The Return Of The £5 Amazon E-book Buying game (£4.68 Version)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well it's the first of the month and the early morning. I'm in Essex exile whilst my mother is still in hospital recovering from her operation so at the moment have nothing much to do.

So in the spirit of shrugging my shoulders before I go and have a bath decide to resuscitate the Amazon £5 ebook buying game. Basically where starting from their Daily Deals and following from their recommendations try to buy the cheapest (though they would have to interest me) books I could buy for a total of £5.

This time though. As there is £19.68 in the account. The balance to play with, rather like chocolate bars, has shrunk to £4.68 for this month.

So let's begin.

I look at the Daily and Monthly Deals. Nothing screams buy me. So I look at the books that are "recommended" for me based on my ebook-buying purchases. One book strikes me instantly. The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf. A collection of essays. Worth a read I think so bought for 99p.

£3.69 left. "Top Picks For you" The screen emboldenedly pronounces. I look.I notice The Tenderness Of Wolves. Costa Book of the year 2007 (Costa has been going for over ten years?) . That too is 99p. Bought.

£2.70 left. Suddenly my eyes fall on a complete collection of the works of Marcel Proust. Have never read him but you feel that a subconscious literary bucket list in your head is saying "buy it". It is also just 49p so bought.

£2.21 left. The system then gives me the complete works of James Joyce. but I know I've Dubliners in the Kindle so I pass. Then I notice the complete works of Franz Kafka for 49p as well. That same literary bucket list is telling me not to be an idiot and buy it, and buy it now.

So I do. £1.72 left. The collected works of the essayist William Hazlitt crops up. 99p. Bought.

73p left. Spend 49p on the complete works of Alexander Pushkin. I know I have a novel of his (I think a poetic one at that) in storage at the moment. But hey. It's the complete set so why not? Bought and for this month the game is finished.

And I look at the books I've bought and think? Am I a proper reader? All these classic works that I haven't read. But then it comes back to the curse of the reader. So many books but so little time. Even at my fifty four years on this planet life interferes with the need to turn and now swipe the page. Still they are bought now. A greater chance that I'll get round to reading them sometime.

Until the next time.

Of Books Read,Bought and Kindled

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well another one of those six books I commenced reading a few weeks ago has at last been finished. The Nowhere Men by Michael Calvin.

It's an impressive book about football talent spotters. Explaining to me that it's far more than watching a kid in the local park and saying "He could be the next Ronaldo".

It's explains, with credible readability that it's all computers, analytics, gut instincts and reports. There is a science to this now.

The book is not without it's problems. It hasn't aged well (published in 2013). The Newcastle system, which the author seemed to admire, has been undermined by their relegation from the Premier League. And the portrait of David Moyes as the assured manager of Everton is far from the potentially tragic figure he is now.

It also does seem to lag around the middle. The author going to every nook and cranny to talk about the subject where for a general reader such a thorough clean isn't really needed. Still, the chapter on the talent scout who discovered David Rocastle is worth getting the book for by itself.

I won't be getting a football book to replace this one from the library until I've finished the Sue Townsend I also borrowed there.

A sign of old age is loss of memory. I'd forgotten to mention a book I'd bought for 20p a few weeks back, It was:

Alexander Pushkin - Eugene Onegin

This is apparently a "verse novel". Never read one of these before. Anyway the Penguin Book budget is currently £3.20.

I've decided to start reading now more from the Kindle during the night for the reasons I gave in an earlier post. The first ebook is going to be the complete essays of George Orwell. We'll see how this goes.

Until the next time.