FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

One more major book and he'll have the Nobel Prize....I predict. Then the body of his work will be considered in its totality, and his genius will be confirmed among those who appreciate superlative literature.

I agree with your prediction.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

One more major book and he'll have the Nobel Prize....I predict. Then the body of his work will be considered in its totality, and his genius will be confirmed among those who appreciate superlative literature.

I was curious and did a search on 'Haruki Murakami Nobel'

Turns out in 2018, when the Nobel in literature was cancelled amid a sexual harassment scandal, the Swedish Academy wanted to give out an alternate prize.

Their shortlist of four authors included Murakami who withdrew his name. I wonder if he would do the same for the regular prize?

Incidentally, one of the author four authors was Neil Gaiman. Now, I like and respect Neil Gaiman. But a Nobel (or Nobel Alternate)? Something just isn't clicking there for me. Gaiman is closer to Stephen King or Charles Dickens to me. A great writer. But not a Nobel nominee.

I do think King should be nominated Presidential Medal of Freedom. Not likely given his relationship with the current administration, but I do believe he deserves it as much as Louis L'Amour did.

[Dr. Drib]

I remember reading some articles on that other prize. The thinking was that an acceptance of an alternative Nobel-type prize would dilute consideration for the 'Big One' if one's name was selected (whose nominees for consideration are not given to the public, as you know).

I think, additionally, that the Nobel comes with slightly more than one million dollars as well.

ADDED: I consider Neil Gaiman a popular genre writer - and a good one - but not Nobel quality.

[ReadingManiac]

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is 99p on Amazon UK today
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0089WCFSG

[Little.Egret]

Amazon UK Deal of the Day

99p


The Young Hornblower Omnibus: "Mr.Midshipman Hornblower", "Lieutenant Hornblower", "Hornblower and the "Hotspur"" (A Horatio Hornblower Tale of the Sea) by C. S. Forester


Great value.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00358VI6E/

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Amazon UK Deal of the Day

99p


The Young Hornblower Omnibus: "Mr.Midshipman Hornblower", "Lieutenant Hornblower", "Hornblower and the "Hotspur"" (A Horatio Hornblower Tale of the Sea) by C. S. Forester


Great value.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00358VI6E/

Yes, highly recommended. I've been waiting for this to go on offer to get electronic versions, as I've read them all in paper.

[FulciLives]

Bill Bryson - I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

This is on sale right now at Amazon USA for $4.99

Amazon Description:

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens—as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

I discovered this back in the 1990s and very recently re-read it and I cannot recommend it enough. I literally find myself laughing out loud while reading this book.

Here's an edited except from one section of the book:

Here’s a fact for you: According to the latest Statistical Abstract of the United States, every year more than 400,000 Americans suffer injuries involving beds, mattresses, or pillows. Think about that for a minute. That is almost 2,000 bed, mattress, or pillow injuries a day. In the time it takes you to read this article, four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding.
My point in raising this is not to suggest that we are somehow more inept than the rest of the world when it comes to lying down for the night (though clearly there are thousands of us who could do with additional practice), but rather to observe that there is scarcely a statistic to do with this vast and scattered nation that doesn’t in some way give one pause.

...

But then that’s the thing about household injuries if Table No. 206 is any guide—they can come at you from almost anywhere. Consider this one. In 1992 (the latest year for which figures are available) more than 400,000 people in the United States were injured by chairs, sofas, and sofa beds. What are we to make of this? Does it tell us something trenchant about the design of modern furniture or merely that we have become exceptionally careless sitters? What is certain is that the problem is worsening. The number of chair, sofa, and sofa bed injuries showed an increase of 30,000 over the previous year, which is quite a worrying trend even for those of us who are frankly fearless with regard to soft furnishings. (That may, of course, be the nub of the problem—overconfidence.)

...

It would be interesting to meet some of these people. I would also welcome a meeting with almost any of the 263,000 people injured by ceilings, walls, and inside panels. I can’t imagine being hurt by a ceiling and not having a story worth hearing. Likewise, I could find time for any of the 31,000 people injured by their “grooming devices.”
But the people I would really like to meet are the 142,000 hapless souls who received emergency room treatment for injuries inflicted by their clothing. What can they be suffering from? Compound pajama fracture? Sweatpants hematoma? I am powerless to speculate.

...

Interestingly, what had brought me to the Statistical Abstract in the first place was the wish to look up crime figures for the state of New Hampshire, where I now live. I had heard that it is one of the safest places in America, and indeed the Abstract bore this out. There were just four murders in the state in the latest reporting year—compared with over 23,000 for the country as a whole—and very little serious crime.
All that this means, of course, is that statistically in New Hampshire I am far more likely to be hurt by my ceiling or underpants—to cite just two potentially lethal examples—than by a stranger, and, frankly, I don’t find that comforting at all.

I should point out that this was originally published in 1998 so it primarily deals with the culture at that time.

[Tarana]

Both Amazon and Kobo have The Morland Dynasty books by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles on sale. This is a 35 book completed series of historical fiction that follows one family from medieval times through just after WW1. ALL of the books are on sale for the first time at $3.99 or less - most are $3.99, but some of the early ones are .99 and $1.99. They are usually $7.99.

[sufue]

And if you are lucky enough to be in Canada or another country where these are already in the public domain, they (and others in the Hornblower series) are available to download from fadedpage, PG Canada, and probably other websites too.

I have a list waiting for my next trip to Canada...

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Yes, highly recommended. I've been waiting for this to go on offer to get electronic versions, as I've read them all in paper.

[bfisher]

On sale today at amazon.ca for $CDN 2.99
We Look Like Men of War by William R. Forstchen
https://www.amazon.ca/We-Look-Like-M.../dp/B005T5O3QI

I read this as a Blackstone audio book about 10 years ago. I thought it was excellent. Forstchen is better known for his Lost Regiment sci-fi series. He completed a PhD in history at Purdue, and this book is based on the research he did for his doctoral dissertation, The 28th USCTs: Indiana's African-Americans go to War, 1863–1865.

The Goodreads page:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...ike_Men_of_War

[ZodWallop]

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins is $1.99 at Amazon US.

The whooping crane rustlers are girls. Young girls. Cowgirls, as a matter of fact, all “bursting with dimples and hormones”—and the FBI has never seen anything quite like them. Yet their rebellion at the Rubber Rose Ranch is almost overshadowed by the arrival of the legendary Sissy Hankshaw, a white-trash goddess literally born to hitchhike, and the freest female of them all.

Freedom, its prizes and its prices, is a major theme of Tom Robbins’s classic tale of eccentric adventure. As his robust characters attempt to turn the tables on fate, the reader is drawn along on a tragicomic joyride across the badlands of sexuality, wild rivers of language, and the frontiers of the mind.

The book was also adapted as a mostly faithful movie years ago by Gus Van Sant

[ZodWallop]

Maori by Alan Dean Foster is $1.99 at Amazon US.

Foster is known primarily as an author of light sci-fi and fantasy, but Maori is a historical novel.

The only son of a poor British coal miner, Robert Coffin sets sail for the far ends of the Earth in search of his fortune, leaving his young bride and infant child behind in England. In the sordid and dangerous South Pacific port of Kororareka, on the sprawling island the native Maori call “the Land of the Long White Cloud,” Coffin builds a successful new life as a merchant. He gains an unwavering respect for the aboriginal people and their culture, and finds comfort in the arms of his fiery Irish mistress, Mary.

But the unexpected arrival of a China-bound clipper bearing his wife, Holly, and son, Christopher, throws Coffin’s world into turmoil—compounded by the ever-increasing tension between the Maori tribes and the mistrusted “pakehas” who are plundering their land. As the years of a volatile nineteenth century progress, the indomitable family of the stalwart adventurer the Maori have named “Iron Hair” will struggle, sacrifice, and endure through war, chaos, catastrophe, and change.

[sufue]

I'm a huge fan of Sharon Kay Penman's too short 4-book Justin de Quincy historical mystery series, but in spite of good intentions, still haven't managed to try any of her "normal" historical fiction, although she is much more active in that genre.

Just to make me add to my TBR pile , Time and Chance, the second in her Plantagenets (Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine) series, has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle and Kobo US.

Kindle US: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B002VXTB0O
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/time-and-chance-2

Spoiler:

The sequel to Sharon Kay Penman's acclaimed novel When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance recounts the tempestuous marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II in a magnificent story of love, power, ambition, and betrayal.

He was nineteen when they married, she eleven years his senior, newly divorced from the King of France. She was beautiful, headstrong, intelligent, and rich. It was said he was Fortune's favorite, but he said a man makes his own luck. Within two years, Henry had made his, winning the throne of England and exercising extraordinary statecraft skills to control his unruly barons, expand his own powers, and restore peace to a land long torn by banditry and bloodshed. Only in one instance did Henry err: Elevating his good friend and confidant Thomas Becket to be Archbishop of Canterbury, he thought to gain control over the Church itself. But the once worldly Becket suddenly discovered God, and their alliance withered in the heat of his newfound zeal. What Becket saw as a holy mission-to protect the Church against State encroachments-Henry saw as arrant betrayal, and they were launched inevitably on the road to murder.

Rich in character and color, true to the historical details, sensitive to the complex emotions of these men and women, Time and Chance recreates their story with all the drama, pain, and passion of the moment.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I agree with your prediction.

I also want to add that I feel the same way about Javier Marías: One more major novel and HE should win the Nobel Prize in Literature. (I'm hoping!)

He's one of my favorite writers.


Below: How the body ages...but the Library stays intact.

[ZodWallop]

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone is $1.99 at Amazon US.

National Book Award Winner: A “harrowing” novel of the Vietnam era filled with “white-knuckled suspense” (Time).

In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he’ll find action—and profit—by getting involved in a heroin shipment. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Damascus Gate, Dog Soldiers is “a dark descendant of Conrad’s and Hemingway’s adventure stories,” perfectly capturing the underground mood of America in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered profiteering cops and professional killers—and the price of survival was dangerously high (The New York Times Book Review).

Filmed as Who'll Stop the Rain