FREE/BARGAIN — Audiobooks

[skinmaan]

Originally Posted by ApK

I not making a blanket objection to the idea of meaning shifting in a living language.

In cases of extending the meaning of "marriage" or, similarly extending "theft" to include infringing on certain IP rights, you can agree or disagree with the reasoning, but there WAS reasoning. Someone(s) who knew what those words meant or conveyed, saw a parallel, or a connotation they wanted to apply, and intentionally started to make that extension. Right or wrong is not the issue here.

That's totally different that using "literally" to mean figuratively or "irony" to mean coincidence. Those are cases of people just being clueless about the meanings of the words they used and other people clueless following them, and no one caring enough to get it straight.

The first kind of shift may only serve people on one side of an issue, but the second kind serves no one and hurts us all.

So this is a shift that has been going on for, like, 100 years. How long does it need to continue, no matter how it started, for it to become a legitimate use? It seems to me that nowdays this use of "ironic" is pretty mainstream. I admit the word gets thrown around more than it should and that dilutes its usefulness - kind of like the overuse of "very" is very overdone (pun intended). The use of "ironic" to be an amusing coincidence (intentional or not) seems to be generally accepted by all except word snobs (and I don't consider you one of those, before you might ask).

[ApK]

Originally Posted by skinmaan

So this is a shift that has been going on for, like, 100 years. How long does it need to continue, no matter how it started, for it to become a legitimate use?

On what do you base the 100 year number?
If that's true, it should have been constantly resisted from the moment it started. Ever vigilant!

My point is is DOES matter how it started.

How long before "me" as a synonym of "I" becomes standard usage, since so many people misuse it that way? That should be resisted to. By force of education.

There must be a more appropriate thread somewhere here for us to continue this tangent. Writer's Corner, maybe?

[skinmaan]

Originally Posted by ApK

On what do you base the 100 year number?
If that's true, it should have been constantly resisted from the moment it started. Ever vigilant!

I'll make this my last word on the subject so as to avoid the hand of the mods. Here's my citing, from Webster:

The historical record shows that irony and ironic have been used imprecisely for almost 100 years at least, and often to refer to coincidence. This 1939 quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald is typical: "It is an ironic thought that the last picture job I took—against my better judgment—yielded me five thousand dollars five hundred and cost over four thousand in medical attention." Is this true situational irony? It’s debatable.

Originally Posted by ApK

How long before "me" as a synonym of "I" becomes standard usage, since so many people misuse it that way?

To me that's no worse an abomination than the modern invention of "ze." English isn't english any more. My comics aren't my comics any more. I'm just getting too darn old.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ApK

There must be a more appropriate thread somewhere here for us to continue this tangent. Writer's Corner, maybe?

Originally Posted by skinmaan

I'll make this my last word on the subject so as to avoid the hand of the mods.

Thanks, guys

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ApK

<snip>
That's totally different that using "literally" to mean figuratively or "irony" to mean coincidence. Those are cases of people just being clueless about the meanings of the words they used and other people clueless following them, and no one caring enough to get it straight.
<snip>

I hope that I can make an interjection here without disrupting the flow of your discussion.

There is at least one other possibility for people using "literally" when they mean figuratively. It could have started out with people using the hyperbole, "almost literally." From there, it was only a small step to people using "literally" when they mean "figuratively." But, it is still a pet peeve of mine when people do it.

Probably my greatest pet peeve concerning word usage is when a man or woman says "we're pregnant." I guess that it started out when someone wanted to be cute and said that instead of saying, "we're expecting a baby." Well, a man and woman can be expecting a baby, but only a woman can be pregnant (carrying a fertilized egg or embryo).

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Probably my greatest pet peeve concerning word usage is when a man or woman says "we're pregnant." I guess that it started out when someone wanted to be cute and said that instead of saying, "we're expecting a baby." Well, a man and woman can be expecting a baby, but only a woman can be pregnant (carrying a fertilized egg or embryo).

I HATE the use of "we're pregnant."

[Athens80]

Originally Posted by skinmaan

English isn't english any more.

And it hasn't been since 1066.

[tubemonkey]

Audible UK -- Daily Deal -- exp 21 Mar

• £2.99 -- Police -- Jo Nesbo --> mystery

[tubemonkey]

Daily Deals -- exp 21 Mar

• Audible ---> $2.95 -- The 7th Canon -- Robert Dugoni --> suspense
  
• BN Nook --> $7.99 -- Fellside -- MR Carey --> horror

[tubemonkey]

Audible UK -- Daily Deal -- exp 22 Mar

• £2.99 -- A History of Britain: Vol 1 -- Simon Schama --> NF history

[tubemonkey]

Daily Deals -- exp 22 Mar

• Audible ---> $3.95 -- Salvage the Bones -- Jesmyn Ward --> contemp
  
• BN Nook --> $3.95 -- Walking with Jesus -- Pope Francis --> Christian

[tubemonkey]

Downpour -- Rental of the Week -- exp 27 Mar

$1.99 -- One Second After -- William Forstchen/ Joe Barrett --> 13.3 hrs --> suspense

In a small North Carolina town, one man struggles to save his family after America loses a war that will send it back to the Dark Ages.

Already cited on the floor of Congress and discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a book all Americans should read, One Second After is the story of a war scenario that could become all too terrifyingly real. Based on a real weapon—the electromagnetic pulse (EMP)—which may already be in the hands of our enemies, it is a truly realistic look at the awesome power of a weapon that can destroy the entire United States, literally within one second.

In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe, and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future and our end.

[tubemonkey]

Downpour -- Deal of the Week -- exp 27 Mar

$5.95 -- The Zookeeper’s Wife -- Diane Ackerman/ Suzanne Toren --> 10.9 hrs --> NF history

The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story

Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Polish Christian zookeepers horrified by Nazi racism, who managed to save over three hundred people. Yet their story has fallen between the seams of history.

Drawing on Antonina’s diary and other historical sources, bestselling naturalist Diane Ackerman vividly re-creates Antonina’s life as “the zookeeper’s wife,” responsible for her own family, the zoo animals, and their “guests”: resistance activists and refugee Jews, many of whom Jan had smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jan led a cell of saboteurs, and the Zabinski’s young son risked his life carrying food to the guests, while also tending to an eccentric array of creatures in the house (pigs, hare, muskrat, foxes, and more). With hidden people having animal names, and pet animals having human names, it’s a small wonder the zoo’s code name became “The House under a Crazy Star.” Yet there is more to this story than a colorful cast. With her exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Ackerman explores the role of nature in both kindness and savagery, and she unravels the fascinating and disturbing obsession at the core of Nazism: both a worship of nature and its violation, as humans sought to control the genome of the entire planet.

[tubemonkey]

Last Day -- Humble Bundle -- exp 22 Mar @ 1400 ET

• SALE -- Dr Who/Torchwood Bundle --> details

[tubemonkey]

Penguin Random House -- this FREE offer is now live -- exp 24 Mar @ 11:59 AM ET

Download here

We're wrapping up Women's History Month by giving away the audiobook of LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott, read by Christina Ricci.

Click here to download: https://app.snapapp.com/LittleWomenAudio

NOTE: You can also listen on your phone when you download the Volumes app. Free on the App Store℠ for iPhone®, iPad® and iPod touch® in the U.S. and Canada.

Offer is for 48 hours and ends on March 24, 2017, at 11:59 AM ET.

Originally Posted by skinmaan

From the PRH Facebook page:

I love the irony - giving away the famous book of the March family this month. The picture says download will be available for 48 hours only. One of your favorite MobileRead eagle-eyes will remind you when the offer goes live.

Enjoy!
skinmaan
Your audiobook bloodhound