America’s Greatest Novelist Arrives on the Kindle!

William Saroyan
I’m thrilled to discover one of my favorite authors has finally arrived on the Kindle — William Saroyan. In fact, one of my first blog posts here was about the great American novel. Older novels have a different style — there’s romantic novels from the 1800s, or rambling post-modern narratives from Ernest Hemingway. But around the 1940s, you get what I think of as “The Great American Novelists”. That is, people who were consciously setting out to write glorious, high-stakes pageants about life itself. And nobody embodied that better than William Saroyan.
 

Every man is a good man in a bad world… Every man himself changes from good to bad or from bad to good, back and forth, all his life, and then dies. But no matter how or why or when a man changes, he remains a good man in a bad world, as he himself knows…

That’s from the 1952 novel Rock Wagram, and back in 2010 I was calling Saroyan “the lost novelist”, because you couldn’t find his novels on the Kindle. (Later I even started calling him “The Author You Can’t Read on your Kindle”.) I’d worried that somehow he might not make the leap into the next century, which made it feel that much more poignant when I discovered that an anonymous web surfer had discovered my blog post about Saroyan by typing in that quote. (One more anonymous good man lost in a bad world….)

But four months ago, Saroyan’s books suddenly started appearing in Amazon’s Kindle Store. The William Saroyan Reader is a great place to start, and it includes an amazing story about the author’s life. HIs son Aram shares a stunning passage from “The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse” in the book’s preface.
 

One day back there in the good old days when I was nine and the world was full of every imaginable kind of magnificence, and life was still a delightful and mysterious dream my cousin Mourad, who was considered crazy by everybody who knew him except me, came to my house at four in the morning and woke me up by tapping on the window of my room.

Aram, he said.

I jumped out of bed and looked out the window.

I couldn’t believe what I saw.

It wasn’t morning yet, but it was summer and with daybreak not many minutes around the corner of the world it was light enough for me to know I wasn’t dreaming.

My cousin Mourad was sitting on a beautiful white horse.

Saroyan’s son says “If there is another single page of prose that better evokes the wonder and mystery of childhood, I would love to know about it.” But then he also points out that his father actually spent his own childhood — from the ages of three to eight — growing up in an orphanage. (Saroyan’s own father — a poet and a minister — had died at the age of 37.) Years later Saroyan won a Pulitzer Prize — and in a particularly flamboyant gesture, he actually turned it down! His son speculates that was Saroyan’s way of thumbing his nose at the “officialdom” that seemed so disinterested during his childhood in the orphanage. And he adds that Saroyan later faced death itself with that same wide-eyed and boyish sense of wonder…

The story about his time in the orphanage is especially stunning because Saroyan’s novels have a special warmth to them — a “camaraderie”, his son calls it — “a dark cheer…a bittersweet poetry.” Maybe that’s what makes it so much more poignant that his stories have now re-awakened in the year 2015, freshly available as ebooks for a new generation of readers. Not every book has arrived yet — we’re still waiting for the Kindle edition of “The Human Comedy,” which is probably Saroyan’s best-known novel. But in the last four months ebook editions have finally appeared for Rock Wagram, Boys and Girls Together, The Laughing Matter, The William Saroyan Reader, and Chance Meetings — Saroyan’s own memoir.

And a great American novelist finally gets a chance to reach a brand new audience.

New Site Mocks the Worst Kindle eBook Covers

Young Tales of the Old Cosmos   How to Deal with Hippo Encounter
Flight of the Intrepid Monkey   Titanimus Makes Jenny a Genie

“Judging a book by its cover is generally frowned upon,” jokes a newspaper in England, “but the same cannot be said for ebooks.” They’re interviewing the creator of a new page on Tumblr called “Kindle Cover Disasters” — and yes, it’s a collection of cover illustrations that are spectacularly bad. You can view all of the awful images — along with the author’s quick assessments of them — by scrolling down the page.

Here’s some of his more interesting finds…

 

Young Tales of the Old Cosmos

Young Tales of the Old Cosmos by Rhys Hughes

Wait, what? I’m not even sure I understand what that means, but oh my god that’s a creepy cover! Human eyes — and even lips — have been cut-and-pasted onto two planets, and also onto the rocky surface of the moon. And according to this ebook’s description, it really is stories about the personal life of planets. “When Pluto is officially demoted from a true planet to a dwarf planet; when the poor moon is infested with clowns…; when the Milky Way wants to make friends… that’s the time they most need our sympathy and support.” You’d think more people would want to read about the clown infestation of the moon, but alas, on Amazon’s list of their best-selling ebooks, this book is ranked #2,179,737


How to Deal with Hippo Encounter

How to Deal with Hippo Encounter by Solomon J. Matt

First, that’s a terrible title. (There seems to be a word missing…) And honestly, that’s a terrible idea for a book, since, really, how big is your target audience going to be? If I actually did encounter a raging hippopotamus, would I rush over to Amazon to purchase an ebook of helpful advice? (Chapter One: Running…) But all of this overlooks the fact that a hippopotamus’s mouth is just plain ugly. Do you really want that enormous pink maw gaping up from the water on the cover of your newest Kindle ebook?


Titanimus Makes Jenny a Genie

Titanimus Makes Jenny a Genie: Book 4 by Betty Crofoot

Where to start? Yes, Jenny’s legs are too short, and those bolts of lightning are clearly the wrong color, but I can’t get past the shape of Titanimus’s body. It’s like an overpadded robot — maybe Klaatu from “When Worlds Collide” — but with a hole in his chest where the cosmos peeks through. In this story Titanimus makes Jenny into a genie, apparently, but its lackluster cover manages to make that look about as dazzling as a quilt at the Andromeda Galaxy’s county fair. This 51-page book is just $5.95, and so far has been reviewed by no Amazon customers whatsoever.


Flight of the Intrepid Monkey

The Flight of the Intrepid Monkey by Mac Zazski

First, that’s another terrible title. But at least this is a full-length novel that’s available free in the Kindle Store, and you have to admire the author’s ambition. It’s a story about fugitives from the law who become intergalactic heroes — an “out of this world love story filled with pirates, ugly secretaries, angry housekeepers, Church librarians…” Unfortunately, author “Mac Zazski” has apparently just cut-and-pasted random photos of people over a washed-out drawing of the solar system, and instead of a poster for excitement, it ends up looking more like a tiny family scrapbook.

Amazon’s Amazing Deal: a Free FireTV Stick?!

FireTV discount on Amazon

Amazon’s FireTV boxes cost $99 — but the same functions are now available for just $39 in Amazon’s new FireTV Stick. But they’ll give you one for free if you sign up for the $20-a-month “SlingTV” service. Frankly, I’m amazed at how low its price has dropped.

Check out Amazon’s cheap FireTV prices at
tinyurl.com/FireTV39

When it was first released last year, Amazon was selling the “box” version of Fire TV for $99, so it already feels like Amazon is offering a massive 60% discount with their FireTV sticks. Maybe Amazon’s calculated how many digital videos you’ll rent from Amazon once you’ve purchased a FireTV stick. And the SlingTV service feels like getting a basic cable TV package at a much cheaper price. I just told my girlfriend — she loves the Food Network — and it’s part of the SlingTV package (along with the Disney Channel, ESPN, TNT, and Adult Swim.)

So why is the FireTV stick so cheap? And ultimately, what’s the difference between FireTV and and the FireTV stick? Fortunately there’s a helpful chart on Amazon, but it makes the two FireTV products look nearly identical. The stick version of FireTV is wireless only — you can’t use a cable to connect it, even if you want to. And the stick also only offers Dolby Digital Plus sound (and not the fancier “5.1 surround sound”).

Both devices can also run games and apps on your big-screen digital TV — though fewer of them will be comptaible with the stick version of FireTV. And there’s also a service for children called “Amazon FreeTime” which is only available on the larger FireTV box. FreeTime gives you a library of child-friendly videos for which you pay a small monthly subscription fee. It’s optional for the FireTV boxes — but the optional service isn’t available if you’re only using a FireTV stick.

I think we’re the winners in a price war between Amazon and the other digital media companies. They’re lowering their prices to attract customers to Amazon’s own streaming media service. “18 times more apps and games than Apple TV,” reads a new ad that just appeared on the front page of Amazon.

They’re anxious for you to try FireTV — and now they’re making it as cheap as they possibly can!

Check out Amazon’s cheap FireTV prices at
tinyurl.com/FireTV39

Amazon Discounts eBooks for March!

The Girl With No Name book coverRants by Dennis Miller

The Three Pigs by David Wiesner

Every month Amazon chooses over 100 Kindle ebooks to sell at a special discounted price. It’s their “$3.99 or less” sale, and my favorite part of each new month is browsing through the selection to see what’s on sale! There’s discounted ebooks in just above every category, from science fiction to biographies — and there’s even some great non-fiction books.

For a shortcut to Amazon’s discounts, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/399KindleEbooks

Here’s some of the most interesting selections…


Rants by Dennis Miller

The Rants by Dennis Miller ($1.99)

You may remember him as Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” news anchor, or from his mid-’90s talk show. But he collected together his trademark jokes and insights into a laugh-out-loud collection which ultimately made him a best-selling author, according to the book’s description at Amazon. “The New York Times called Dennis Miller’s Rants ‘a pleasing mix of profanity and wit…that will make fans of his irreverent liberal angst laugh out loud.” And one Amazon reviewer wrote simply that Dennis Miller is one of the five funniest comedians in the world, adding that his rants are among some of the most original stuff to come around in a long time.”


The Girl With No Name book cover

The Girl With No Name: The Incredible Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys ($1.99)

Wait, what? Wow. Just wow…. I can’t even imagine! It’s a true story. In the mountains of South America, back in 1954, a 4-year-old girl was abandoned in the jungles of Colombia, according to this ebook’s description on Amazon. “[H]alf-drugged, terrified, and starving, she came upon a troop of capuchin monkeys. Acting entirely on instinct, she tried to do what they did: she ate what they ate and copied their actions, and little by little, learned to fend for herself.” And so begins the story of her next five years, lived entirely within a family of monkeys. It sounds like an incredible story, and Amazon promises that “this rousing story… will astonish readers everywhere.”


The Three Pigs by David Wiesner

The Three Pigs by David Wiesner ($1.99)

It’s a Caldecott Medal-winning children’s book with a story so mind-boggling that even I had to buy it! A big wolf huffs and puffs a little pig right out of his house — and out of the frame of the illustration. “Come on — it’s safe out here,” he tells the other pigs, who also escape from the other pictures of the story. “We got away from that wolf for good.” Then they frolic in an impossible neverland of pure imagination, which Amazon describes as “a dazzling fantasy universe” — which leads to a wonderful and surprising happy ending.

Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach

Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach ($1.99)

It’s a seven-step program that can provide a huge payoff, according to this ebook’s description on Amazon. “David Bach is a financial genius with a passion for helping women get rich,” reads a testimonial by finance writer Laurie Beth Jones. “Read this book–and prosper! And another best-selling author added “Finally, a book for women that talks about money in a way that makes sense. David Bach is not just an expert in managing money — he’s the ultimate motivational coach for women. I can’t recommend this book enough!”


Remember, for a shortcut to Amazon’s discounts, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/399KindleEbooks

Amazon Celebrates National Reading Month

Amazon Celebrates National Reading Month
March is “National Reading Month,” and Amazon’s greeting it with a special deal on their Kindle! They’ve slashed its price by more than 25% — to just $59. It’s a “limited-time” offer, but it’s also Amazon’s way of making it easier to read. (Especially Kindle ebooks, from Amazon…) And Amazon’s also doing even more to encourage reading….

Amazon’s also created a new web page with links to more special collections of books. “What Will You Read This Month?” the page asks, with another subtitle: “Discover a New Story.” And the first link is Amazon’s impressive list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime. It’s “a bucket list of books to create a well-read life,” assembled by the editors at Amazon.

For a shortcut to Amazon’s special page, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/AmazonBookLists

There’s also another link to a fun list of best books chosen by readers from the online community at GoodReads.com. (“Vote for your favorites,” it urges, with several intriguing categories.) There’s Best Books of the 21st Century, Best Books of the Decade: 2000s, Best books of March 2015, and of course — Best Books Ever. The list’s #1 book is “The Hunger Games, with a Harry Potter book at #2 and a Twilight book at #4. “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” came in at #9…

Amazon’s also created a new page called Books to Look for This Spring. (“Twenty books we think you’ll be hearing a lot more about this season…”) Glenn Greenwald has written a new book about Edward Snowden, and 82-year-old novelist Tom Robbins is finally delivering a personal memoir, “stitching together stories of his unconventional life, from his Appalachian childhood to his globetrotting adventure”. And at the end of March, Michael Lewis will release another new investigation into Wall Street — this one highlighting “the good guys” who tried to reform a broken stock market…by creating their own.

There’s lots of new and exciting things to read — and I have to admit that I’m reading more ever since Kindle came into my life. I can imagine a parent giving one to their children, to try to make reading seem high-tech and fancy and cutting-edge. But the most important thing will always be the books, and I feel like Amazon understands that too.

Because they’re celebrating National Reading Month with appreciative lists of some very great books…

For a shortcut to Amazon’s lists, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/AmazonBookLists