SPOILER TIME!

In the future, people are manufactured a-la Ford. All instances of the word “God” or “Lord” are replaced with “Ford”, as he is their deity. This is mainly to piss off the reader. People have purple eyes or something. This is some side effect of the test tube people-growing process (Matrix anyone?), which they are very proud of. Parenting as we know it is a lost art, replaced by – wait for it – pills. All your needs are cared for by pills (watch Equilibrium). Some disgruntled stooge and his floozy go out to go camping and see “natives” in Arizona, and come home with a “civilized woman” that was lost on a camping trip 40 years ago, and her *gasp* natural born son. They return, the woman doses herself to death on the magic pills, and the son is the only person that can feel any sympathy for the dying, so he throws a fit, gets dragged off to the Principal’s office, and they go all poly-sci theory on him for a while. Somewhere along the way he falls in love with the girl that went camping and discovered him, but when she offers to sleep with him for nothing, he calls her a whore and decides that people are scumsucking meatsacks. He decides to go live au-natural off in the fields outside London (hah!). The New World people catch up with him and notice that he’s taken up self mutilation because he’d rather feel pain than make sense. At this point in the book, you’re hoping he hits an artery. It turns into a media circus, he shouts at them, they ask him to hit himself again. The reader cheers with the crowd. The girlfriend-wannabe shows up, boy hits her (presumably killing her, it’s never made clear), and an orgy breaks out. He wakes up and hangs himself.

Real feel-good book there.

The point is, this book, while it may have been somewhere between shocking and progressive during the ’30s, is just pointless now. I can see it as maybe the first place that many people will have encountered some of these ‘ideal society’ ideas, but the modern versions are more current, more polished, and closer to home. Save yourself the time – leave it on the shelf in the public library.

This one is about a cutting-out expedition by our heroes. The characters are distinct and memorable, the setting is good, and it has that Crichton-ish feel for the environment. Yeah, I know, stupid sounding, but oh well. Just don’t let facts get in the way of a good naval romping good time and it is quite enjoyable.

When I got to the halfway point, the story that I figured was the main plot was done. Then I realized there is a lot more book coming. So, puzzled I marched onward, and it took on a subtle twist I should have expected. And now, another quarter book in, things are still not resolved.

Can’t wait for the drive home!

Yes, I know it’s a book by a girl. And I’m starting to notice that entirely too many girl-written books have the same attributes:

1. Girl hero character is always object of hidden, secret love that comes out in book, even when it does nothing for the story.

2. Love triangle thing always happens.

3. Girl hero is always right. Even when it’s illogical, and stupid. Because she just is.

4. Girl hero character sleeps with forbidden member of love triangle in 85% of these books.

Which begs the question – are girl authors not getting enough action? Or is this just playing to the audience of girls that don’t get enough action? Either way, I’m getting tired of this pattern.

Flipping the same flashlight on guy-written books you get:

Action books:

1. Manly man hero character is always allowed to kill someone. At any time. With anything. And rarely gets hurt.

2. Manly man rarely if ever has secret burning love of character in book. Either they’re in bed or he’s forgotten.

3. He’ll just jump in bed with whoever.

Fantasy books:

1. Wimp at beginning of story is wronged.

2. Wronged wimp suddenly discovers magic/fantastic power or lifelong friend.

3. Wronged wimp and comedy tagalongs must escape/take on noble journey.

4. Immediate family or equivalent bond is sworn to kill them, or everyone, or both, or destroy the world, or whatever.

5. Powers have no cost, and are entirely overused.

6. Readers lose interest and only finish out of commitment to finishing what they started in the dire hopes that it gets better, which it never does.

Scifi books:

1. One neat or perhaps clever idea is presented at the beginning as the crux of a theoretical society.

2. The idea is beat to death.

3. Every instance of, “Dammit!” is replaced with a slightly altered version that reflects on point 1, such as “By Space!”, or “By Selden!”, as if it made sense.

4. Every other aspect of human life is ignored as a convenience to the reader. The only elements left to these societies is science, politics, and sex. Love, art, music, children, funding, etc. cease to exist. Conveniently.

Back to Vanishing Acts.

There are a few things that I liked. The pace was good. The characters were okay. The imagery was good. The shock value was up there. But why in the world does it have to follow the girl pattern? He has always loved her, but left it alone for her happiness. She’s had CharA’s baby, but decides suddenly it’s time to jump beds and take up with his and her Other best friend, because once you’ve had one guy’s baby, why not have the other one’s too? He gives up Everything to be near her.

Has this woman not been to Louisiana? Has she not met women before? Has she not met a GUY before? Which leads me to the obvious alternative: they’re symbolic. So what do they represent:

Hero Girl: I stopped maturing at 17 and my hormones are uncontrolled. I’m the mental projection of every locked-in housewife south of the snowline. I’m slim, attractive, emotionally wrecked, always right, and nothing is my fault!

Baby’s Father: I’m the drunk you fell in love with in high school and wonder what would have happened if you stayed with. I clean up, become a lawyer, and then go back on the bottle, so aren’t you glad you broke up with him/me? And when we break up and you take away my baby, I give in because you’re always right, and nothing is your fault.

Best Friend: I’m the intellectual and moral backbone of your friendships in high school that you wish you had slept with (or slept with more). I should get the girl, so in this book I will! I will leave my job and home to follow you around. Aren’t I cooler than the person that provides for you? Wow, you’re always right.

Dad: If I were real, you’d love to have had me instead of whatever defective real people brought you up and cared for you. I represent the overidealized parent that would do anything. Wouldn’t you rather have me than your own parents? I thought so. Because you’re always right.

Really girls – get over this. It’s ruining your books.

So I did the next most logical thing. I went to the public library’s web site. Now, of course, this is where many of you will get angry with me, because I’m part of the San Jose Public Library system (www.sjlibrary.org) and you’re probably not. I can only say that this is documenting how I got around this problem, and you’ll have to adjust your experiences accordingly. Moving on.

So I still did the next most logical thing. I went to the public library’s web site. And sure enough: there on the left is a search catalog link. Which is exactly what I was after. I typed in the title and clicked search.  The list came back with over 300 entries. Most were paper, most by other authors, but the great thing was: they had audiobooks in there too. And I don’t just mean the CDs you can get on the shelves, which was all I was expecting – but electronic audiobooks. So I clicked, and fell down the rabbit hole.

For Father’s Day this year I got my audiobook subscription to Audible renewed for one year, so I have book credits on hand. However, I’m surprised by two changes; first – I love the new Audible site design with the NYT Bestseller lists and favorite-ever lists, and second – now that I know how to get so many books from other sources for ‘free’, I’m surprised how little is left on my Audible list that can’t be found elsewhere.  There are some exceptions, like there are a hand full of Orson Scott Card books that I just don’t find elsewhere, and some Michael Crichton (I limit myself to one Crichton book a year or I stop enjoying them). But even many of the newest books appear in the public library in short order.

For the impatient, I’ll just shortcut to the:

Workflow Cheat Sheet

• Keep a master wish list at Audible or Amazon. They have the big catalogs of books, with a variety of reviews available and star ratings that may keep you out of a book that sounds like one thing but turns out to be another. And sometimes they will have books that aren’t available from public locations. I hate forgetting: what-was-that-book-that-sounded-so-good-but-then-I-forgot-to-write-it-down-and-then -I-got-busy-and-now-I’ll-never-know-if-it-was-any-good-or-not. Get in the habit of using the voice recorder on your phone if you don’t feel like typing. I use the iPhone camera in book stores and the public library to snap the title and author of anything that looks good. They don’t have to like me.
• Periodically go to your wish list at either site above and start searching your public library catalog. I’m finding that about 2/3 of the books I search for can be had at one of the free sources, albeit with a wait. Even if there is a wait, I have 12 books queued up, I can be patient.
• Go to the public library site and search, sort by media kind and scroll all the way down – ebooks and audiobooks are at the end mostly. This catalogs both what is in the ebooks site and what is in the physical holdings. First pick the electronic version if you can get it. No CDs to import, quality is sufficient for translation into medium or low quality Audiobook Builder format. And no driving.

The San Jose ebook web site has its own flow. The flow here is [ optional - wishlist]->waiting list->bookshelf for 1,2,3 weeks. They manage it in the same way you would manage the paper copies – only so many copies are available for checkout, and you have to take turns with the others. Their wish list has each books current “Get it now” or “You’ll have to wait” status.

Spend some time one day just throwing piles of stuff into your wishlist from your master Audible/Amazon list, or from browsing. If you keep your checked-out list (a.k.a. bookshelf) about half full, you’ll still have room if a couple of your waiting list books come to you.  Otherwise you’ll miss your reservation window. Go ahead and keep your waiting list books more or less full and don’t be afraid to put yourself back in a queue if you miss it because of a full bookshelf. Remember about once a week to go back and check the wish list for available books and check out enough to keep it around half full and you’ll be happy.

Second choice is to get the physical CD set. Sometimes there is also an mp3 CD set. I was quite impressed with the quality of this. If the library is between work and home, I’ll drive it myself. If not, I’ll request a delivery to the one closest to home.

• Then turn to LibriVox. A surprising amount is available there, so don’t discount it.  Just don’t cringe at the narrators – quality varies widely. But also because they aren’t hindered by things like production cost, you can find a lot more content there than in most commercial collections, like their Sherlock Holmes collections are far more complete. The problem is that the LibriVox site is hard to navigate; but again, the price is right. If I liked my voice, I might consider doing some narrating myself. Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, seriously good stuff available.
• If all else fails, money talks. Audible or Amazon can help you find nearly anything in audiobook form.

Okay, now the details.

Welcome to DRM – we hates it forever

First: At home I’m a Mac user by default. I have a Windows box and 3 linux boxes, but my preference for the UI is the mac. iTunes is run on my mac mini – which is its main job really, followed by the endless video encoding I do. So when I showed up at the San Jose Library’s ebooks section (run by Overdrive DRM software, piggybacking Windows DRM), there were a few things of note:
1. They do have mp3 audiobooks with “do it yourself” DRM – please delete when you are done with a reminder from the download client.
2. They have far more DRMd WMA books.
3. But hey, the price is right.
4. Books can be checked out for 1, 2, or 3 weeks at a time, with a max limit of 10 at a time.
5. You can also put yourself on the waiting list for individual books. If you have a book slot open on the day your number comes up, you can check it out.  If not, just put yourself back in the queue tomorrow. Be sure to check your email.
6. They recently added “iPod friendly WMA audiobooks”, which apparently means that if you run iTunes from Windows, you can sync them to Apple devices. I haven’t tried them.

So, being an Mac iTunes-iPod-iPhone person, this limited me to just a subset of those books, but you can search just within that range and still get quite a bit.

Bundling and Organizing

So, just the same, I got busy with the checking out some MP3 audiobooks and some CD audiobooks, and remembered one of my pet peeves about the whole business. The “Audiobook” handling in iTunes is only scalable to the point at which you copy one or maybe two to the device you use. The interface on the iPhone and iPod for their Audiobooks navigation is annoying – titles only. So I’ve taken to storing them as Music, so I can navigate like so:

1. Music
2. Genres
3. Audibooks or Radio for radio shows
4. Author as Artist
5. Series name or Title as Album
6. Title Part N

I also keep a set of playlists based on the intended listener:

• Book Queue New

- for my new books. I keep them here to get around to them in some sort of order, whatever I feel like. I find that if a book is too dark or too much work, I only listen to it on the way to work and prefer something lighter for the trip home.

• Book Queue Reread

- for the lighter books or just anything I feel like I want to come back to soon.

• Book Queue Kids

- The public library has lots of audibooks geared toward the short set. I’ve picked up some for them and put them in here so we can get to them on the school run. They loved the Star Wars Radio Shows I got a couple years ago and a Peter Pan radio play.

So if Apple ever offers Audiobooks the same navigation, I’ll switch them back, but it’s a simple change.

Each publisher has different policies when dealing with the track length, and the books you get from the public library could be chapter divisions or they could be disc divisions, or something else entirely. Enter Audiobook Builder by Splasm software. It does exactly what I want it to do – combine lots of different little chapter or whatever files into a single set of m4b audiobook format files for iTunes. Bingo! Well worth the $10 I paid for it three years ago.

So now that I have my books and can listen to them and they aren’t 6 bizillion little files, I pop them into iTunes and the silence is gone. I have recovered – and the only thing I had to buy (but already owned, so no expense for me) was Audiobook Builder. $10 for a serious pile of audiobooks.

So I guess that’s the conclusion as well. I have a lot of credits for the things I can’t get from the Library, and the Library does a spectacularly efficient job of giving me access to books I can hear.Happy listening!

Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show

Now generally I like short story collections, especially in audio form, because the change from story to story is a lot of fun, especially with a 30m – 1h commute most mornings. Sometimes you complete a whole story on the way to or from work and you feel like you’ve accomplished something, and you get the whole picture in a short time. It’s nice. These were especially fun because they were extremely well thought out, sometimes silly, sometimes sad, and they touched me beyond the normal, “heh, that was cool.” The one about Elvis had me rolling in my seat in the parking lot, 10 minutes after I’d arrived at work. I’m glad nobody saw me there. As it was, I had to re-tell the story to my wife, doubled over in laughter the whole time. Highly suggested collection.

SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT

I don’t like the violence done to the characters immediately at the beginning of the book. I don’t like the particular violence described, nor the reasons. I think he could have done better without the descriptions. I don’t like the extreme masculinity assigned to the female lead character. I’m just not enjoying it. So I’m done.