The Cranky Old Reader

Okay, I'm going to rant a little now.

There's a book called Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein. It was first published in 1948 and is one of Heinlein's classic "juvenile" science fiction novels. Until the last ten years or so it was continuously in print, but now even my library won't carry it because "nobody reads it any more".

It's still as good as it ever was. I read it to my son, and he loved it. I suspect that the reason kids aren't reading it is because they're just not reading as much as they used to, period.

I bought a brand-new paperback edition of Space Cadet in a bookstore (bricks and mortar, presumably with a mortgage, employees, benefits, and other expenses) for $1.95 in 1981. Not on sale, mind you - this was the price that was actually printed on the cover.

The price for the e-book version currently is $9.99 from Barnes & Noble AND, by an amazing coincidence, from Amazon.com too. That's an increase of 512% - which is effectively far more, since the cost of production is now effectively nil.

No paper, no ink, no printing, no binding, no shipping, no insurance on the shipping, no depreciation, no shelf-space required...NOTHING.

And almost certainly virtually no editing or proofreading. All of that was done long ago!

So is that price increase in keeping with the increase of costs in general since 1981? It damned well isn't. In fact, I just looked it up:

 

What cost $1.95 in 1981 would cost $4.85 in 2012.

 

The reading public is being SCREWED, massively, by an effective monopoly that is utterly unashamed and virtually unchecked - and has just grown that much stronger thanks to the sale of Goodreads.

One of my very favorite books, hands down. It never fails to leave me choked up when I reach the end.

An extremely funny work of political and sociological black humor. A group of eccentric and ruthless professors from middle America decide to take over the USA and reform it.The book is packed with clever, amusing ideas, some of which have filtered into popular culture - for example, although it was written before the Internet was developed, it portrays nationwide electronic voting on referendums via something very much like the internet.

A truly original take on Creation, from a semi-Biblical viewpoint - in other words, it's an imaginative take on Genesis from a very skewed angle indeed. This book has the honor of being the one I've loaned out most often AND the one that has failed to be returned to me most often. As a result I've had to buy many copies.I no longer loan it out, of course.

Phunsi is a young zebra who lives with his mother on the African veldt. His gift is speed - he can run so fast that he can't be seen. But when he accidentally runs into a cage and is trapped, he and his mother end up being shipped to a zoo in New York City.It isn't long before Phunsi escapes, and he soon ends up lost in New York - not just in the city, but the relatively pastoral parts of New York state. His adventures are many, ranging from a carousel, to a pet shop, to a farm, to the rooftops of New York City. On the way he meets many other animals, almost all of them with a story, song, or poem to tell. How Phunsi becomes a hero and finds his way home makes for a wonderful story.This book is perfect to be read to any child aged four or older, depending on their vocabulary. Since it was written in the 1940s, it does assume a more extensive vocabulary than some young children may have. A child who enjoys reading the Doctor Dolittle books would probably love The Adventures of Phunsi; it's roughly the same level of vocabulary and density of text.It's charmingly illustrated in black & white by the author.Unfortunately this book is incredibly rare. Copies can be found online for a reasonable price, but so far I have yet to meet or hear from anyone else who has ever read it. Except for my son, that is; I read it to him as soon as he was old enough, and we'll be reading it again soon. This book is simply a treasure.

This was, hands down, one of the three most vile books I've ever read in my life. It's not science fiction or Chinoiserie, as it pretends to be; it's torture-porn of the very nastiest sort. Apart from that, it's quite poorly written, and as science fiction it's grade "Z" at best.An absolutely disgusting book. I feel as if the author tried to molest me. I've never burned or destroyed a book in my life, and I can't bring myself to start now, but I will not continue reading it and I will never open its pages again.I wish I could give negative stars, because this book deserves thousands of them. Only Jack Chalker and one of the authors of the "Wild Cards" series have ever equalled the utter vileness of Chung Kuo.If you like seeing "heroes" discover bizarre new ways to torture and rape innocent characters, then Chung Kuo is the book for you. If so, I hope you'll seek therapy and stay away from children. The only positive thing I can say about the book is that the writing and characters are all so flat and lifeless that the details of the book didn't linger in my memory for too long. Except that even one SECOND was too long to have some of that crap in my head!

I'm still waiting for any of my reviews to come in. The count's still at zero. I know that I should be patient, but that's rather difficult!

 

I have to say that I'm not pleased to see all the Amazon.com advertisements here at BookLikes. Of course, avoiding Amazon in this day and age is like avoiding pollution; there's no way to do it completely.

 

But that didn't mean I was going to let Goodreads jam an exhaust pipe down my throat - and it doesn't mean I like a taste coming from BookLikes, either!

 

I'm not leaving here, however - not now, anyway. If the choices are between seeing Amazon ads, and being Amazon property, I'll take the ads. But it occurs to me that there may be some way to use the Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox to screen out Amazon ads.

The sale of Goodreads to Amazon sent me looking for alternative websites for my reviews...and eventually brought me here, among other places. Today's my first day. I hope it works out.

 

In the meantime, I've started a community on Google Plus called "Escaping Amazon". It's for Goodreads refugees like myself to discuss our options, and also for anyone who wants to avoid shopping at Amazon.com.

 

Anyone can join. It's at https://plus.google.com/communities/101902216461396504043 .

 

 

This is a relatively late and inferior entry in the Three Investigators series. The series was created by Robert Arthur, a woefully neglected author who did a great deal of work with Alfred Hitchcock; Arthur wrote the first nine and the eleventh book in the series. Unfortunately M.V. Carey was no Robert Arthur!I recently read the book to my son. We've read many of the books in the series together. In this one, there were several ways in which the book simply didn't work. Oh, Carey included the usual iconic elements of the series; Jupiter Jones' family, and the hidden Headquarters (a trailer buried under a pile of junk), and Pete, and Bob. But there are several false notes.One that was particularly annoying was the use of Jupiter's name. Arthur usually referred to him as "Jupiter" or "Jupiter Jones". Once in a while his fellow Investigators, Pete or Bob, would refer to him as "Jupe". But in this book, he is almost always called "Jupe" - not just by other people, but by the narrator. I'm not that picky, but seeing "Jupe" repeated over and over in paragraph after paragraph just got weird! It started to become a meaningless sound - you know how some words get when you say them over and over? I ended up auto-correcting it to "Jupiter" when I read it aloud, except when it was said by Pete or Bob.The mystery itself was just...okay. Nothing particularly clever or memorable about it. If anything, the resolution was rather anticlimactic. I won't bother to give it away, though.But another thing that was quite irritating was a dramatic change in a long-standing supporting character, Police Chief Reynolds. In the early books in the series he was supportive and friendly to the Three Investigators, even going so far as to give them official cards identifying them as Junior Deputies or something like that. In Flaming Footprints, he has been completely changed. He's sneering, abusive, hostile, and sarcastic. The change was so extreme that my son remarked on it. Personally, I found the recasting of Chief Reynolds as a stereotypical negative adult authority figure so irksome that I couldn't resist editorializing: "'What do you want now, Jones?' snarled Chief Reynolds, while busily stomping on a cute kitten and simultaneously farting on a helpless old lady."My son is more generous and/or uncritical than I am. He gave the book 4.5 stars. I feel I'm being generous in giving it three.Oh, as always I should note that there are probably two different versions of the text extant. Older versions feature the character of Alfred Hitchcock. For legal reasons newer editions have been rewritten to replace Hitchcock with a lame-ass ersatz version. If you decide to pick this one up, try to go for an older edition. But if you're new to the series, I strongly recommend starting with the original nine books by Robert A. Arthur.

This is a relatively late and inferior entry in the Three Investigators series. The series was created by Robert Arthur, a woefully neglected author who did a great deal of work with Alfred Hitchcock; Arthur wrote the first nine and the eleventh book in the series. Unfortunately M.V. Carey was no Robert Arthur!I recently read the book to my son. We've read many of the books in the series together. In this one, there were several ways in which the book simply didn't work. Oh, Carey included the usual iconic elements of the series; Jupiter Jones' family, and the hidden Headquarters (a trailer buried under a pile of junk), and Pete, and Bob. But there are several false notes.One that was particularly annoying was the use of Jupiter's name. Arthur usually referred to him as "Jupiter" or "Jupiter Jones". Once in a while his fellow Investigators, Pete or Bob, would refer to him as "Jupe". But in this book, he is almost always called "Jupe" - not just by other people, but by the narrator. I'm not that picky, but seeing "Jupe" repeated over and over in paragraph after paragraph just got weird! It started to become a meaningless sound - you know how some words get when you say them over and over? I ended up auto-correcting it to "Jupiter" when I read it aloud, except when it was said by Pete or Bob.The mystery itself was just...okay. Nothing particularly clever or memorable about it. If anything, the resolution was rather anticlimactic. I won't bother to give it away, though.But another thing that was quite irritating was a dramatic change in a long-standing supporting character, Police Chief Reynolds. In the early books in the series he was supportive and friendly to the Three Investigators, even going so far as to give them official cards identifying them as Junior Deputies or something like that. In Flaming Footprints, he has been completely changed. He's sneering, abusive, hostile, and sarcastic. The change was so extreme that my son remarked on it. Personally, I found the recasting of Chief Reynolds as a stereotypical negative adult authority figure so irksome that I couldn't resist editorializing: "'What do you want now, Jones?' snarled Chief Reynolds, while busily stomping on a cute kitten and simultaneously farting on a helpless old lady."My son is more generous and/or uncritical than I am. He gave the book 4.5 stars. I feel I'm being generous in giving it three.Oh, as always I should note that there are probably two different versions of the text extant. Older versions feature the character of Alfred Hitchcock. For legal reasons newer editions have been rewritten to replace Hitchcock with a lame-ass ersatz version. If you decide to pick this one up, try to go for an older edition. But if you're new to the series, I strongly recommend starting with the original nine books by Robert A. Arthur.

It's amazing how Marvel was able to take brilliant source material like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner and produce such a remarkably lame illustrated "novel". The art, the writing...just astonishingly bad. Do yourself a favor and go to the originals, not this churned-out piece of garbage.

It's amazing how Marvel was able to take brilliant source material like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner and produce such a remarkably lame illustrated "novel". The art, the writing...just astonishingly bad. Do yourself a favor and go to the originals, not this churned-out piece of garbage.

I don't like Orson Scott Card. There was a time when he was a gifted writer, but that was decades ago. And I'm rather glad of that, I must admit, because his homophobia and religious bigotry offend me.But Shadows In Flight isn't as bad as most of his recent books have been. Yes, it has the usual "genius" children talking to each other in "shocking" ways; Card seems to find them irresistible. There's even some of Card's trademark child-on-child violence, which makes me wonder just how badly screwed up his head is. But for once he doesn't take it too far.This is no Ender's Game or Songmaster. It isn't even A Planet Called Treason. But it's readable and not annoying, which is a big improvement over Card's other work this millennium.

I don't like Orson Scott Card. There was a time when he was a gifted writer, but that was decades ago. And I'm rather glad of that, I must admit, because his homophobia and religious bigotry offend me.But Shadows In Flight isn't as bad as most of his recent books have been. Yes, it has the usual "genius" children talking to each other in "shocking" ways; Card seems to find them irresistible. There's even some of Card's trademark child-on-child violence, which makes me wonder just how badly screwed up his head is. But for once he doesn't take it too far.This is no Ender's Game or Songmaster. It isn't even A Planet Called Treason. But it's readable and not annoying, which is a big improvement over Card's other work this millennium.

First, a note: I will never try to use my Nook to write a book review again. I had written quite a long review - not easy on the Nook's touch-screen, which is not well-laid-out and lacks a number of conveniences which are standard on other Android devices - only to make the slightest mis-touch and lose EVERYTHING. That's incredibly annoying.That said, The Horse Tamer is part of Walter Farley's Black Stallion series, and it's both charming and memorable. Bracketed by short passages featuring Alec, Henry, and the Black, it's actually a historical novel; Henry's story of his older brother, who tamed horses in the days when horses were the standard mode of transportation. Henry himself plays a small but substantial part in the tale.Unlike most entries in the series, it's not a racing story. But the story of "problem" horses and how to help them is quite fascinating, as well as exciting. I first read this book as a boy, and it has stuck in my head ever since. I'm glad to be able to buy it for my own son, and for the chance to read it again. It includes the original black-and-white line drawings, which are charming. I strongly recommend this book. One caveat, however: the Nook edition has been formatted with HUGE margins. Even when the text is manually set to the smallest margin size, the margins are nearly as large as the text itself - which means that in portrait orientation, each line of text is only a few words wide. This is somewhat awkward. I assume that the publisher did it because the book is SO short, only 100 pages. With reasonable formatting, it would have probably been closer to 70 pages long, even with the illustrations - and they may feel that it would be difficult to charge a full-novel price (even a low one) for what is probably only a novella. But it's a really fine story, and any fan of Walter Farley, the Black, or horses would be wise to pick it up. Strongly recommended!

First, a note: I will never try to use my Nook to write a book review again. I had written quite a long review - not easy on the Nook's touch-screen, which is not well-laid-out and lacks a number of conveniences which are standard on other Android devices - only to make the slightest mis-touch and lose EVERYTHING. That's incredibly annoying.That said, The Horse Tamer is part of Walter Farley's Black Stallion series, and it's both charming and memorable. Bracketed by short passages featuring Alec, Henry, and the Black, it's actually a historical novel; Henry's story of his older brother, who tamed horses in the days when horses were the standard mode of transportation. Henry himself plays a small but substantial part in the tale.Unlike most entries in the series, it's not a racing story. But the story of "problem" horses and how to help them is quite fascinating, as well as exciting. I first read this book as a boy, and it has stuck in my head ever since. I'm glad to be able to buy it for my own son, and for the chance to read it again. It includes the original black-and-white line drawings, which are charming. I strongly recommend this book. One caveat, however: the Nook edition has been formatted with HUGE margins. Even when the text is manually set to the smallest margin size, the margins are nearly as large as the text itself - which means that in portrait orientation, each line of text is only a few words wide. This is somewhat awkward. I assume that the publisher did it because the book is SO short, only 100 pages. With reasonable formatting, it would have probably been closer to 70 pages long, even with the illustrations - and they may feel that it would be difficult to charge a full-novel price (even a low one) for what is probably only a novella. But it's a really fine story, and any fan of Walter Farley, the Black, or horses would be wise to pick it up. Strongly recommended!