The Return of The £5 Amazon E-Book Buying Game : Backlisted Edition

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As it's the time of year when you get Amazon gift vouchers as presents. Proceed to spend what you want and then realise there's £5 less which you don't know what to deal with.

Occasionally on this blog I play a game where following all the recommendations from Amazon I see how many ebooks I can get for a fiver.

This time I'm going to play the game based on the Backlisted literary podcast. Based on books by writers or as guests in the podcast from episode one I will see how many I can download for a pound or less for a total of £5. This doesn't include books available for free or (obviously) books I already have. The other rule here is one book per author

So...

Their Finest by Lissa Evans, a guest on the first and other programmes. A novel about an ad agency in World War Two. 99p.

Coming Up for Air by George Orwell. I've read his essays, Burmese Days and of course 1984 and Animal Farm. But whilst I've got a Classic  Penguin paperback of The Clergyman's Daughter I haven't got round to reading his other fiction. So hopefully this will redress the balance. 84p

James Joyce wrote a novella? Well apparently he did. I must admit to having etons of James Joyce ebooks that I haven't yet got round to reading and this is another one. It's called The Dead. 49p

Jonathan Coe's The Rotters Club. Another contributor to the podcast. An author I've always wanted to get round to read. 99p

Ostrich Country by David Nobbs. An actual author discussed on Backlisted. I've read The Fall and Rise Of Reginald Perrin books. Novels which are far deeper than they first appear so I'm excited about this. 99p

Finally All the Sad Young Men by F Scott Fitzgerald. A sequel to The Great Gatsby. As regular readers will know I view Fitzgerald as literary Switzerland in that I don't dislike him but I don't get why he's considered great. I've never read The Great Gatsby mind. So this sequel has (once I've done so) curiosity value.

So what has this exercise achieved? No idea. Still it was fun playing it.

Until the next time.

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.

Does Welsh Labour read books? (Libraries As Preventative Medicine)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Recently here in Wales there has been a report come out which says that should the funds ring fenced for health continue to be protected it might mean that leisure centres and libraries "unaffordable" in the future. The Welsh first minister, Labour's Carwyn Jones put his grave face on when he said that this was an "inevitable" result in the cuts by Westminster to the Welsh budget.

So the Welsh Conservatives respond in such a highly trained way you wondered whether London threw them a fish afterwards by saying that the situation was because of how Labour has mismanaged the resources it actually had.

Who is right? Well of course the answer is both. Westminster has cut, and will continue to cut the Welsh budget. On the other hand as I've documented in this blog from time to time Welsh Labour seem to prefer tackling issues with grandiose gestures rather than focusing on the nitty gritty of people need in their daily lives. You compare the Welsh Labour government with that of the SNP in Edinburgh and it fails, and miserably at that.

But for the purposes of this post I wanted to discuss the notion, which the Welsh Labour leader appeared to have accepted that to protect the health services in Wales you will need to cut leisure centres and libraries in the future.

What logic is there that the health service will be protected by cutting back on services that will help prevent health conditions? For years we have been told as a nation that we should actively participate in sport which would help to prevent heart conditions for example. So how does it help the NHS that people who could have had healthier bodies because of the proximity of a local leisure centre find it closed? You know what the increased budget will be spent on? It will be spent on people who were denied the means of participating in sports and physically suffered accordingly. False economy number one.

But there are plenty of people who will shout in protest for the leisure centre, so let me shout in protest for the library as a haven for preventative medicine instead. Dementia is a cruel disease of the mind where there is no cure. But it is known that one of the things that helps to at the very least is keeping yourself mentally as well as physically active.

Consider the library then as the leisure centre for the mind. It doesn't really matter what book you've borrowed. It could be James Joyce or James Patterson (plus one other) the point is that you've borrowed a book. Which means first that you have made the physical effort to go to a library. Then you have taken it home, then you sat down and started enjoying the quiet pleasure of turning a page whilst mentally engaging your brain.

Cutting the number of libraries will mean that this vital piece of mental stimulation for many communities will be lost. Consequently there will be a greater risk of dementia cases for the NHS to deal with. Welsh Labour Councils have already closed libraries (Rhondda Cynon Taff) or messed around with them (Bridgend). A more widespread closure programme will make the potential Alzheimer's timebomb even worse.

False economy number two.

And just to confirm I practice what I preach yesterday I finished reading Timetable of Death by Edward Marston. It's not the best Victorian police procedural I've ever read (that goes to the Inspector Cribb novels of Peter Lovesey) but taking the crime genre purely as entertainment I can't recall enjoying a book more for quite a while now.

If there is a piece of possible irritation it might be that Inspector Colbeck and his assistant Sargent Leeming might be of that brilliant upper class detective working class sidekick cliché. But I say possible because this novel is part of a series and being the first I've read (but not the first of the series, there's been at least fourteen) I don't know. Am not going to find out online either. I'll wait until another book in the series comes my way.

The other book finished yesterday was Moranthology by Caitlin Moran. A collection of her columns and articles in The Times newspaper. I loved it. One of those books where you're disappointed for having finished it.

Perhaps Welsh Labour may be interested in her essay regarding Libraries as "Cathedrals of The Soul". Explaining how to her the library was her university which gave her an education for her future life and how library closures will affect a town and the people in it.

But you won't will you Welsh Labour. You don't seem to care about books.

But think of this Welsh Labour. You may laugh at the little old lady with her piles of historical romances, Or the fifty three year old man with his crime novel set in Victorian England with added trains. But reading may mean that we are less of a burden on the NHS.

Think of that Welsh Labour.....and cut the stupid showy projects instead.

Until the next time.