


Haha Americans, I laugh at your puny currency! - Livre d'Or








Miscellaneous. Eclectic. Random. Perhaps markedly literate, or at least suffering from the compulsion to read any text that presents itself, including cereal boxes. * Blogroll * Strange words * More links * Bookies * Microblog * Recent comments * Humans only * Second degree * By topic * Cool posts * Writing * New post

Tags

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *



livredor
Haha Americans, I laugh at your puny currency!
Sunday, 02 December 2007 at 10:33 am
Tags:

Previous Entry Next Entry


I've been planning for ages to take advantage of the weak dollar and top up my dwindling book supply with a shopping spree on Amazon. The postage makes it marginal whether it's cheaper to buy books that way rather than in local shops, but the selection of English language books is obviously much greater in Amazon's catalogue than a typical Swedish bookshop. Then hatam_soferet was generous enough to offer to bring my purchases with her when she next visits England, meaning that I can use the free shipping and not even have to pay postage at all.

I got round to putting this plan into action last night. I'd saved up the part of my budget that I consider pocket money for a week, and I was willing to go a bit over that for a one-off purchase. But between the dollar being practically worthless and books being generally cheaper in America and some handy discounts going on at Amazon, I managed to get everything that I wanted that is available to buy, and added in some random CDs while I was at it... and still spent less than half my not terribly generous weekly friv allowance. Wo0t! Having a kind friend who is willing to carry the books for me means it is actually cheaper to buy brand new books from Amazon than second hand books here or even in the UK.


Music, which I just grabbed because it was there and cheap rather than being systematic about it:
Things I wanted but which weren't available:
Anyway, since I usually read about 3 or 4 books a month, this lot should keep me going until Passover time, when I might well go to Cambridge for a few days and raid charity shops for more. I am so looking forward to getting these; it will be like a fabulous birthday present to myself!


Whereaboooots: amazon.com
Moooood: hungrygreedy
Tuuuuune: The Pretenders: Complex person
Discussion: 10 contributions | Contribute something
Tags:

Previous Entry Next Entry




Contribute something
View all comments chronologically



From:wychwood
Date:December 2nd, 2007 11:43 am (UTC)
53 minutes after journal entry
(Link)
Unless you have an allergy to reading books online (as I know many people do), you can read Blindsight here; Watts has several of his books CC-licensed on his website.

And I look forward to your feelings on "Air", "Years of Rice and Salt" and "Speed of Dark" *g*.
(Reply to this comment) (Thread)
lethargic_man: reflect
From:lethargic_man
Date:December 2nd, 2007 12:36 pm (UTC)
1 hours after journal entry, 01:36 pm (lethargic_man's time)
(Link)
Unless you have an allergy to reading books online (as I know many people do), you can read Blindsight here

And if you do, I'll bring my copy to lend to you to Limmud. (I'm also glad to see this list does not include the book I've just got you for your birrrrrdie. :o))

Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt
lethargic_man raves about this in a way that makes it sound like my kind of book.


I wouldn't have said I rave about it...

Tallis: Spem in alium
A random recording, but j4's enthusiasm convinced me I have to get to know this piece better.


Mmm. It just so happens I recently introduced myself to this piece. Having recently watched (at bluepork's behest) the film Touching the Void, I was reading about it probably on Wikipedia, and it mentioned that the Spem in Alium was used as the theme tune. Suffering as I do from Wikipedia syndrome, I then followed the link and was intrigued enough by what I learned to go off and listen to a recording on YouTube...

...And was not, I hate to say, particularly whelmed. I think I would probably need help to appreciate this piece of music; either someone to point out features to me, or the score to follow (and preferably study by myself first at a piano Music 4000 keyboard).
(Reply to this comment) (Up thread) (Parent) (Thread)
lethargic_man: default
From:lethargic_man
Date:December 2nd, 2007 12:59 pm (UTC)
2 hours after journal entry, 01:59 pm (lethargic_man's time)

Touching the Void

(Link)
Oh, btw, I'll recommend this film whilst I'm at it. It's a docu-drama about two British mountaineers who set off to climb a never-climbed face of an Andean peak, Alpine-style, which means in a single push to the top, without establishing a series of camps on the way up.

Having successfully done so, they're still 20,000 feet up when one of them, Joe, breaks his leg. The other one, Simon, then sets about performing an unprecedented one-man mountain rescue, and gets Joe down to just above the glacier at the base of the mountain when a second disaster strikes, and Simon is forced to cut the rope holding Joe. Joe plummets eighty feet and falls into a ravine in the glacier, and Simon reluctantly abandons him for dead.

The film (and the book it's based on) is Joe's incredible survival story (described by Wikipedia as "amongst the most amazing pieces of mountaineering lore in history") of how, broken leg notwithstanding, he managed to get himself out of the ravine and the rest of the way down the mountain by himself, and down to base camp before Simon and the friend they had left there departed.
(Reply to this comment) (Up thread) (Parent) (Thread)
From:ploni_bat_ploni
Date:December 2nd, 2007 02:09 pm (UTC)
3 hours after journal entry
(Link)
I *love* the Kim Stanley Robinson Mars series and I would still like to read '... Rice and Salt'. I shall look forward to your review!

Enjoy your new toys :-)
(Reply to this comment) (Thread)
pw201: science limecat
From:pw201
Date:December 2nd, 2007 03:20 pm (UTC)
4 hours after journal entry, 04:20 pm (pw201's time)
(Link)
I enjoyed Blindsight, having found it on the author's website. I wrote a small review of it a while back.
(Reply to this comment) (Thread)
sartorias: default
From:sartorias
Date:December 2nd, 2007 03:29 pm (UTC)
4 hours after journal entry, 08:29 am (sartorias's time)
(Link)
air and Speed of Dark, excellent stuff!
(Reply to this comment) (Thread)
catwithclaws: book love - Sawyer
From:catwithclaws
Date:December 2nd, 2007 05:36 pm (UTC)
6 hours after journal entry, 11:36 am (catwithclaws's time)
(Link)
I drool in envy. Enjoy the haul!
(Reply to this comment) (Thread)
darcydodo: goombarcy
From:darcydodo
Date:December 2nd, 2007 07:55 pm (UTC)
9 hours after journal entry, 02:55 pm (darcydodo's time)
(Link)
I was less pleased with Spellbinder than with Rawn's other stuff — one of the fantastic things she does is create remarkably in-depth worlds, and this is set in our world and was, I think, lacking for it. But it was still a good read.
(Reply to this comment) (Thread)
rysmiel: wilde thing
From:rysmiel
Date:December 2nd, 2007 09:27 pm (UTC)
10 hours after journal entry, 05:27 pm (rysmiel's time)
(Link)
Wow, that's a great haul. Just about everything there I have read is something I think highly of, though I gave up on Melanie Rawn years ago; surprised to see no Jack Womack though. Looking forward to reviews in due course.
(Reply to this comment) (Thread)
pir_anha: default
From:pir_anha
Date:December 3rd, 2007 05:38 am (UTC)
18 hours after journal entry, December 2nd, 2007 10:38 pm (pir_anha's time)

books to give away

(Link)
anything at all by ozarque? i have nonfiction that i'd be happy to send you if you like (it must go because i am reducing my library, slowly but surely, in prep for the boat). also aristoi.
(Reply to this comment) (Thread)



Contribute something
View all comments chronologically
https://livredor.livejournal.com/224859.html
livredor.livejournal.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-22
120453
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:Q2NUUYI6XS6RPIKXDMUD52P4SF23AU23
<urn:uuid:62cf39a7-cf29-43f2-a68f-fc020f0b00df>
2018-05-24T06:02:25Z
13.88.179.33
text/html
sha1:ALA4WRXQZ2BWRTWEKMVPMWVDLDUZ7HJ5
<urn:uuid:8afb9ee9-2f20-41e2-b537-bc669053cddb>
https://livredor.livejournal.com/224859.html
response
<urn:uuid:ff70ef29-3ebd-4c9d-934e-3ccb58a5a312>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-239-86-148.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-22
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for May 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf