Since I'm a member of Amazon's "Hey, you spend way too much money with us, so here's some free shipping" club, I usually spend Wednesday night nosing around for reading material for my day off. Pick out a book or two, select Next Day Air for $3.99/item, and hey! Presto! My leisure reading shows up on Friday as though by magic.
So, there it is, Wednesday night. I select The Elephant In The Room and Antique Firearms Disassembly/Reassembly, and note that both contain the reassuring green print stating "Order within the next ten hours and receive your order on Friday, November 3rd!"
I not only ordered within the next ten hours, I ordered within the next ten minutes.
According to order tracking, guess what's showing up on frickin' Monday?
Bastiges.
Now I have to stop at a book store on the way to lunch; my brain is growling louder than my tummy...
They don't have librarys where you live?!
ReplyDeleteKnox county should have a couple.. I think there's one in Farragut.
ReplyDeleteI tend to go to a brick & mortar store. The Borders Rewards system is decent as long as you keep using the 30% off coupons they post on the Net.
ReplyDeleteI hang on to my "re-read" authors for times of drouth. It's frustrating to browse Amazon or wander through one of the Biggies and none of my favorite authors has anything new out. Having a couple of thousand books around makes life easier.
ReplyDeleteBut I hear Spider Robinson has completed a previously unfinished Heinlein. Yaaaayyyyy!
In the meantime, it's quail season and football season and getting cooler and all that. And tomorrow is "fix up hunt camp" day.
Life is good. It'll be better come Monday, when all the Chiliheads go home.
Art
" They don't have librarys where you live?!"
ReplyDeleteCall it an eccentricity of mine, but if I want to read a book, I go buy it. This creates positive feedback by rewarding the author and publisher, and hopefully encourages them to produce more of the same. Plus, it causes me to break out in libertarian hives to think that I'd be using the taxpayers' money to fund my reading habit.
" I tend to go to a brick & mortar store."
Generally, I do, too. I only get maybe 5-10% of my books from Amazon.
" I hang on to my "re-read" authors for times of drouth. "
Oh, definitely. I've been re-perusing Pournelle's John Christian Falkenberg books, but the stack of pages of Prince of Mercenaries in my right hand was getting thin. Plus, have you ever stood there in front of six feet of shelf space, floor to ceiling, covered with Tolkein, Heinlein, Drake, Hogan, Pournelle, Niven, McCaffrey, Card, Anderson, et cetera and realized that you'd re-read every book on it over the past couple-three years, sometimes multiple times? (LOTR and the Lazarus Long books get at least annual readings...) and there was just nothing there that really tripped your fancy at the moment?
Yep. Worse is getting a book and figureing out you've already read it and it wasn't too good. I buy non-fiction, use my involuntary tax dollar purchased books at the library for fiction. Fredrick Forsyth has a very good new one - "The Afgan".
ReplyDeleteAl T.
As the Stone Age ended, I was teaching English to a lot of high school non-readers.[And, yes, some of my classes were kids we expected to go to college. I was just trying to help the others survive.] Try selling them on doing a book report a semester [6 of them]. So I read everything I could to find something they might like. And read for myself. Figured out once that I was doing about 250 books a year. Which is why I still use the library for most of my books - which in retirement is closer to 400 books a year. B&N does see me often enough that I have a "members" card. OldeForce
ReplyDeleteArt Eatman,
ReplyDeleteYour "hearing" is good, it's "Variable Star" finished by Spider from notes and a plotline left by Robert. Google the title for the website and you'll find the first eight chapters online as a free sample. After that you have to buy the book, TANSTAAFL.
Tammy,
ReplyDeleteGo back to the early stone age and check out the original "space operas", the "Lensman" series by E.E.(Doc)Smith. they're a bit dated by now, the setting and slang are pure 1930s but the stories are still fun, straight slam bang adventure in a future that never happened.
"Anonymous",
ReplyDeleteThanks for being a teacher who tried to teach reading. Mrs. Mahoney in one of my very early grammar school years gave away old books at the end of the school year. She was an old dragon in the classroom but I got a copy of "Grimm's Fairy Tales" and was hooked for life. I hope the old gal is in a teacher's heaven where she can look down and see that one of the little brats took her gift and ran with it.
ooops, apologies, the above by "Anonymous" to "Anonymous" was "gunner" to anonymous who was a teacher.
ReplyDelete