At this moment, there is a batch of very interesting and generally acclaimed books for sale really cheap in Kindle form in the US, that I suspect readers of this blog will be interested in.
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599
Creek Mary’s Blood: A Novel
Africa: A History
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election
And I mention this now because it is dirt cheap on Kindle.
People of the Book: A Novel
Speaking of this author, Geraldine Brooks also has another book, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
The chronicles of Narnia, to be read in whatever order you feel is correct (but there is really only One True Order), are now for a short time available for $1.99 each in Kindle form. This probably only applies to US buyers, but I don’t know that for a fact.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia Book 2 BUT REALLY BOOK 1)
The Magician’s Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia Book 1 BUT REALLY BOOK 2)
The Horse and His Boy (Chronicles of Narnia Book 3)
Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (Chronicles of Narnia Book 4)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia Book 5)
The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia Book 6)
In addition to this, a very special and engaging biography of LBJ: Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
And this, which I’ve not read, but thought you might like to know is cheap:
For kindle, Dune
Meanwhile, of possible interest: Other Worlds Than These
“We can all imagine such “other worlds”–be they worlds just slightly different than our own or worlds full of magic and wonder–but it is only in fiction that we can travel to them. From The Wizard of Oz to The Dark Tower, from Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass to C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a rich tradition of this kind of fiction, but never before have the best parallel world stories and portal fantasies been collected in a single volume–until now.”
It is an anthology of some kind, I put it here because it looks interesting, but I’ve not read it. Have you?
A kindle version of The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World: Stories
This is an anthology including A Boy and his Dog.
And while we are on the topic, check out this lost video of Harlan Ellison:
Jailbird: A Novel
Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government—and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate’s least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.
Also, while we are talking about cheap books, Powder Burn
JD Rockefeller believed himself to be something of a gift from god, a gift to capitalism. I’m not big on the god thing, but Ron Chernow is a gift of some kind to the art of biography. He writes big thick books that are actually about 25% less thick than they look because the last quarter is footnotes. He is famous for writing the biography that became the famous musical known as Hamilton. You know of whom I speak.
I recently read Rachel Maddow’s excellent and compelling, must read Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
Two books suddenly cheap in Kindle format that you might like:
The Physics of Baseball: Third Edition, Revised, Updated, and Expanded
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
How are these two books related? They are probably not related. But they are both cheap right now.
I know you either have these or want these, and they are now cheap in Kindle form:
Happily Ever After
The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
You know those books that anthologize the best of this and the best of that? A bunch of them are now cheap in Kindle form:
The Best American Mystery Stories 2018 (The Best American Series ®)
The Best American Comics 2018 (The Best American Series ®)
The Best American Travel Writing 2018 (The Best American Series ®)
The Best American Sports Writing 2018 (The Best American Series ®)
And since you are busy looking at books, look at mine! In Search of Sungudogo
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
In her new preface, Jane Mayer discusses the results of the most recent election and Donald Trump’s victory, and how, despite much discussion to the contrary, this was a huge victory for the billionaires who have been pouring money in the American political system.
Why is America living in an age of profound and widening economic inequality? Why have even modest attempts to address climate change been defeated again and again? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? In a riveting and indelible feat of reporting, Jane Mayer illuminates the history of an elite cadre of plutocrats—headed by the Kochs, the Scaifes, the Olins, and the Bradleys—who have bankrolled a systematic plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. Mayer traces a byzantine trail of billions of dollars spent by the network, revealing a staggering conglomeration of think tanks, academic institutions, media groups, courthouses, and government allies that have fallen under their sphere of influence. Drawing from hundreds of exclusive interviews, as well as extensive scrutiny of public records, private papers, and court proceedings, Mayer provides vivid portraits of the secretive figures behind the new American oligarchy and a searing look at the carefully concealed agendas steering the nation. Dark Money is an essential book for anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.
Isaac Asimov’s robot books form a somewhat confusing and internally contradictory, but overall fantastic and important corpus of science fiction. One of the Asimov robot books is on sale right now super cheap in Kindle format: The Caves of Steel (The Robot Series Book 1)
Referring to Wikipedia (so get mad at them, not at me, if this seems wrong to you) the robot series of books (not counting short stories) in order of the stories themselves runs something like this:
The Caves of Steel (The Robot Series)
The Naked Sun (The Robot Series)
The Robots of Dawn (The Robot Series)
Did you ever wonder how Richard Dawkins got so smart? Or why he looks so much like Hermione Granger? Well, read this book to find out the answer to those two questions, and so very much more:
An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist
In An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. He paints a vivid picture of his idyllic childhood in colonial Africa, peppered with sketches of his colorful ancestors, charming parents, and the peculiarities of colonial life right after World War II. At boarding school, despite a near-religious encounter with an Elvis record, he began his career as a skeptic by refusing to kneel for prayer in chapel. Despite some inspired teaching throughout primary and secondary school, it was only when he got to Oxford that his intellectual curiosity took full flight.
Arriving at Oxford in 1959, when undergraduates “left Elvis behind” for Bach or the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dawkins began to study zoology and was introduced to some of the university’s legendary mentors as well as its tutorial system.
It’s to this unique educational system that Dawkins credits his awakening, as it invited young people to become scholars by encouraging them to pose rigorous questions and scour the library for the latest research rather than textbook “teaching to” any kind of test. His career as a fellow and lecturer at Oxford took an unexpected turn when, in 1973, a serious strike in Britain caused prolonged electricity cuts, and he was forced to pause his computer-based research. Provoked by the then widespread misunderstanding of natural selection known as “group selection” and inspired by the work of William Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and John Maynard Smith, he began to write a book he called, jokingly, “my bestseller.” It was, of course, The Selfish Gene.
Here, for the first time, is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist, and the story of how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the twentieth century.
*, by Robert Heinlein, is currently cheap in Kindle format. Thought you should know.
