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Post by Craig Herbertson on Sept 18, 2014 7:58:47 GMT
One aspect of ebooks that I don't like is that I don't have the same sense of ownership with an ebook that I get with physical books. With a kindle book, I am very limited with what I can do with it. I have to read it on a kindle device or with a kindle for pc app; I can't convert it to another, more convenient, format, due to drm, despite having purchased it. Once you buy a kindle book then you are tied into using it as amazon sees fit. I have physical books that I have owned for 40+ years, but I have no idea if the kindle books I have bought will still be available to me 40 years hence. Too many times in the past I have bought a piece of download software, only to lose it due to a hard drive failure or virus and not being able to remember a key to re-install it or the company disappearing from the net. Well said, Ripper. I have the same feelings about this. And still I buy more Ebooks then books nowadays. Reading fine print seems to have become such work: for this the Kindle is great. I even buy old books I have again as Ebooks for re-reading purposes, especially if they are cheap. The 24/7 ordering is so convenient. Instant gratification.
But it is not the same as a "real" book. As I have to read a lot of original manuscripts, these books are basically worthless for me. They are just another file which can be deleted on a whim. Nothing like having a real book in your hands.
And if some day power or Internet is down, I will still have my books.
Another thing which becomes ever more a put-off for me is the flood of self-published crap. These atrocious covers, the un-edited wanna-be novellas. Call me elitist, but in my book the loss of editorial control is another nail in the coffin of genres. I read a blog in the Amazon-Hachette debate where the writer seriously favoured books done by CreateSpace over the rest of the market. Sure, books done in the quality of your schoolwork published in a copy-shop. I got a few of these CreateSpace Editions, and these are shitty books.
Frankly, no Ebook can ever give one the same joy as an old, musty paperback you discover in a book store. Or in the Vault
Completely agree. I like looking at my bookshelf. It gives me a warm glow of companionship and a sense of history. Pulp and genre covers for books, the illustrations, the names of the authors, highly inspiring and warming.
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Post by claytwisted on Sept 27, 2014 17:51:51 GMT
No mention of who the editor is, but this is certainly a very odd selection of tales. I haven't checked the sources, but I suspect that this selection was dictated by virtue of what's in the public domain as opposed to any serious attempt at theme or quality. That's not to say that this isn't a quality offering, it is, there are plenty of good stories in here, but it could have been so much better... I can think of over two dozen Blassingame stories better than this one right off the top of my head. "Fresh Fiances for the Devil's Daughter" is notorious for its sadism, but there are at least a dozen other Russell Gray tales that are its equal and FFFTDD is starting to get over-exposed.
If we must have the likes of Lazar Levi, S.P. Wright, Howard Hersey and Hugh Gallagher does it have to be at the expense of no John H. Knox, Donald Dale, Dane Gregory, and Arthur J. Burks (just to name four authors who have plenty of PD material in the weird menace genre to choose from. For that matter, "The Corpse on the Grating" is what we get for the great Hugh B. Cave? The man had a bunch of fine stories in Thrilling Mystery that the editor could have selected from. Some other misfires would be (in my opinion) the selections by Lars Anderson and Paul Chadwick; further, anytime the answer is "Capt. S.P. Meek", then the wrong question has been asked...
Just so one doesn't think that I'm totally trashing the book, the G.T. Fleming-Roberts piece is one of his best as is the contribution by Hal Wells. A really nice surprise is the inclusion of L. Patrick Greene, an author who should be much better known than he is. Oh, one last HUGE disappointment... Where is Arthur Leo Zagat?
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Evil Scientist
Crab On The Rampage
answering the call of the Weird
Posts: 18
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Post by Evil Scientist on Sept 27, 2014 18:32:10 GMT
No mention of who the editor is, but this is certainly a very odd selection of tales.
Quoting the publishers from the beginning of the book:
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