Books You Can't Shut Up About

[Ravenshire]

Holy shit, do you not have a job??

What is this job thing you speak of?!?

I have a desk job that is, for the most part, not terribly demanding intellectually. So, most days I get 9 hours at work to listen to e-books. Then, I push the playback speed slider in WMP up to somewhere between 1.5 and 2/1, depending on the reader. I usually wind up around 1.7 to 1 so I can usually get through about 12 hours (figuring 7 hours actually at my desk with a book playing) worth of audio book. Then I have a little over 2 hours of commute time (bus) to read ebooks. Then there's reading in bed before (and sometimes instead of) going to sleep, eating dinner, sitting and listening to music, taking a... well, probably TMI.

Reading is the single most important form of entertainment in my life. If I were struck deaf and blind, well, let's just say there wouldn't be much quality left in life. Sports, movies, music, television, etc.. All very, extremely distant seconds and I bleed orange and blue (Denver Broncos).

Will keep that in mind.

(I will now go around poking random strangers in transport terminals just to make sure they're all alive. Surely this is bound to piss people off... )

Or, you could just look for the guy with the new hat.

This is a primary reason I dislike purchasing ebooks unless I can get them from the library and only plan on reading them once (which isn't actually a purchase), or unless I can get stupidly good deals on price. I wanted to loan my mom the Henrietta Lacks book but couldn't because loaning wasn't a part of the license for that ebook, but it was so cheap that my mom just bought it herself.

I've been wanting to read Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus, but the prices are outrageous, even the kindle price. For hardcover, it's ~$85, for paperback it's ~$32, and for kindle it's ~$20! WTF?? I could save $15 getting in as an ebook, but I'm still out $20 for a fucking ebook! And it's the type of book that will never be at my library, so I'm really just putting off the purchase until the price (hopefully) drops to something more reasonable.

Trust me, I feel your pain. I keep seeing reminders to "respect the author's rights" in the front of many ebooks yet it's the publishers who are raking in the cash on their over-priced products in a vain attempt to cling to a dead business model. Hopefully, there will soon be a "Spotify for ebooks" type of service where you can pay a manageable fee each month to read as much as you want from a huge selection.