Hooked On Classics (2) and The Great EBook Buying Game (2)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well I've finished reading The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield and to be honest I was stunned.

These stories are very clever. Nothing much happens, no literary eqvilant of melodramatic music will enter your heads as you read them. The characters appear to live comfortable lives. And yet slowly she reveals people who are walking around in a state of quiet sadness.

You the reader are embroiled in the lives of these people for a brief while, but are affected by it.

It was quite simply the best collection of short stories that I've ever read.

The next ebook . Got for reasons of cheapness (it was free) is With Zola in England by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. It was Viztelly's (who was apparently a journalist in the old London Evening News) account of the time in exile of Emile Zola in England (in a time when Britain accepted people who fled their country of origin for political reasons) having left France to avoid imprisonment for his actions on the "Dreyfus Affair". So far so good.

As all my paper books are now boxed, crated etc in preparation for the move you may remember that I created what I'm now calling The Great Ebook Buying Game (given now the fashion is to title everything "great". From baking shows to Acts of Parilament that will turn Britain into some right wing wet dream).

Given that I'm not buying anymore paper books until we permantly move house. This temporary monthly game is simply seeing how many ebooks I can buy on Amazon for £5. I'm doing this as I'm writing this post now. So let's see what happens.

I go to the Amazon "Daily Deals" One of them looks Chick Lit stuff, one of them is George Orwell's Animal Farm (have read that) and the remaining one is The Humans by Matt Haig. It seems interesting enough. So it's bought at 99p.

Looked at "Recommended reads" for me by Amazon. Nothing grabs my attention. Then time for the 250 books they're offering for 99p. I stop at Absolute Friends by John Le Carre. You know I haven't read Le Carre in years. Bought.

Amazon then offer more "Recommended Reads" suggested by my purchase of the Le Carre. I stop at a biography of the Italian fascist poet Gabriele D'Annuzio. by Lucy Hughes-Hallett. I think about this one long and hard. Eventually I decide to buy it. There is a rise of the extreme right in Britain, I'm curious to know what turns people that way. Bought for 99p.

Looking further at the Recommended reads following my purchase of the biography leads me for some reason to the novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. It's just 75p. Bought. This leads me to yet another Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt at just 49p. Bought.I have 79p left. So I go for another Sinclair Lewis book Free Air at 75p. Today then has become Sinclair Lewis day.

Until the next time.