April 2015 – Me and My Kindle

Amazon Discounts Eight Amazing Biographies

April 29, 2015April 29, 2015 meandmykindle Leave a comment

Bringing Down the House - The Inside Story of Six MIT. Students Who Took Las Vegas for Millions (with Blackjack strategies)

Every month Amazon discounts dozens of ebooks for their “$3.99 or less” sale. But this month I was absolutely stunned by some of the jaw-dropping true stories that they’d put on sale in their biography section. There’s tales about professional gamblers, midwestern mafia members, and even an honest-to-god prince who somehow ended up working with the Rolling Stones. And each of these amazing biographies has been discounted to just $3.99 or less!

For a shortcut to Amazonâ€™s discounts, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/399KindleEbooks

Here’s some of the more interesting titles…

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich ($1.99)

This remains one of my favorite geek stories of all time: “The amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T. students who beat the system in Vegas — and lived to tell how.” These college kids crunched the numbers, first forming a card-counting club on their campus. But inevitably they get the itch to try test their skills in a real-world casino — and end up winning millions of dollars. Suddenly the casinos caught wind of their racket, and started tracking the 20-something prodigies. It was loosely adapated into a movie with Kevin Spacey, and one Amazon reviewer applauded this tale of “a constant adrenaline high”. And best of all, it includes a detailed description of Las Vegas card counting — so you’ll know exactly which tricks can help you win big at blackjack!

This book normally sells for $16, so this represents a massive 78% discount. And you can also purchase the audiobook for another $3.99 — and then switch between the ebook and audio versions!

A Prince Among Stones by Prince Rupert Loewenstein - Rolling Stones pictures on book cover

A Prince Among Stones by Prince Rupert Loewenstein ($1.99)

“In 1968 Mick Jagger couldn’t understand why the Rolling Stones were broke,” reads this book’s description at Amazon. “The man he asked for help was a German prince, a merchant banker. They forged an unlikely alliance which re-invented the business of rock ‘n’ roll…” The hardcover edition of Prince Loewenstein’s book normally sells for $27, so this is a massive 75% discount — and it’s a story unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. As the wild band cranked out Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, this strange new relationship rocked the lives of both Prince Loewenstein as well as Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and the rest of the Rolling Stones, according to the book’s description at Amazon. ” For nearly forty years Prince Rupert worked with the Stones as-in his own words — ‘a combination of bank manager, psychiatrist, and nanny,’ usually enthralled with his clients but often bemused and exasperated with them, too.” They describe his book as “Coolly impartial and dryly humorous,” and “a refreshingly different take on the rock ‘n’ roll world…”

And you can also purchase the audiobook for another $3.99 — and then switch between the ebook and audio versions!

Milwaukee Mafia (Images of America) by Gavin Schmitt $2.99

“Milwaukee is best known for its beerâ€”and rightfully so,” reads this book’s description at Amazon. “But in the days of Prohibition, the big alcohol suppliers were not Miller, Blatz, Schlitz, and Pabst. The Mafia had control, and it made its money by running alcohol…as well as with counterfeiting, the numbers racket, and two of the biggest heists in American history. ” Using never-before-published photos augmented by historical archives, author Gavin Schmitt also taps the memories of police officers, federal agents, and even his own relatives for a detailed look at a fascinating forgotten moment in history. It’s a vivid pictorial history telling a story that’s never been told before, according to one Amazon reviewer, who applauds the author for being “the first person to take on the Milwaukee Mafia in print.”

Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back by Josh Hamilton ($2.99)

He’s the baseball player who’s been making headlines this month — for all of the wrong reasons. So it’s fascinating to discover this 2008 autobiography by Josh Hamilton — and some fans have found it to be an especially poignant read. “I read this book in a couple of hours on Opening Day of the 2015 baseball season on the cusp of Josh Hamilton’s most recent relapse,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, adding “[I]wanted to learn of his journey through his addiction and I was not disappointed. This is a raw, moving account of a very talented man who fell face first into the use of drugs and watched his baseball career plummet…” Hamilton paints a picture of happier times with his loving wife — who announced two weeks ago that she’s now suing him for divorce. But that seems to make it even more precious that in this 2008 book — which normally sells for $16 — readers found “a man talking to the reader with frank candor and honesty…a man bearing his soul for the reader and taking responsibility for his actions.”

And you can also purchase the audiobook for another $3.99 — and then switch between the ebook and audio versions!

Remember, for a shortcut to all of Amazon’s discounted ebooks,
point your browser to
tinyurl.com/399KindleEbooks

Is The Kindle Making Us Stupid?

April 23, 2015April 23, 2015 meandmykindle Leave a comment

I’m starting an experiment. I’m reading the print editions of books now (instead of downloading their Kindle editions). They’re always free — I’m requesting them from my public library, and apparently nobody else is interested in the books I’ve been checking out. But I’m trying to “re-wire” my brain so it focuses more intensely…

Dr. Larry Rosen once wrote an interesting article for Psychology Today. His blog is called “Rewired: The Psychology of Technology,” and he ultimately confronted a new argument against digital readers – that non-linear reading “is changing our brain and moving us away from deep thought into more shallow thinking”! By non-linear technology, Rosen’s referring mostly to the hyperlinked discussions which happen online, where it’s almost too easy to flit away to a new web page or a new activity (like checking your e-mail or answering instant messages). But author Nicholas Carr predicts that even reading books will soon enter this universe of “interruption” technologies, in which we’re not just reading but also simultaneously participating in a distracted online dialogue related to that same book.

Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. But he received a strong rebuttal from Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University — who’s also an avid Kindle user! “I bought a Kindle when they first came out in late 2007…” Rosen remembers in his blog post, “and delighted in using it on airplane trips instead of bringing along two or three paperback books.” And Rosen ultimately sees the hyperlinking of online discussions as a good thing. (“As C.S. Lewis said, ‘We read to know we are not alone.'”) “What better way to read a book than to be able to share it as we are reading? Isn’t that what book clubs are all about?

“The difference here is that people will be able to read what other people think about the book as they read. They can even discuss the book live while they are reading it, not when they have read the final page…”

That’s a reasonable position. Even without joining an online discussion, I’ve been reading some free history ebooks on my Kindle, and sometimes I’ll get inspired to dig deeper into some especially intriguing details. (“Wait a minute — the re-supply ship to the Jamestown colony in 1609 actually crashed instead in Bermuda? And they only made it to America because they built two new ships while shipwrecked? And that may have inspired Shakespeare to write The Tempest?“) I think one of the best things a book can do is pique your curiosity. And now it’s easier to act on that curiosity with a Kindle, since it lets you look up any word in a dictionary, and look up any topic in Wikipedia with its always-available wireless connection.

That’s an argument that ultimately going to make us smarter, not shallower. And I think this whole debate can be summed up by two brilliant sentences from author David Weinberger. “Perhaps the web isn’t shortening our attention span,” he wrote in 2002. “Perhaps the world is just getting more interesting…” But just to test this theory, I’m going to try long reading sessions, with a nice substantial print book. One that doesn’t turn into a different book just by pressing a few buttons. One that sits in a single place in our universe, and doesn’t reveal its secrets until you actually turn through its paper pages…

I don’t know if this is an ironic twist, but I actually read Weinberger’s defense of the web in an old-fashioned printed book. (Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory Of The Web.) It was written five years before the Kindle even existed, but there’s now a neat Kindle version of his mind-boggling insights. And yesterday Dr. Rosen’s blog post seemed to make a similar argument.

Sure, teenagers may someday be participating in online discussions while they’re reading a book, but “This is way better than seeing students read the Cliff Notes or not even reading at all.” And ultimately he puts the whole debate into perspective. Are ebooks making us smart or stupid? “As Dr. Gary Small, director of the Center on Aging at UCLA and author of iBrain said discussing online reading, ‘People tend to ask whether this is good or bad.

‘My response is that the tech train is out of the station and it’s impossible to stop.'”

Click here for the Kindle version of Dr. Rosen’s book, Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn.

Click here for the Kindle version of Dr. Small’s book, iBrain: Surving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind

Click here for the Kindle version of Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Click here for the Kindle version of David Weinberger’s book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory Of The Web

The Books of Hillary Clinton

April 18, 2015May 29, 2015 meandmykindle Leave a comment

Young First Lady Hillary Clinton photo from Invitation to White House Book

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton book cover photo - Living History

Presidential Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton book cover picture- Hard Choices

Everyone is publishing books in Amazon’s Kindle Store — even Hillary Clinton. She’s running for President now, and in a weird twist, her whole life story is spread across Amazon’s store in a series of books. Over the last 18 years she’s written three books, and each one is available as Kindle ebook.

For a shortcut point your browser to
tinyurl.com/HillaryEbooks

America is polarized when it comes to politics, but I always try to understand the candidates from both parties. And there’s a certain amount of history and pageantry that goes along with the role of begin a nation’s first lady. I’m disappointed that there’s no Kindle edition for the book “Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets”, which included a fun history of various pets in the White House, plus an inspiring story about how the children’s letters are answered at the United States Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home. And her time in the White House saw the publication of a collection of Hillary’s own writings, plus a lush coffee table book Hillary wrote about state dinners and life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But here’s the three Hillary Clinton books that are available as Kindle ebooks.

It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (Updated in 2006)

In 2006 a special “10th Anniversary Edition” was released for Hillary’s 1996 book which included a new introduction written by U.S. Senator Clinton. The topic of children only leads a larger look at society itself and the issues facing us as we try to raise the next generation, according to the book’s description on Amazon, and Hillary’s new introduction even acknowledges the arrival of the internet to our complex global village. One reviewer at The Christian Science Monitor gushed that “it would be a loss if the nation missed this opportunity to address [these] issues…” But I was surprised that even one Amazon reviewer who described themselves as “more right than left” thought Hillary’s writing style was enjoyable, adding “I like to think I can be part of that middle ground — a right-winger who appreciates the intelligent passionate argument that she brings to the table. ”

Living History (2003)

Did you know Hillary’s uncle once tried to kill himself? Or that her mother was nearly abandoned by Hillary’s grandmother? This book offers a surprisingly personal glimpse into the life of a girl from Illinois who grew up to be America’s First Lady, its Secretary of State, and a Senator from New York — and it’s also her highest-rated book among Amazon’s reviewers. I liked how this book pulled together the different parts of her family history, which shows just how much America changed over the last 100 years, especially during the 1960s (when Hillary was in college). Hillary started life as a Republican — before she was 21, she’d already attended the Republican National Convention (where she met Frank Sinatra and John Wayne). There’s also stories about hearing Martin Luther King speak, the women who inspired her, and of course, her life with a young man named Bill Clinton who became President in 1992.

Hard Choices (2014)

Hillary’s most recent book — published just last year — sprung back onto Amazon’s best-seller list when HIllary announced her candidacy. Six days later, it’s still one of Amazon’s 10 best-selling books in their history section’s category for books about women in history — and in their biographies category for political leaders and notable people. It opens with a funny story about hiding in the back of a van to avoid the press on the way to a secret meeting with Barack Obama back in 2008. Hillary becomes Secretary of State, and this book offers fascinating details about the way the U.S. ultimately handled other world foreign leaders. “[O]nce Clinton gets rolling, she does what’s most valuable in this kind of memoir,” wrote The Washington Post, “which is to take readers inside her meetings — sketching portraits of the world leaders with whom she did business…” There’s a revelation about how the U.S. arrived at its (interim) nuclear agreement with Iran in 2013, and colorful stories like Vladimir Putin offering to take Bill Clinton along on an expedition to tag polar bears. “The book includes a lot of information that we never got from the media,” wrote one Amazon reviewer, who described the book as a “wonderful walk through history.”

For a shortcut to Amazon’s Hillary Clinton books, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/HillaryEbooks

Amazon Discounts Raymond Chandler Mysteries!

April 8, 2015April 9, 2015 meandmykindle Leave a comment

Farewell My Lovely - by Raymond Chandler (book cover)

Playback graphic novel by Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler book cover - the little sister

Detective fiction — classic noir-style mysteries by Raymond Chandler — are being discounted in Amazon’s Kindle Store! (Tough-guy detective Philip Marlowe may have a new mystery on his hands — the case of the discounted ebooks…) There’s even a cool illustrated “graphic novel” that’s adapting one of Chandler’s books. And two more of his classic novels have been discounted to less than $3.99!

Here’s the three Raymond Chandler mysteries that Amazon’s discounting.

Farewell My Lovely ($3.79)

This may be the classic hard-boiled detective story. It’s the second novel Chandler wrote about Philip Marlowe, who “finds himself in the wrong place at the right time,” according to this book’s description at Amazon. Suddenly a routine case leads him into “a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.” But this 304-page masterpiece aspires to be more than your ordinary detective fiction, with something to say about corruption and our ultimate place among the good guys and bad guys all around us.

Playback: A Graphic Novel ($3.03)

The great mystery writer’s 1948 screenplay was “presumed lost”, according to a review by Publisher’s Weekly. But 20 years after the author’s death, it was re-discovered in a dark and dusty archive at Universal Studios. A French publisher created this slick comic book version, which has finally been translated into English and published as a Kindle ebook. “Betty Mayfield is blond and beautiful and has just been found guilty of murdering her husband,” reads the book’s description at Amazon. This visually stunning and highly original ebook adapts the very last novel by Raymond Chandler, and its description at Amazon promises it’s “a heart-pounding tale of betrayal, blackmail, and murder.”

The Little Sister: A Novel ($2.99)
Raymond Chandler wrote only 7 novels throughout his career, and this one was completed when he turned 61. In the story his detective Marlowe is “beginning to tire…” according to one reviewer at Amazon, “and the disillusionment has started to etch permanent lines on him.” But it seems like that makes this the quintessential story of a world-weary detective fighting for right, and the reviewer ultimately lauds this as “An underrated and underestimated effort.” The fast-moving story concerns “A movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend,” according to the book’s description at Amazon, who conspires to lure Philip Marlowe “into the less than glamorous and more than a little dangerous world of Hollywood fame…”

Install an Amazon Button in Your Home!

April 3, 2015April 3, 2015 meandmykindle Leave a comment

It’s not a joke, The New Yorker assures us. “Many people assumed it was,” they wrote yesterday, “mostly because the announcement came the day before April Fool’s, but also because the idea seemed to poke fun at Amazon’s omnipresence, making it visibly manifest with little plastic one-click shopping buttons adhered to surfaces all over your home.” But yes, this really is happening. You can now install a little button in your home which will automatically order you products from Amazon.

For a shortcut to Amazon’s button, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/AmazonButton

It’s free for Amazon Prime members, if you request an invitation from Amazon at that URL. The “Dash” buttons are even customized with the logos of products you might want to order (like Tide detergent or Bounty paper towels), according to a promotional video Amazon’s included on the page. “A simple way to re-order the important things you always run low on,” its friendly narrator explains, “so you’ll never run out.” And apparently you can set up the button to order any product that you want (using the Amazon app on your smartphone).

Amazon always sends a confirmation to your phone, so you’ll have a chance to review your order after it’s been placed. And don’t worry — by default, the button is set up to place only one order (even if you press it more than once!) Amazon is reaching out to manufacturers now about how they can include Amazon’s magical button as part of their own marketing plans. And what’s really amazing is that after pushing the button, your order will sometimes arrive at your house in less than one hour!

Amazon’s announcing a new one-hour delivery window for members of their Prime shipping service in select target markets. The “Prime Now” service is available in Atlanta, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Dallas, Manhattan and Miami — in select zip codes — for thousands of products that you’d order from Amazon. “We are excited to continue delivering to customers in record-breaking time…” brags Amazon’s senior VP of worldwide operations. “It means you can skip a trip to the store and get the items you need delivered right to your door in under an hour…”

“Since launching, we’ve seen high demand on everything from essentials like water and paper towels to more surprising deliveries like getting a customer a hard-to-find, top-selling toy in 23 minutes!”

The New Yorker had some fun with the announcement, wondering how people would configure their Amazon buttons — and which items they’d re-order again and again? “So far, other than coffee, Amazon appears to be steering clear of offering addictive products with the service. There is no Cheetos button. No Oreos button… And the buttons are set up to place only one order at a time, no matter how many times you press them, which means that Fido or your five-year-old can’t order ten thousand rolls of paper towels when you’re not paying attention.”

My biggest problem was that I thought the whole thing was a joke! Especially since for April Fool’s Day, the link-sharing site Reddit announced a button of their own. When you press this button, it resets a timer that’s counting down from 60 seconds. So far over half a million people have clicked on it, always resetting the timer before it reahes zero — so no one knows what will happen when its timer finally drops to zero.

But if this were Amazon’s button, they all could’ve ordered a half million boxes of Tide!

Remember, for a shortcut to Amazon’s button, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/AmazonButton

Best-Selling Authors Stage Wrestling Match for Charity

April 1, 2015April 1, 2015 meandmykindle Leave a comment

Suzanne Collins is the all-time best-selling author on the Kindle. But can she defeat Stephenie Meyer – the author of the Twilight series – in a mixed martial arts cage match?

“Suzanne Collins is #1 in the hearts of fans — and in the sales of her books through Amazon’s Kindle store,” WWE chairman Vince McMahon said in a statement from Florida. “So we’re issuing a formal challenge to her on behalf of her rival author, Stephenie Meyer. And to Miss Meyer we say, come and listen to the cheers from a real crowd. Leave your desk behind, taste the springtime air here in Miami Gardens, and come to defend your title out here in the real world.”

“And you can bring along as many of your vampire friends as you want.”

In a promotional video segment, “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson” was photographed holding printed copies of all the Twilight-series books, and also copies of each of Collins’ Hunger Games books, which he smashed together to pump up the anticipation. “We professional wrestlers all know how to read,” Johnson said in a pre-taped segment. “But do you have what it takes to wrestle? There’s a ring with your name on it at Sun Life Stadium, Stephenie Meyer.”

The World Wrestling Entertainment issued their formal invitation this morning as part of an ambitious ongoing campaign to improve the image of professional wrestling, They’re offering to fund the entirety of the special event “with the two heavy-weight authors” as a prominent part of WrestleMania XXXI. It may not be a fight to the death — like the staged tournaments in Collins’ Hunger Games books — but McMahon alluded to that excitement while urging both authors to accept the challenge by using a quote from the newly-released movie.

“They just want a good show, that’s all they want,” McMahon said, standing near a mock-up of a promotional poster for the event in the back of his broadcasting booth in Florida. But then he looked directly at the camera, and added ominously, “But only one comes out.”

It’s not clear whether the massive popularity of the Kindle can translate into bigger ticket sales for a staged wrestling event between the authors of two popular ebooks. But it’s not the first time that the WWE has tried to attract celebrities into carefully-prepared professional wrestling matches. (Famously in 2004, Vince McMahon successfully lured Lucy Lawless — the original Xena the Warrior Princess — into a staged wrestling match against Sarah Michelle Gellar, who’d played Buffy the Vampire Slayer). McMahon gamely joked that if there’s enough interest in this year’s “War of the Writers,” they might even duplicate the event in 2016.

“Maybe we’ll get J. K. Rowling to wrestle Anne Rice!”

* * *
UPDATE: Okay, while it turns out that WrestleMania 31 is a real event, apparently it is not going to feature an appearance this year by Suzanne Collins in a mixed-martial-arts, cage-match fight to the death with rival author Stephenie Meyer. I’d actually be a little embarrassed if you hadn’t already guest that I made this whole thing up, because I wanted to be part of all the fun of April Fool’s Day!

I promise that I’ve never, ever made up a blog post before, and that I’ll never, ever do it again.

Er, except maybe for April Fool’s Day of 2016. :D