All the Literature and Reading Stuff...

[Hurlshort]

Slightly off topic: The worst book I've ever been assigned to read was Catcher in the Rye. The fact that the book was written by a kid right out of high school who had no clue what he wanted to do with his life and was about a kid out of high school who had no clue what he wanted to do with his life seems to be lost on English professors.

 

 

Please, tell us about Vonnegut and Steinbeck next. 

[Gromnir]

I'm going to Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota this summer, so I'm looking for some good books about the history of the area.  I've watched Deadwood, of course, and we are staying a couple nights in that town.  We are also staying in Custer, so I might be interested in a good book on him.

ok, we could channel our inner bruce and go all leonard peltier on ya, but truth is we never much sympathized with peltier. am gonna avoid the rather considerable number o' books focusing on indian suffering while recognizing that many is fine reads.

 

you a laura ingalls wilder fan?  be honest.  a couple o' her books were set in south dakota... at least that is our recollection.  another pioneer/settler book worth a read is giants in the earth. is historical fiction and does a fair job from the portions we has actual read.

 

given the recent thread direction asking 'bout fantasy, is perhaps appropriate to observe that dan simmons, the guy who wrote hyperion and ilium, also wrote a book called the black hills. am gonna avoid comment on quality, but keep in mind as fantasy, is not 'posed to be historical accurate.

 

am knowing you asked 'bout history books, but is some good movies too. again, am gonna avoid the obvious dances with wolves kinda stuff.  little big man were a novel before it were a movie.  is a fun read if full o' inaccuracies.   if you want a kinda modern indian perspective, watch powwow highway.  

 

national geographic also included an impressive pine ridge piece a few years ago... see if we can get a linky.

 

http://www.aaronhuey.com/pine-ridge-national-geographic-magazine/

 

am sure you can get a copy o' the national geographic article if you wish to have the accompanying text to go with the photos.  thus ends our preachy indulgence.

 

custer actual wrote a book, so if you are genuine interested, we recommend starting with his personal account. custer and the epic of defeat is a nice book that does a fair job contrasting fact v. fiction surrounding custer's doomed final battle, but custer were a noteworthy personage before his death and many books give only cursory recognition o' the general's early life and military career.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 5, 2016 by Gromnir

[Guard Dog]

I'm going to Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota this summer, so I'm looking for some good books about the history of the area.  I've watched Deadwood, of course, and we are staying a couple nights in that town.  We are also staying in Custer, so I might be interested in a good book on him.

The best history book I've read about the area was The Heart of Everything That Is by Bob Drury. I commented on it here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69999-the-latest-reading-thread/?p=1635111.

 

Gromnir would be a better judge on it's veracity than I am but I thought it was well researched and the writing puts you "there" and gives a feeling not just of the history but the land and locations.

[Hurlshort]

Thanks guys, some of these sound like great reads.  

[Hurlshort]

 

national geographic also included an impressive pine ridge piece a few years ago... see if we can get a linky.

 

http://www.aaronhuey.com/pine-ridge-national-geographic-magazine/

 

am sure you can get a copy o' the national geographic article if you wish to have the accompanying text to go with the photos.  thus ends our preachy indulgence.

 

 

 

Those are pretty haunting.  

[Cyseal]

Is there some detective sci-fi adventure book to recommend?

[Leferd]

Is there some detective sci-fi adventure book to recommend?

Gromnir mentioned Asimov, and I agree. Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun are classic SF Whodunnits.

[Raithe]

Is there some detective sci-fi adventure book to recommend?

 

io9 - 10 Greatest Science Fiction Detective Novels of All Time

 

Best Sci-Fi Books - 23 Best Science Fiction Mystery Books

 

A little bit of crossover on those lists, but it should provide a few thoughts.

 

 

[Guard Dog]

Leviathan Wakes starts out as a detective story. James Holden is a detective on Ceres trying to solve a disappearance. It turns into a much bigger story though.

[Gromnir]

our top 3 is gonna be caves of steel, demolished man and  gun, with occasional music... though one needs be a bit more flexible regarding lethem's work.  lethem goes to a less familiar place than does asimov or bester, but his protagonist is clear channeling marlowe and other noir detectives. 

 

also, keep in mind that every phillip k. **** novel is arguable a mystery/detective story.  scanner darkly and flow my tears the policeman said, while not specific detective stories, follow the detective formula kinda close.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[ManifestedISO]

 

http://www.aaronhuey.com/pine-ridge-national-geographic-magazine/

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

I realize now all the problems I thought I had are illusory. 

[Leferd]

Really tempted to to read this.

 

 

Co-written by Ex-Grantlander/Baseball Prospectus/FiveThirtyEighters. Basically stathead Sabremetricians are given the opportunity to play Moneyball with an Independent Minor (MINOR) League team.

 

The sneak preview serves as a good teaser. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-happened-when-we-tried-to-play-moneyball-without-any-money/

 

As a bonus, I like the mascot.

 

[ManifestedISO]

No way, after laundry tomorrow I'm picking up a copy of this. Not that I'm about to die, but you never know. 

 

[Guard Dog]

Really tempted to to read this.

 

 

Co-written by Ex-Grantlander/Baseball Prospectus/FiveThirtyEighters. Basically stathead Sabremetricians are given the opportunity to play Moneyball with an Independent Minor (MINOR) League team.

 

The sneak preview serves as a good teaser. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-happened-when-we-tried-to-play-moneyball-without-any-money/

 

As a bonus, I like the mascot.

 

I'm definitely buying this one

[Raithe]

On the changing nature of science-fiction literature....

 

 

Golden Age science fiction was like your drunken ex-roommate from college: For the most part, you outgrew the guy and matured into a functional adult, but every once in a while he'd come to crash on your couch and, instead of chastising his life choices, you'd stuff some bail money in your sock and go out to shotgun beers from a flabbergasted policeman's riot helmet with him. Maturity is a wonderful thing, but sometimes you just need to toss adulthood in the dumpster and go punch a guy in a Little Caesar costume.

[Guard Dog]

I finished reading The Scar by China Mieville. It took a little bit for me to get into but it was pretty good. A little weird. I understand his novel Perdido Street Station was in the same setting. I'll give it a look later. Now reading The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom by David Boaz. I just started that one on my lunch break today. Also reading Just Life by Neil Abramson. I didn't like his first novel Unsaid at all. And while he does have a better story idea this time he just doesn't have the writing skills to pull it off. Reading his dialogue is so awkward it hurts my brain. I'm glad this one is a library book.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

I finished reading The Scar by China Mieville. It took a little bit for me to get into but it was pretty good. A little weird. I understand his novel Perdido Street Station was in the same setting. I'll give it a look later.

 

"A little weird" is perhaps understating it slightly   Actually I just decided to re-read it, and I was astonished how well it's put together - the characterization is incredibly consistent, the twists are very well foreshadowed, the overarching themes and motifs are very coherent... and I was mostly surprised not because this is a standout book in its genre (well technically it is, because "fantasy steampunk" is generally not a genre associated with any level of consistent characterization, well-foreshadowed twists and coherent themes, but in the wider SF/F scene, it's not that special), but because Perdido Street Station had nowhere near this level of craftsmanship.

 

I mean, Perdido Street Station is all kinds of awesome and genre-defining to me (when I first read it, after being brought up on a steady diet of golden age SF and Tolkien, the fact that genre fiction can actually be about other things than starships and evil overlords completely blew my mind), but it's very much a love letter to the aesthetics of new weird rather than a book with a plot that progresses from A to B. I **** you not, the actual events that kickstart the main conflict don't happen until the very end of the first half of the book.

[Guard Dog]

Now reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind about William Kamkwamba. As a self educated teenager in Malawi this young man began building windmill powered generators out of tractor and bicycle parts and using them to bring running water to impoverished villages. He is a pretty remarkable man and a very interesting story. 

[Agiel]

Throneworld, part of the "The Beast Arises" Warhammer 40000 book series. Awesome to read about my favourite space elf ninja clowns in this one, and see them mop the floor with the Adeptus Custodes and almost come out on top of a Callidus Assassin.

Edited May 20, 2016 by Agiel

[Oerwinde]

I have about 1 and a half Witcher books left. Its an interesting twist that Vampires don't need blood to survive, its just an intoxicant, and vampires who kill by drinking blood are essentially just alcoholics overdoing it.

[Guard Dog]

Now reading George Washington's Secret Six by Brian Kilmeade. It's one of the source books that inspired the AMC show Turn.

 

Also reading Lita Ford's memoir Living Like a Runaway. By reading I mean I bought it and looked at the pictures. I'll really get into it tonight. 

[Guard Dog]

I just ordered this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455568872/ref=s9_acsd_simh_bw_c_x_1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-3&pf_rd_r=PKMT6ESWR6J5KHFP49QW&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=2394961222&pf_rd_i=283155

 

Now reading this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455568872/ref=s9_acsd_simh_bw_c_x_1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-3&pf_rd_r=PKMT6ESWR6J5KHFP49QW&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=2394961222&pf_rd_i=283155

 

Someone once asked me how smart I though my dogs were. I told them they know everything there is to know... about being a dog. That means they are smarter than me on that point. This book takes that notion and expands on it. Very well researched and written.

[Raithe]

For the random literature related thing...

 

Think you couldn't possibly lose your amazon publishing account, think again

 

 

 

There’s this indie author I know a little bit from the Kboards.com forum. Her name is Pauline Creeden, and she’s an ordinary midlister, like so many of us. I remember PMing her some time ago and gushing about how particularly beautiful one of her book covers is — the one for Chronicles of Steele: Raven.collection Here, I’ll include an image. Gorgeous, eh?

Anyway, today I tuned in to Kboards and noticed that Pauline had started a thread. It contained what’s surely the worst news possible for an indie author: Amazon had closed her publishing account. All her ebooks had been taken off sale. Permanently. Here’s the email she got from Amazon:

 

We are reaching out to you because we have detected that borrows for your books are originating from systematically generated accounts. While we support the legitimate efforts of our publishers to promote their books, attempting to manipulate the Kindle platform and/or Kindle programs is not permitted. As a result of the irregular borrow activity, we have removed your books from the KDP store and are terminating your KDP account and your KDP Agreement effective immediately.

 

As part of the termination process, we will close your KDP account(s) and remove the books you have uploaded through KDP from the Kindle Store. We will issue a negative adjustment to any outstanding royalty payments. Additionally, as per our Terms and Conditions, you are not permitted to open new KDP accounts and will not receive future royalty payments from additional accounts created.

 

According to Pauline, she received no warnings. She just checked her email and discovered she’d been banned for life from selling on Amazon. Now, I don’t know Pauline well enough to ask about her sales details, but if this happened to me, 70% of my writing income would vanish. For most of us, Amazon is by far the best platform for selling books. Losing one’s account there would be a career-ending event for many of us.

 

While the email Pauline got sounds like a form letter, it does imply that her problem arose from two things: promotional activity and Kindle Unlimited (KU) borrows. Most of you are probably familiar with Amazon’s KU program. It’s a subscription service through which readers pay about $10/month to read as many books as they like. It’s a great deal for major bookworms. As a reader, I’m a member myself.

 

KU authors get paid as readers make their way through the books they borrow. So, if someone borrows your 300-page novel and reads the entire thing, you get paid for 300 page-reads (about $1.50). If they only get though half the book, you get paid half as much. When authors self-publish on Amazon, they have to choose whether or not to participate in KU. Many choose to do so, as the program includes promotional opportunities and enhanced visibility on the platform. The one downside is that Amazon demands the right to offer KU books exclusively; authors can’t upload those books to iTunes or Kobo or other sales sites. Therefore, authors who have their books enrolled in KU are even more dependent on the Amazon platform.

 

Amazon’s email to Pauline suggests that the KU accounts borrowing and reading her books were not legitimate. They’re implying, basically, that she paid a click-farm to borrow her books and race through them, so that she would get paid for pages that weren’t truly read. There are outfits that do this kind of thing. Someone in a developing nation will open twenty KU accounts, which are free for the first month, and then use those accounts to borrow books and either page though them at high speed or skip directly to the end, generating a pay-out for the author. This is a known scam plaguing KU. Scammers have been doing stuff like putting up 10,000-page "books" of gibberish, hiring click-farms to borrow and "read" them, and raking in the big bucks. It got particularly bad earlier this year, and Amazon has been cracking down on these scammers in recent months. Which is good, right? No one wants Amazon to be clotted with garbage.

 

But Pauline isn’t a scammer uploading gibberish. She’s a real writer uploading real books. True, there are probably outfits that real authors, not just gibberish-producing scammers, can hire to do this sort of thing. In fact, Amazon warns against using black-hat promoters:

　

You’re welcome to promote your book through third-party websites and other services, but we encourage you to keep a close eye on the tactics they use to promote your books. You are responsible for ensuring that no tactics used to promote your book manipulate the Kindle platform and/or Kindle programs. We advise against using any sites that "guarantee" a return on your investment.

 

We support our authors’ efforts to promote their books worldwide, but at the same time we work to prevent any manipulation of the Kindle platform.

But Pauline says she hasn’t used any shady promotional sites. The ones she says she’s hired are those most of us have used. They’re well known and, so far as we’ve heard, they’re perfectly legit, advertising real books to real readers.

 

Pauline does report that she saw a one-day increase in page-reads on one of her books (Raven, actually) in May — from the usual 80 per day to 25,000. (That’s a big spike, but not a terribly lucrative one. The payment rate for April was $.005/page; if May is similar, 25,000 page-reads will generate $125. Not enough to risk your KDP account over, that’s for sure!) Pauline doesn’t know what caused the spike. She hadn’t promoted the book recently. Did a click-farm hit her book by accident? Did someone with a grudge target her? Was it just a glitch? Was the one-day spike even the problem? The problem is that we don’t know what the problem was. No specifics have been shared.

Amazon has been "looking into" Pauline’s situation for ten days, now. They’re not telling her anything, and her ebooks remain offline, their rankings getting worse and worse. It’s got to be a terrifying situation for her.

 

You know who else is terrified? Everyone. Well, okay, not everyone. Not everyone knows about this. But I’ve seen quite a few authors wondering if they should take their books out of KU, wondering if the benefits are worth the risk.

 

To be clear, Amazon has the right to do what it did to Pauline. We all agree to the KDP Terms of Service when when we publish, and those terms make it clear that we sell on Amazon’s platform at Amazon’s pleasure. They can close us down any time for any reason. If they decide to take down every book containing the word "moist," they can go ahead and do that with perfect legality, so far as I understand it.

 

But legality alone doesn’t make right. Taking career-destroying action without warning, in the shape of a form letter; offering no explanation as to why; sitting on the issue for day after day with no response … this isn’t nice or fair. It’s the way you treat adversaries, not partners. We want to be Amazon’s partners.

Beyond the issue of simple decency, there’s also the question of the damage this kind of thing will do to KU. Who’s going to put their books in the program if doing so makes one vulnerable to this sort of devastating blow? No one wants to risk account termination. No one. And what readers will sign up for the program if frightened authors pull out all their books?

For the good of the whole community, I think someone at Amazon needs to step up and give this situation some personalized attention.

 

 

[Raithe]

For the rather entertaining imagery...

 

 

Next to him, a furry eight-legged creature the size of a basketball struggled, trying to untangle itself from the roots. It was covered in blue fuzz and resembled an odd mix of a spider and a kitten, two things that should never go together. It looked like one of Disney’s artists got high on something vile and spent the night drawing his cute nightmares.

[Gromnir]

 

For the rather entertaining imagery...

 

 

 It looked like one of Disney’s artists got high on something vile and spent the night drawing his cute nightmares.

 

am imagining the above would describe a typical day for tim burton... for the last 30 years.

 

HA! Good Fun!