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Mon October 17 2016

Bendable electronic paper displays whole color range

07:02 AM by wodin in E-Book General | News

Bendable electronic paper displays whole color range

They don't say how it works, just that it's got gold and silver in it so it's bound to be expensive.

[ 16 replies ]


Sat October 08 2016

MobileRead Week in Review: 10/01 - 10/08

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Another week, another steady stream of e-book goodness here on MobileRead. Our authentic roundup of what's been going on:

E-Book General - News


Fri October 07 2016

Amazon Prime Reading

09:56 AM by jhowell in E-Book General | News

From the Press Release:

Amazon today introduced Prime Reading, a new reading benefit for U.S. Prime members. Prime members can now enjoy unlimited reading from a rotating selection of books, magazines, comics and more – at no additional cost. Prime Reading joins the growing list of all-you-can-eat benefits for Prime members including unlimited fast, free Prime shipping, unlimited access to Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Photos, Audible Channels, early access to Lightning Deals and more. Members can start reading now by downloading the Kindle app for iOS and Android or using any Kindle or Fire tablet. To learn more about Prime Reading or start a 30-day free trial of Prime, please visit amazon.com/primereading.

Sort of a Kindle Unlimited lite.

[ 86 replies ]


Wed October 05 2016

New Zealand adds 15% GST to (some) ebooks from today

06:24 AM by GeoffR in E-Book General | News

From 1 October 2016, non-resident companies selling more than $60,000 of goods and services to New Zealand consumers will be required to collect 15% GST on sales. Previously only companies resident in New Zealand were required to collect GST, although imported physical goods over $400 were taxed at the border.

GST law change for non-resident businesses supplying remote services [IRD]

'Netflix tax' to take effect from tomorrow [NZ Herald]

Under previous law, the Government was missing out on $180 million a year by not collecting GST on online purchases, including $40 million from shopping on iTunes, Netflix, Spotify and other online services.

GST Move Good for Big Kiwi Tech Firms But Government Still Missing Out on Revenue [Booksellers NZ]

briefly checking some prices on Kobo, it appears that ebooks by small- and self-publishers have increased by exactly 15% overnight, but no change to prices of some big publishers such as Hachette, HarperCollins, and Macmillan UK who are perhaps absorbing the GST to maintain their price points.

[ 117 replies ]


Sat October 01 2016

MobileRead Week in Review: 09/24 - 10/01

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Gosh we've talked a lot this week. Here's your weekly round up of MobileRead's events.

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations


Mon September 26 2016

October 2016 Book Club Vote

09:49 PM by WT Sharpe in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

October 2016 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the October 2016 eBook for the MobileRead Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. There will be no runoff vote unless the voting results a tie, in which case there will be a 3 day run-off poll. This is a visible poll: others can see how you voted. It is You may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you.

We will start the discussion thread for this book on October 20th. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each:

Bridge in the Fourth Dimension: Further Adventures of the Hideous Hog by Victor Mollo
Goodreads | Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo UK / Kobo US / Overdrive
Print Length: 160 pages

Spoiler:
I read it laughing out loud, rolling on the floor, totally devoured it and kept coming back for more for years until my original paperback was in tatters.

Victor Mollo was one of the all time most successful contract bridge players in the UK where they play it as a blood sport. I came across Bridge in the Menagerie when I was still in college, and playing bridge to feed my family. I read it laughing out loud, rolling on the floor, totally devoured it and kept coming back for more for years until my original paperback was in tatters. That original book was long out of print but has now come back in print, but has never been converted to eBook format. However, this sequel can be read without having read the original and by those whose knowledge of bridge is no more than passing. I haven't played a hand myself in probably 15 years, but I'd love to play out the hands in this.
— CRussel

Mislaid by Nell Zink
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 288 pages

Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start—she’s a lesbian, he’s gay—but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.

Worried that Lee will have her committed for her erratic behavior, Peggy goes underground, adopting an African American persona for her and her daughter. They squat in a house in an African American settlement, eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities. As Peggy and Lee’s children grow up, they must contend with diverse emotional issues: Byrdie must deal with his father’s compulsive honesty; while Karen struggles with her mother’s lies—she knows neither her real age, nor that she is “white,” nor that she has any other family.

Years later, a minority scholarship lands Karen at the University of Virginia, where Byrdie is in his senior year. Eventually the long lost siblings will meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.

Rivers of London (US title: Midnight Riot) by Ben Aaronovitch
Goodreads | Amazon US / Overdrive UK / Overdrive US
Print Length: 400 pages

Spoiler:
"I'll absolutely second Rivers of London/Midnight Riot. This is witty more than funny, but definitely left me regularly chortling and reading passages to my DW. (Best nomination you've made, Jon!)"
— CRussel

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit–we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to–and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden . . . and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos–or die trying.

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Goodreads | Amazon US
Print Length: 119 pages

Spoiler:
"[O]ne of the funniest books I've ever read."
— Issybird

From Goodreads:

Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday-and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art. Waugh's dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide depicts a world where reputation, love, and death cost a very great deal.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Goodreads | Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo US / Overdrive / Overdrive Audio
Print Length: 272 pages

Spoiler:
From The Guardian:

"The temptation when reviewing a David Sedaris book is simply to quote liberally, and enviously, from his endless stock of pithy one-liners. A humorist par excellence, he can make Woody Allen appear ham-tongued, Oscar Wilde a drag. Me Talk Pretty One Day collects tales from both home and abroad, and picks up from where Naked - in which he first introduced his larger-than-life Technicolor family - left off."
— David Vincent

From Goodreads:
David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section. His family is another inspiration. You Can't Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.

Noises Off by Michael Frayn
Goodreads | Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo US
Print Length: 176 pages

Spoiler:
"I saw it on Broadway when Linda Thorson was in the cast, and I laughed so hard during the first two acts, that I didn't have any laughter left inside of me for the third act!"
— GA Russell

From Goodreads:

Noises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award—winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage “drama” that develops during Nothing On’s final rehearsal and tour. The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown.

Bellwether by Connie Willis
Goodreads
Print Length: 256 pages

Spoiler:
Pop culture, chaos theory and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula winning author of Doomsday Book. Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennet O'Reilly works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions.

The Deadly Dowager by Edwin Greenwood
Goodreads
Print Length: 244 pages

Spoiler:
From The Washington Post:

According to a contemporary review, it was “quite the jolliest crime story that has come our way in many moons.” Yet it’s not at all comic in the manner of, say, a Donald Westlake caper about Dortmunder and his lovable gang of burglars. Black humor, gallows humor, sardonic humor — these better describe the overall tone of Greenwood’s tale of the 83-year-old Dowager Duchess Arabella, Lady Engleton, who decides to do away with a handful of her inconvenient relatives.

Arabella becomes a serial killer for what she believes is the best of reasons. Her own two sons having died, one in the Boer War and the other in the Great War, and the de Birkett family’s fortunes having precipitously declined, she has taken it upon herself to establish her 20-year-old grandson Henry in a manner befitting his noble station. Initially, she persuades various childless in-laws — a dotty clergyman, a blustery India hand, a Harley Street doctor, a stupid businessman, and a pair of sisters, one repulsively fat, the other mousy — to allow her to insure their lives, making Henry the beneficiary. Arabella will naturally pay all the fees against the day — no doubt quite distant, of course — when each finally shuffles off this mortal coil. While maintaining a demeanor of sweetness and innocence, she then starts killing them off, one after the other.

Alice, Let's Eat by Calvin Trillin
Goodreads | Amazon Ca / Amazon US / Overdrive
Print Length: 193 pages

Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

In this delightful and delicious book, Calvin Trillin, guided by an insatiable appetite, embarks on a hilarious odyssey in search of “something decent to eat.” Across time zones and cultures, and often with his wife, Alice, at his side, Trillin shares his triumphs in the art of culinary discovery, including Dungeness crabs in California, barbecued mutton in Kentucky, potato latkes in London, blaff d’oursins in Martinique, and a $33 picnic on a no-frills flight to Miami. His eating companions include Fats Goldberg, the New York pizza baron and reformed blimp; William Edgett Smith, the man with the Naughahyde palate; and his six-year-old daughter, Sarah, who refuses to enter a Chinese restaurant unless she is carrying a bagel (“just in case”). And though Alice “has a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day,” on the road she proves to be a serious eater–despite “seemingly uncontrollable attacks of moderation.” Alice, Let Eat amply demonstrates why The New Republic called Calvin Trillin “a classic American humorist.”

Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald
Goodreads | Kindle / Barnes & Noble / BAM!
Print Length: 272 pages

Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

Wild, dangerous, and flat-out unbelievable, here is the incredible memoir of the Canadian actor, gambler, and raconteur, and one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time

Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life—more or less—from his rural origins on a farm in the backwoods of Ontario to an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search, from an unbelievable audition for Lorne Michaels to his memorable run as the anchor of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” (until a couple of O.J. jokes got him fired). But Based on a True Story is much more than just a memoir: it’s the hilarious, inspired epic of Norm’s life.

Told as dispatches from a road trip to Las Vegas with his sidekick and enabler, Adam Eget—a plan hatched to regain the fortune he’d lost to sports betting and other vices—Norm recounts the milestone moments of his life: the regrets, the love affairs, the times that Fortune smiled on him, and the times it did not. As the clock ticks down, Norm’s debt reaches record heights, and he must find a way to evade the hefty price that’s been placed on his head by one of the most dangerous loan sharks in the country.

As a comedy legend should, Norm peppers these pages with classic jokes and long-mythologized Hollywood stories. This tense, wildly adventurous, totally original, and absurdly funny memoir turns the conventional “comic’s memoir” on its head and gives the reader an exclusive glimpse inside the mad, glorious mind of Norm Macdonald.

[ 59 replies - poll! ]


Sat September 24 2016

MobileRead Week in Review: 09/17 - 09/24

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

If you've been too busy to check out MobileRead this week, check out our usual roundup:

E-Book General - News

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations


Tue September 20 2016

Sainsbury's ebook store bites the dust

04:19 PM by chrisridd in E-Book General | News

TL;DR: Sainsbury's is selling all their ebook customers to Kobo, the vaccuum cleaner of the ebook store world.

Dear Customer,
We are writing to tell you about an important change to Sainsbury’s Entertainment on Demand.

Over the last four years we have enjoyed providing our customers with eBooks, MP3 music, digital magazines, and movies and TV on demand. We've made some great progress and learnt a lot about the digital entertainment market. However, following a detailed review of our service we have made the difficult decision to close Sainsbury's Entertainment on Demand and focus on our core businesses.

We'd like to make the process for you as straightforward as possible. Below you will find details of what will be happening and when, for each entertainment product area.

Movies & TV

As of now you can no longer buy, rent or watch any movie or TV content. We will refund you for any movies or TV content you've bought to own, as well as any active rentals you have. Any rentals that fall outside of either their 48-hour viewing period or 30-day active viewing window will not be refunded. We'll let you know of any refunds due and how they will be made by 15th October 2016.

eBooks

As of 1st October 2016 you will no longer be able to buy any eBooks from us although you will be able to continue reading eBooks on our apps until 30th November 2016. On 1st December 2016 the site will close and our reading apps will no longer be supported.

You will have the opportunity to transfer your eBook library to Kobo, a leading global eBook provider, who will support your eBook library in accordance with their terms and conditions. If you don't already have a Kobo account you will need to set one up. We will e-mail you by 25th October 2016 explaining how this will work and what you will need to do. We will not be issuing any refunds for eBook purchases.

Digital Magazines

As of 1st October 2016 you will no longer be able to buy digital magazines from us although you will be able to continue reading digital magazines on our apps until 30th November 2016. On 1st December 2016 the site will close and our reading apps will no longer be supported. We will refund all digital magazine purchases, we'll let you know by email of any refunds due and how they will be made by 15th October 2016.

MP3 Music

As of 1st October 2016 you will no longer be able to buy music from us although you will be able to continue to listen to music on our apps until 30th November 2016. On 1st December 2016 when our site closes, our music apps will no longer be supported and you will not be able to download your music library from us. We strongly recommend that you download your music purchases before the end of November so that you can play them on an alternative digital music platform (e.g. iTunes or Google Play). We'll email you reminders as we get closer to the end of November. We will not be issuing any refunds for MP3 music purchases.

Thank you for your support and custom over the last four years. We understand that this is disappointing news and are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

If you need any further information, please visit our FAQs where further help is on hand.

Yours sincerely,

Sainsbury’s Entertainment on Demand

20th September 2016

[ 110 replies ]




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