ATP website, and the file will be sent to you upon receipt of the order. |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 04:56 pm: | |
Thanks, Barbara. I'm sorely tempted to make my first real-time review of an ebook to be the title you mention by Steve Rasnic Tem - author of 'The Green Dog' in Nemonymous 10 So, watch this space. Thanks everyone else, too. I hope this may be the first of many. Not that I am relaxing any of my views on Ebooks. This is an experiment. |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 07:32 pm: | |
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/the-far-side-of-the-lake-steve-ra snic-tem/ |
Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon
Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.11.133
| Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 07:47 pm: | |
Good on you, Des. |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Saturday, February 11, 2012 - 12:41 pm: | |
An excerpt from my real-time review above (relevant to ebooks): Leaks Another inter-generational male scenario, one that has just brought an ineluctable welling (leaking?) of tears to my aging eyes, almost literally as well as with full metaphorical force. The battle against entropy-through-structural-and-endemic-dampness by means of poignant human endeavour to maintain doing the small things for the benefit of one’s family, even if those small things amounted to nothing really significant or, perhaps, a great deal? One never knows. The rituals of conscientious living are portrayed here wonderfully, together with fiction’s creepiness of spiritual and material encroachment in a family house by the creek. [This story also evoked in me - within the context of this special review - a reminder of being myself likened to King Canute vis-a-vis my recent public pronouncements regarding ebooks seemingly encroaching upon traditional books and encouraging a culture of plagiarism/piracy and of published fiction authors losing their specialness (they can't so readily do live concerts that musicians do so as to buy bread for their family before it grows mouldy). Similar to the story's 'rituals', there have been decades of my own meticulous care and attention to books; of collecting; of writing; now of reviewing them and publishing/editing them: a semi-autistic series of well-meaning actions on my part today starting to seep away as the electronic creek draws even nearer? But, perhaps not. Surely the act of facing the situation out - with this story, possibly with this whole ebook once I've read it all - is the challenge, the sandpaper to the mould on the wall: just what I need to create a bridge across the generational parting of the Red Sea, across the two competing sides of Self, one increasingly aging, the other still the boy I once was. We shall see.] (11 Feb 12) |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Sunday, February 12, 2012 - 11:44 am: | |
Escape on a Train “The window tappings continue all night long, but he never sees anything. In the morning he discovers hundreds of round, slightly greasy spots on the glass.” Those tappings again leading to a scryable text? I am ever more agog at this book’s resonances with itself (and with my first reading of it as my first experience of reading a fiction ebook). This basically is an enjoyably well-crafted absurdist tale (reminding me favourably of much 20th Century European literature) – involving the Theory of Relativity and the insulation of travelling on a train past life’s tragedies without the ability of helping or even connecting, all mingled with this book’s fragile inter-generational caring for children. Yes, absurdist but also genuinely emotional. Didactic, too, in a good way. The Ariel reaching out for the Caliban and vice versa, but because of the glass between never to connect. The glass that keeps full immersion from the electronically coded text? I feel immersed, but am I? If yes, it is probably because Tem is a rare transcending writer. ”Those other people, the ones outside the train, are merely lost messages coded into the winds,…” (12 Feb 12 – two hours later) |
Craig (Craig) Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88
| Posted on Sunday, February 12, 2012 - 11:03 pm: | |
What about getting the iPad app for "The New Yorker," Des? The latest issue has a long article on M.R. James: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/02/13/120213crbo_books_lane |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 09:26 am: | |
I have been thinking about the long-held tradition of giving a copy of the Bible (certainly in the UK) to participants of Court cases for swearing the oath on. I was wondering if they will ever start offering an Ebook version of the Bible contained within a Kindle or Ipad to place one’s hand upon? Just asking that question bears somewhat upon the subject of any books that are held to be sacred (however many editions of them exist) and perhaps tells us something about this whole debate. The on-going centuries-long existence of physical books, whatever they contain, however new or old they are, will always prove something about remaining ’sacred’ in some sense of that word. (thanks, Craig, for suggestion) My first review of an Ebook continues here: http://zencore2007.wordpress.com/131-2/ |
Joel (Joel) Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| Posted on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 01:33 pm: | |
Des, the Bible is certainly available as an e-book. This may become something that differentiates 'High Church' from 'Low Church' observers. One might also imagine hymn sheets being replaced with a sequence of code readers, so the faithful can call up the words on their smartphones. However, I'd say the likelihood of the Torah being issued to synagogues in electronic form is not high. |
Joel (Joel) Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| Posted on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 01:38 pm: | |
Perhaps the electronic replication of sacred texts will finally lay to rest the fallacious belief that in the beginning was the word. In the beginning was the link? I don't think so. The more you think about it, the more obvious it is that the word was a late arrival. Sadly, however, all the internet has done is increase people's reverence for the word, sacred or otherwise, and reduce their regard for (and awareness of) the deed. |
Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.124.77
| Posted on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 02:20 pm: | |
In the beginning was the E-Word . . . The Ten Commandments now available on Kindle! |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 08:25 pm: | |
OMG! http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/hearts-an-amazing-serendipity/ |
Craig (Craig) Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88
| Posted on Friday, February 17, 2012 - 04:43 pm: | |
(thanks, Craig, for suggestion) It is well worth reading this piece too, Des, or anyone: Anthony Lane, the premiere movie/theater critic for The New Yorker, is clearly a keen critic (and fan!) of quality horror, by this highly praising piece on M.R. James. And nearly the whole way along, as he's describing James' power and method of expressing unsettling and cosmic terrors emanating from the close-at-hand, I thought: geez, you could easily be saying these exact same things after switching out the name M. R. James... and inserting Ramsey Campbell! |
Des (Des) Username: Des
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16
| Posted on Friday, February 17, 2012 - 04:51 pm: | |
Thanks, Craig. I'll look it out. I've just bought another ebook - following the mind-boggling serendipities concerned with my first ebook real-time review - and started a new review of this second ebook: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/nowhere-to-go-iain-rowan/ |