wickles posted:

I was thinking of creating just such a thread last night - but then fell asleep and forgot all about it. I thought it could be more for book news or general chat but if off-topic stuff works well then so be it.

Radio 4 is one of the best things in the world and at the moment they have an 8 part series called Capturing America: Mark Lawson's History of Modern American Literature "Mark Lawson tells the story of how American writing became the literary superpower of the 20th century, telling the nation's stories of money, power, sex, religion and war".
It features insightful interviews with the likes of: Cornwell, DeLillo, Doctorow, Ellroy, Irving, King, Mailer, Roth, Updike, Vonnegut, (you get the idea).

The programmes and the individual interviews are available here for UK users at least (does any of this work for anyone outside the UK?)

The Machine posted:

Where do you guys read book reviews?

Looking for something that would have a large mix of new/old books (that isn't just Amazon user reviews).

wickles posted:

If Radio 4 was ever affected in any way I think there'd be a middle-class uprising! Have you ever heard some of the random poo poo people complain about on Feedback? (Fridays at 1:30PM)

Actually, if any one has any copies of The New Yorker, New York Review of Books or London Review of Books they no longer want can I have them? I'll pay for shipping.

Shonagon posted:

They aren't necessarily making anyone much money, because they don't sell many copies. Say you've got a print run of 4000 copies, and after four years you have to pulp any remainder and bring out a new edition. The cover price on that 4000 print run has to pay for:

- Author advance/royalty, maybe 7.5% of receipts (don't know about academic)
- Bookseller discount, anything from 35% at your local bookshop to 80% if you're buying through Amazon. (Yes, Amazon get an 80% discount from the publisher.)
- Print costs, pretty high if the book is full of photos or colour. High print cost and low print run = crippling unit cost
- Production costs, also high if the book is full of diagrams and charts and numbers that have had to be painstakingly double checked
- Salaries, heating and light at the publisher's office (if a book doesn't make any contribution to that, the publisher goes down)

So on the £35 you just paid for a textbook, the publisher gives away maybe 55% in retailer discount on average. That leaves around £17 to cover author costs, image costs, freelance costs like designers, proofreaders, indexers, running costs including salaries, print costs (which could easily run to £3 per book or more for this kind of thing), and the small profit without which the publisher is just not going to bother to do it in the first place.

Obviously these costs apply to everything, but you can imagine that when you're printing 30,000 copies of a mass market paperback, and expecting to reprint at 10,000 without changing a thing beyond the copyright page, your unit costs are very small. (You are really getting gouged when you pay £6.99 for a Dan Brown p/b, in terms of cost to the publisher vs cover cost.) If you have to make a new edition every few years, your unit costs are huge, and you have to price accordingly. This is also why travel guides are so absurdly expensive.

I completely agree that all travel guides and academic texts should go electronic, though bear in mind what that will do to the costs of texts for people who don't have/like/can't afford e-readers.

The London Deanery (NHS UK) has been giving out e-readers already loaded with medical textbooks to junior doctors and apparently it's been really successful. I'd expect that kind of thing to become the norm in the West soon. But again, where does that leave places that can't invest in that kind of technology?

(This is not an apologia for publishers and obscene cover costs, we operate on a retarded business model and have only ourselves to blame. Just an explanation...)

Shonagon posted:

Wouldn't you try to be the recognised expert in the subject, and the guy getting the royalties, rather than just telling people to buy someone else's book? Of course a professor would want to pimp their own texts. The real question is why universities don't lean on flagrant abuses such as the above. (Out of interest, how many of those texts were printed by the university publisher?)

Hah - my ex studied philosophy at Oxford, with a highly renowned ethicist, who set all his own stuff as required reading for the course and, when asked a question, would reply, 'Let's see what I think about that' and flip to a relevant page in one of his books. Ethicist.

I'm not defending the practice at all, I think some of the stuff above is disgusting abuse. I just wanted to point out that academic textbook prices aren't set at £35 purely because the publisher knows people have to buy them (though there's always an element of that in any pricing strategy); poo poo costs money to make, too.

Irisi posted:

Thank you for the explanation, Shonagn, you're always so informative!

It does make sense for the NHS to be giving out the e-readers, given that little details about methods of treatment, etc. are constantly being updated & revised. Wish they'd give them to us poor, underfunded nurses & midwives in training too. (Mind you, that would mean that I wouldn't get to colour in diagrams of the lymphatic system anymore, and I quite like doing that; it's not every field of study that classifies "colouring with crayons" as a legitimate method of revision)

McMurphy posted:

Gentlewoman and gentlemen, I implore you: if you are going to write your brilliant observations in a book then give away that book, write is loving pencil. If it's a library book, just kill yourself. That's all.

LGBT War Machine posted:

Actually, they would register their protest without hesitation or repetition and sung to the tune of an entirely different complaint. And then they'd drive the minister to Mornington Crescent and stick his head under a tube train.

Hedrigall posted:

Why on earth hasnt this idea caught on in UK or US?

LGBT War Machine posted:

Nope, just the once. False challenge!! Point to me and my go.

On the other hand, this may count as a deviation and so we both lose. Sandi Toksvig takes the round.

wickles posted:

With Borders gone where can I pick up the occasional copy of The New Yorker in the UK for when I'm feeling all ? Someone must know.

Grushenka posted:

Used bookstores are the way of the future. Oxfam books in Headingley is claiming much of my stipend right now.

Hedrigall posted:

Isn't there a US version of the site now, though?

jmaze posted:

I won't dog-ear pages in a hardcover, but paperbacks are meant to be used and abused. Dog-earing a page is much more convenient than trying to find a place to hold the bookmark while reading.

Susan B. Antimony posted:

I don't know if anyone here can help me, but. I just read a book called The Baker's Boy--picked it up used and was looking for a pulp fantasy "young man finds noble destiny/spoiled princess discovers own strength" kinda read--and I hated it. I bought the sequel at the same time, and I may end up reading through it (because I'm weird like that), but really disliked the fact that the author seems obsessed with the darker/ickier aspects of human sexuality and the incredibly lame, pseuso-Dickensian religious villain. So I'm wondering if anyone here has read the full trilogy and can tell me what happens, because I really don't want to have to read two more full books to find out that the titular character dies unexpectedly, mourned by his love interest, but not before bringing low the blah blah blah. Thanks! And if no one can help, uh, I advise you not to read these.

LooseChanj posted:

There's a thread for that, which I can't blame you for not noticing because it's fallen to the middle of page 2.

jmaze posted:

uh, um, 23!

Hedrigall posted:

Someone needs to start a Numberwang thread in GBS

TapTheForwardAssist posted:

There's some fiction series about a British soldier (mercenary?) around the Victorian era, with at least some of the stories happening in Afghanistan and India. It's a relatively well-known work, I think relatively modern historical fiction, and the character's name somehow reminds me of "Lord Flashheart" from the Blackadder comedies.

I've tried googling up variants of all the above, and coming up short. Any ideas?

Dr Scoofles posted:

Are these spoof books? I've seen them in the bookshop and have avoided them because I'm too fond of O'Brian and Cornwell's cheeky yet grubby takes on that era. Characters like Sharpe are sometimes absurd but the love of the history is there and so he doesn't do overly dumb poo poo like holding a rifle in each hand at the same time.

Casimir Radon posted:

Going through some rough changes in your life hmmmm? I recommend the Han Solo trilogy by A.C. Crispin.

Casimir Radon posted:

Speaking from experience you should not read that while depressed.

jmaze posted:

Though I like some of the political ideas presented in Rand's work, I think the books are terribly written. I liked reading Atlas Shrugged at first, because she was presenting these ideas in ways I hadn't thought about them, but after she started just repeating herself over and over again, it got pretty old pretty quick. Her characters are just terrible, too.

Van Dis posted:

This forum has terrible taste but here goes nothing.

I'm on a cross-country bicycle trip and would appreciate recommendations for actual good books relevant to the places I'm riding through. For example, so far I have read:

• Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent (before the trip)
  
• Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose (through the Columbia River Gorge, Idaho, and parts of Montana)
  
• Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (along the Blackfoot River itself and other parts of Montana)
  
• John Fire's Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions (through the Indian reservations of South Dakota, including Pine Ridge)

And right now I'm blazing through On the Road. I am currently in Omaha and on my way through Des Moines, Kansas City, St. Louis, Nashville, Atlanta, then northeast through Richmond, DC, Philadelphia, New York, and finally Boston. Since you guys can't seem to read anything not in bold, let me just ask,

What literature do you recommend for going through those parts of America?

Keep your lovely science fiction, fantasy, airport books, milporn lit and all similar recommendations to your goddamn self, you worthless loving teenagers. I swear to Christ I will ride to your house and stab you with my spare spokes if you even think about posting that poo poo at me. I will tear your limbs off and beat you with them. I will kick a hole in your torso with my ironwoon legs. I will use your entrails as handlebar streamers. Why is this forum so obsessed with bad literature. It's like you are actually retarded, unable to read anything without a spaceship or elf babe on the cover, unable to think about words and sentences and paragraphs and narratives beyond "That was a cool fight/sex scene." God drat every single one of you.

(Also, I've read a ton of Mark Twain, which is what I'd recommend first to someone asking me this question, so don't bother recommending him. Thanks in advance!)

Dub Mapocho posted:

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Earwicker posted:

I've found that not really a problem at all. If you want to discuss classics of western lit for example you can pretty easily find large active discussions about it without having to deal with any of that kind of stuff.

Viconia posted:

In other news, the book store down the road from me is closing, so I can't have a gander at lunch in there anymore. I'm really annoyed about that!

Also, not sure about ye, but I've been to about 5 bookstores and none of them have the SA Book Club's Book of the month "Vacation". Anyone else found that problem? Like what the hell?

deety posted:

I've only gotten really good deals on eBay when the books are listed in batches, I've sometimes found listings for 5-6 books that include the one I want for the same price or less than one copy is going for individually.

In general, I tend to find better prices through Amazon Marketplace.

deety posted:

Usually when I've resorted to searching eBay, it's for books or specific editions that are out of print.

But even when I end up in a used bookstore getting something that's still available in other ways, I can't say I feel too bad about it. For one thing, authors and publishers have gotten a hell of a lot of money from me over my lifetime. And, while it's not like I can't afford them new, bargains lead me to buy things I wouldn't typically get. So while the author doesn't benefit from that one purchase, if I enjoy the book then they have a new fan searching for their stuff and talking them up to friends. If I don't like it, then it's still not like they've lost anything because I wouldn't have tried them at full price in the first place.

I'd love to shop at indie stores more often, because while I can usually beat them on price their selections tend to be worth the expense. But there are fewer independent shops around here than used bookstores, and they're more inconvenient to get to.

LooseChanj posted:

That sounds like a really lovely thing to do, making money off it. On top of never giving anything back.

7 y.o. bitch posted:

Hopscotch (Cortazar), The Good Soldier Svejk, Suite Francaise, The Voyeur (Robbe-Grillet)

inktvis posted:

Published in 1923, so maybe it falls under the same extension of copyright that's keeping the last volumes of Penguin's new Proust off the shelves in the US. Something about copyright being extended to 95 years after the artist's death, that being 2018 in this case.

FakeHipster posted:

I'm about 75 pages into Gravitys Rainbow, and I have no loving clue what is going on. How many drugs was Pynchon on? I read Against the Day, but at least that book had a semi coherent plot.

abagofcheetos posted:

Any tips on buying used books online that don't charge and arm and a leg for shipping? I managed to find a single book seller on Amazon marketplace that had like 10 books I've been wanting to buy, but their policy is $4 shipping per item, period. I'll be damned if I pay $4 to ship a book I'm buying for $.10.

I guess Half.com is a popular place to buy books, is there a way to easily search if a store has multiple titles, so I can see which sellers have the highest quantities of books I want to save on shipping? Any other good sellers?

7 y.o. bitch posted:

Also, I'm considering starting a poetry discussion thread in TBB. It'd be pretty much a free-for-all discussion, so a bit different from the PHIZ thread I had a while back. If there's dedicated interest in one, I'll do it. I think one comprehensive discussion thread might allow for it to stay alive in the sea of sci-fi and fantasy threads.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Has there ever been a Patrick O'Brian thread here? I was reading the Naomi Novik Temeraire series and I had to migrate over to Aubrey/Maturin just to get my head clear.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

quote:

Excuse me, Captain, problem with the Euphroes again".
"Get O'Brian up there, then, if it's about Euphroes, he's the one to see."
"Hey t'en Pat. Scribblin' again, are ye? More Sea Stories?" Not only does O'Brian know all then is to know and more 'pon the Topick of Euphroes and Rigging even more obscure, - he's also acknowledg'd as the best Yarn-Spinner in all the Fleets.