FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[salty-horse]

Moonglow by Michael Chabon is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Following on the heels of his New York Times bestselling novel Telegraph Avenue, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon delivers another literary masterpiece: a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure—and the forces that work to destroy us.

In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon.

Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination.

From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,” the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.

[salty-horse]

A bunch of Francis Spufford books are on sale today in the UK on Amazon.
Kobo hasn't updated their prices but are eligible for a price match.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

A bunch of Francis Spufford books are on sale today in the UK on Amazon.
Kobo hasn't updated their prices but are eligible for a price match.

Thanks! I've wanted to read I May Be Some Time for some time and it's not available digitally here. (The paperback is a whopping $16 at Amazon and I don't read paper anyway.)

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

A bunch of Francis Spufford books are on sale today in the UK on Amazon.
Kobo hasn't updated their prices but are eligible for a price match.

Maybe a better Kobo search
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/search?qu...4-574bdbae5f96

[salty-horse]

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

Think your family is dysfunctional? Meet the Flynns.

For the three Flynn daughters, it’s been disastrous since their parents opened up their marriage. Abigail, the eldest, is dating an ex-soldier several years her senior nicknamed ‘War Crimes Wes’. Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist. And the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to a wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone – or something – is monitoring the town’s citizens.

Casting a shadow across their lives is Paul Alabaster, a nefarious local billionaire. Rumours of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with Alabaster’s machinations sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy – one that may just, finally, bring them closer together.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

Got it.

Thank you!

[BionicGecko]

The 30th anniversary edition of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is on sale for 0.99£ in the UK (Kobo, Amazon).

Edit: Although the product page mentions this is a new edition for the 30th anniversary of the book, and although the cover is indeed that of the 30th anniversary edition, the content does not correspond to the 30th anniversary edition (the foreword by Michelle Zauner is missing, and the book contains an “introduction to the 2013 edition”). This seems to be the case on both Kobo and Amazon.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

The 30th anniversary edition of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is on sale for 0.99£ in the UK (Kobo, Amazon).

Edit: Although the product page mentions this is a new edition for the 30th anniversary of the book, and although the cover is indeed that of the 30th anniversary edition, the content does not correspond to the 30th anniversary edition (the foreword by Michelle Zauner is missing, and the book contains an “introduction to the 2013 edition”). This seems to be the case on both Kobo and Amazon.

Oof, tempting, but, looking at the page count...am I really gonna have the energy to read a single book for 50 hours?

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Oof, tempting, but, looking at the page count...am I really gonna have the energy to read a single book for 50 hours?

I bought it in November for $4.99 USD and it's worth it based on the word count alone. I read the first chapter back then and it's definitely interesting. About to embark on reading the rest with a friend of mine starting next week.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

I bought it in November for $4.99 USD and it's worth it based on the word count alone.

You seem to be equating more words with more value/"bang-for-your-buck". I submit that this is true up to a point (e.g. if I'm paying more than $0.99 I want a novel, not a novella), but beyond a certain point it actually becomes a detriment, because the prospect of reading something that long becomes daunting.

I had 1Q84 on my shelf for several years before I finally psyched myself up to read it, and that took me the better part of the month to get through it. That book was half the length of this one...

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

You seem to be equating more words with more value/"bang-for-your-buck".

Perhaps I was too succinct. I'm merely saying if this is the sort of book you're interested in, it doesn't get this cheap too often due to its size, so now is the time to plunge.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

Edit: Although the product page mentions this is a new edition for the 30th anniversary of the book, and although the cover is indeed that of the 30th anniversary edition, the content does not correspond to the 30th anniversary edition (the foreword by Michelle Zauner is missing, and the book contains an “introduction to the 2013 edition”). This seems to be the case on both Kobo and Amazon.

I don't think it is rare for all previous introductions to be included, but the rest of it seems like blatant misrepsentation by the publisher (since it happened for both stores).

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I don't think it is rare for all previous introductions to be included, but the rest of it seems like blatant misrepsentation by the publisher (since it happened for both stores).

The American version doesn't have the older introductions, just the latest. Which was weird for me, because I bought it with the older intro, but Amazon updated the thing to the new one.

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I don't think it is rare for all previous introductions to be included, but the rest of it seems like blatant misrepsentation by the publisher (since it happened for both stores).

The weirdest thing is that the cover is correct, as it mentions the foreword by Michelle Zauner (which is the “highlight” of the 30th anniversary version), but it’s not the one in the book; instead we get a foreword by Dave Eggers from 2006. It’s not a deal breaker, as obviously the foreword is not needed to read the book, but it really is a blatant misrepresentation!

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

The American version doesn't have the older introductions, just the latest. Which was weird for me, because I bought it with the older intro, but Amazon updated the thing to the new one.

Ah so perhaps there’s hope that my version gets updated too!