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He doesn't have internet, so a kindle is pretty lame. Look into AbeBooks, Thrift Books, and Better World Books. Goodwill has stores set up on Amazon, and you can buy a lot of amazing books from Amazon and only pay for shipping. Post in here if you use those websites, and let me know what you think.
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Sep 23, 2015 23:53
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Doesn't a kindle have quite a sizable memory? I don't know the state of the art, but it seems like my ma's old one can fit the entire bibliography of Robin Hobb and room to spare.
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Sep 23, 2015 23:56
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Once you purchase a book, it can be accessed by any device with Kindle via cliud. Finish a book, delete it from the device, download it again in a few seconds if you need to look something up. It also keeps any highlight, comments or notes on the cloud.
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Sep 24, 2015 00:03
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blue squares posted:Get an actual Kindle. The batteries last for weeks. You can get books instantly from the internet. Right, but a Kindle I can't just freely hand over to another expat or local employee and not worry about ever giving it back, can't just gift it away to a local kid when I'm done reading it out in the field, etc. There are still some legit uses for cheap paperbacks. quote:Look into AbeBooks, Thrift Books, and Better World Books. Goodwill has stores set up on Amazon, and you can buy a lot of amazing books from Amazon and only pay for shipping. Thanks, will give those a look-see. I've had mixed success in the past buying used books by the lot off eBay, like in Afghanistan I got a box of like 15 different Faulkner paperbacks for $30 or whatever. I'll see if I can find an individual seller with a number of cheap books where I can get them packaged up together for efficient shipping. I still would love to find a good source specifically for little pocket-sized editions that aren't too expensive. I have a couple of those Shambhala Pocket Classics that I carry around while traveling, but they're all like $5-7 and mostly about Buddhism, so rather niche and just slightly pricier than I want to freely just give away as the spirit moves me.
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Sep 24, 2015 13:04
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Better World Books & World of Books on Amazon UK have worked well for me in the past. They have pretty much everything and are cheap as hell (1p for the book + GBP 3 or so for shipping to EU iirc).
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Sep 24, 2015 13:46
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Most libraries do an annual/biannual book Sale to raise funds. Maybe find out when it is and get a list together for a friend to buy a bunch of books for cheap and they can mail the box to you? Here's a thought: there are services to get packages of wine, clothes, cheese, nerd poo poo, etc. from online clubs so you can try new things based on your interest. Does such a thing exist for books?
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Sep 24, 2015 15:49
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My book club is reading Ready Player One, which I'm not very happy about reading, so I'm keeping track of what I'm reading and venting through my tumblr after each chapter. I've talked to people who have enjoyed it and I otherwise respect their decisions about fiction, but it's been rough going so far, and I'm only eight chapters in.
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Sep 27, 2015 04:22
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Djeser posted:My book club is reading Ready Player One, which I'm not very happy about reading, so I'm keeping track of what I'm reading and venting through my tumblr after each chapter. RPO was written to relentlessly hammer on the nostalgia of people that grew up in the 80s and early 90s; if you're not in that group (either older or younger) or nostalgia doesn't give you the warm and fuzzies, the book is a loving chore because that's literally all it has going for it. Armada is even worse from my understanding.
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Sep 27, 2015 04:43
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It's not even that nostalgia is a bad thing, it just serves no purpose in RPO than unneccessary namedropping. The whole novel is nothing more than a juvenile power fantasy, except instead of muscles and guns the protagonist uses video games and obscure 80s trivia. To be fair though, if that's what you look for in fiction, then it's not a bad book at all.
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Sep 27, 2015 05:14
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This was really enjoyable so far. Thanks.
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Sep 27, 2015 05:33
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Anyone here have any literature Nobel Prize predictions? I'm guessing it's going to be this Javier Marias character.
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Sep 30, 2015 15:48
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I don't think characters can win.
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Sep 30, 2015 16:24
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Just finished Payndz's "Valhalla Prophecy", it was pretty cool, like Skyrim meets Prometheus, with a good, serious side drama plot.
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Oct 1, 2015 07:46
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bleeding pebbles posted:Anyone here have any literature Nobel Prize predictions? I think it's unlikely that another Western author will win after Munro and Modiano, tbh. Javier Marias is great and well deserving writer, but he's still reasonably young, which also plays against him getting the award this year. I think that it will be a well known non-Western author. If I were a betting man, I'd go with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Ismail Kadare or Amos Oz.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:06
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Always rooting for Ko Un even though it's long overdue to the point where he probably won't win in the few years he has left to live. I want Korean literature to enter the world stage so that more stuff can be translated, drat it. In any case, I don't know why people are betting so much on Svetlana Alexievich but then again I haven't read anything by her. Anyone check out her book on Chernobyl?
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Oct 1, 2015 15:32
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I read Alexievitch's latest ('Second-Hand Time') last year and liked it. All of her books are basically collections of interviews with questions taken out, so you get 20-30 narratives about peoples' experiences in a particular time & place. The times were hosed up, and the stories reflect that. If that sounds cool to you, pick up a book on whichever topic you're more interested in and you won't be disappointed. I do have some reservations: in the couple of places where Alexievitch's voice shows up in the stories, her questions seem very loaded with a strong sense of there being clearly distinct good and bad side in any situation, which makes me wonder if all her questions were this leading. Also, the people she intervieweded seemed to be largely well-educated (in liberal sciences, mostly philology and literature) old people and they tended to use strangely similar, very literary expressions that I have literally never heard in real life (coming from ex-USSR). I don't think the peoples' stories have been tampered with - maybe spruced up a bit - but it's something to keep in mind.
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Oct 2, 2015 08:05
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Good purchase today
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Oct 3, 2015 17:11
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Mira posted:Always rooting for Ko Un even though it's long overdue to the point where he probably won't win in the few years he has left to live. I want Korean literature to enter the world stage so that more stuff can be translated, drat it. English speakers and europeans hardly rate south american/Mexican literature and outside of murakami dont care for anything asian so good luck
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Oct 4, 2015 05:21
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And before anyone gets all, mo yan won a prize, on me let me say this: westerners loving love anything satirical about antagonistic nations especially if it is relatively silent protest.
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Oct 4, 2015 05:25
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Yeah, that's very true.  I would counter by mentioning Kawabata and Oe, but I see Kawabata's win as more of an olive branch in deciding not to give the prize over to the (superior) Mishima. And Oe is a very outspoken liberal so I'm sure that tipped the decision in his favor.
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Oct 5, 2015 15:37
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Already mostly done with the next Nina/Eddie book, "Kingdom of Darkness". It's really good, like Von Ryan's Express crossed with Commando. I'm surprised it took payndz this long to have nazis be the bad guys in a book. Really good, if you like airport fiction.
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Oct 6, 2015 06:30
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Man I just read about the new Twilight book and I cannot believe it isn't a joke
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Oct 7, 2015 00:48
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New Twilight mock thread please. Actually since it opened up the door for self published crap to get loads of attenyion it doesn't seem so bad in comparison.
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Oct 7, 2015 05:51
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Casimir Radon posted:New Twilight mock thread please. Actually since it opened up the door for self published crap to get loads of attenyion it doesn't seem so bad in comparison. This forum definitely needs more threads where morons comment on bad books in an unfunny way for 10,000 pages.
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Oct 7, 2015 06:10
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A human heart posted:This forum definitely needs more threads where morons comment on bad books in an unfunny way for 10,000 pages.
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Oct 7, 2015 06:32
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A human heart posted:This forum definitely needs more threads where morons comment on bad books in an unfunny way for 10,000 pages. The QUit Being a loving Child thread is not even a hundred pages long actually
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Oct 7, 2015 16:55
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i just read The Day of the Jackal and it was ok.
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Oct 7, 2015 20:46
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I was stunned by how boring and badly written it was. Though there was a nice similie where a guys hopes and dreams are going to be crushed like a ornamental vase hit by a steam train.
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Oct 7, 2015 22:17
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I don't remember that part, the prose was generally very plain and I would say "workmanlike", though it did cause me to wonder if the infamous IKEA scene in the Larsson books might have been a parody of it. mostly though I thought the plot had a good buildup but that the payoff didn't really work right and I feel like the author was more or less cheating with the whole "manhunt" section of the book.
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Oct 8, 2015 00:39
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Stupid question--I try to be pretty meticulous about logging the books I read on Goodreads, but I'm at a loss when it comes to short stories... Just looking for some other opinions on how you all might log short stories if you don't read the entire book... argh. It's the only area of my life where I have OCD, and I can't figure out what to do. #nerdpeopleproblems
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Oct 9, 2015 20:04
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tonytheshoes posted:Stupid question--I try to be pretty meticulous about logging the books I read on Goodreads, but I'm at a loss when it comes to short stories... Just looking for some other opinions on how you all might log short stories if you don't read the entire book... argh. It's the only area of my life where I have OCD, and I can't figure out what to do. #nerdpeopleproblems Ideally they'd alter their database so each "work" is an entry by itself and you can mark a given collection of works read or just a handful of short stories from different collections. Would also fix books that for practical reasons are split up into two volumes, but are a single work. But short stories don't have ISBN numbers so it'd probably be a nightmare to maintain, metadata-wise. Anyway I stopped using goodreads because reading became a numbers game.
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Oct 9, 2015 20:56
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Man I just read about the new Twilight book and I cannot believe it isn't a joke I saw some excerpts and somehow it manages to be worse than the original. Like, Stephanie Meyer wrote it because But Stephanie Meyer actually believes in the aforementioned stereotypical gender roles and rewrote parts of the book so her genderswapped characters better fit them. So Beaufort Swan (these loving names, man) has had virtually every moment where Bella cried or self-reflected or displayed any kind of vague complexity in her emotions purged from his narrative to prevent him from seeming too "weak". The scene where Bella faints at the sight of blood now includes a few lines where Beau explains that he has a "weak vasovagal system" (a really dumb way of saying weak circulation, I guess) so he can be manly and pass out from a medical problem rather than traditionally womanly weakness. She also tries to make Beau feel more masculine in really hilarious ways, like "It was beautiful, I couldn't deny that" being rewritten as "It was probably beautiful, I guess." The newly female characters are more cheerful and descriptive than any of their male counterparts, because women are bubbly and emotional to her. The male version of Rosalie has a man bun, and Beau's narration says something like "It should have made him look girly, but it really made him look even more manly." That is a serious line to justify a man bun. And the names are incredible. Bella and Edward become Beaufort and Edythe. The Cullen family includes Royal Hale and Archie.
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Oct 9, 2015 21:48
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drat, I hate this dumb series and think it is really stupid. So I went to the bookstore and picked up my copy and here's my meticulous thread with line by line dissections
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Oct 9, 2015 21:56
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Stravinsky posted:drat, I hate this dumb series and think it is really stupid. So I went to the bookstore and picked up my copy and here's my meticulous thread with line by line dissections How's somebody supposed to have a legitimate reason to dislike something if they never even look at it?
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Oct 9, 2015 21:57
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chitoryu12 posted:How's somebody supposed to have a legitimate reason to dislike something if they never even look at it? Another option is not having an opinion.
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Oct 9, 2015 22:02
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chitoryu12 posted:How's somebody supposed to have a legitimate reason to dislike something if they never even look at it? by being high level
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Oct 9, 2015 22:33
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Snapchat A Titty posted:Another option is not having an opinion. Or I just.....can?
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Oct 9, 2015 22:35
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chitoryu12 posted:Or I just.....can? Can what? It's fine if you read it, it doesn't bother me. I just meant that it's not necessary to have an opinion on every book ever, so it's not necessary to read them for that same reason. If a book looks interesting, give it a shot and if it's poo poo, stop reading or post a thread I guess.
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Oct 9, 2015 22:54
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Snapchat A Titty posted:Can what? It's fine if you read it, it doesn't bother me. I just meant that it's not necessary to have an opinion on every book ever, so it's not necessary to read them for that same reason. If a book looks interesting, give it a shot and if it's poo poo, stop reading or post a thread I guess. I think you're talking about something entirely different. I was responding to a guy who was somehow critical of the idea that I might actually read something so I can legitimately say whether or not I like it instead of just going "Heh, Twilight sucks" and then not being able to actually say why.
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Oct 9, 2015 22:56
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chitoryu12 posted:I think you're talking about something entirely different. I was responding to a guy who was somehow critical of the idea that I might actually read something so I can legitimately say whether or not I like it instead of just going "Heh, Twilight sucks" and then not being able to actually say why. Oh I gotcha. I thought you were quoting me as if you were specifically disagreeing with me. It's all good.
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Oct 9, 2015 23:11
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