Giveaway of my book of quotations, The Mind Boggles, to celebrate my 1000th EyedentityGame!

10 years of ILMK! Free books! Amazon gift certificate giveaway! All to thank you!Giveaway of my book of quotations, The Mind Boggles, to celebrate my 1000th EyedentityGame!

I’ve been doing a game on Twitter where I post the eyes of a celebrity & people guess who it is. I call it the #EyedentityGame:

#EyedentityGame on Twitter

It’s been going quite well & has been picking up steam lately. I think with the changes in Twitter, people are looking for things that are just fun, which benefits me & similar feeds.

I’ve had individual games get over 10,000 views.

Four times now when a celebrity was the answer, they have trended on Twitter. The first time was Bob Barker, and I wasn’t sure it was me, but when Mildred Natwick trended, I figured it had to be. 😉

I’ve done my 1,000th today (the first one was 28 April 2020). To celebrate, I’m giving away my Kindle book of quotations today & tomorrow (Thursday & Friday)! You obviously don’t have to play the game to get it. Do check the price before you use that Buy Button: I’ve made it free where I could, but it might not be free in your market.

The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

When it was first published back in 2012, I believe it was the most popular book of quotations in any format at Amazon…for a really, really short time. 😉 The focus is on geeky books/movie/TV and I know they aren’t the most profound quotations for everybody, but I really enjoyed doing this.

Enjoy!

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. 

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Answers to the titles/band names which came from books quiz

Titles/band names which came from books: a quiz

I recently posted a quiz:

Titles/band names which came from books: a quiz

If you want to try it yourself, go there first; I’m about to post the answers!

Each of these are quotations where I knew the source before I knew the work which used it…

1. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
   1. Source: Macbeth by William Shakespeare
2. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
   1. Source: The Tyger by William Blake (AKA Tiger, Tiger…”burning bright”)
3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
   1. Source: The Tempest by William Shakespeare (I could probably have done an entire game based on “Billy the Bard” allusions) 😉
4. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
   1. Source: The Bible, specifically Exodus
5. The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth
   1. Source: Julius Caesar, again by Shakespeare
6. The Doors (the name of the band…and the origin of the name of the book on which the band name was based)
   1. Source: It’s a shortening of “The Doors of Perception” by Aldous Huxley…which is, in itself, quoting William Blake’s (Blake, again) The Marriage of Heaven and H*ll
7. The band Steppenwolf
   1. Source: (Der) Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
8. The band Veruca Salt
   1. Source: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (Veruca is the spoiled one who wants it now)
9. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
   1. Source: The Odyssey by Homer
10. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
    1. Source: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII by John Donne. The poem also includes the line “No man is an island”

There you go! How many did you know? If I posted a comment where you guessed and you would like my e-book of quotations (and you are in a country which can get a gift from the USA Kindle store), just let me know. If you already have the book, you can let Amazon know and they’ll give you store credit instead…

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Titles/band names which came from books: a quiz

Titles/band names which came from books: a quiz

I recently wrote about the sudden popularity of George Orwell’s 1984 (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*):

1984 is sold out in hardback & paperback at Amazon…but Kindleers can read it for free

There were some great comments in response (reading and responding to respectful comments is one of my favorite things about doing this blog).

One of them questioningly connected the CBS reality show Big Brother with 1984.

That interested me, and shouldn’t have surprised me.

It’s one of the reasons I place no statute of limitations on spoilers. 🙂 I am as careful about spoiling The Wizard of Oz or Citizen Kane as I am about a movie in theatres now. People enter pop culture awareness all the time: children growing up, people coming from different cultures, people who have just gotten into reading (as one example).

It’s quite possible that the majority of people in America today first encountered the phrase “Big Brother” meaning a…surveilling authority through the TV show, not through the book. I used to do Shakespeare on stage, and I remember seeing something that suggested more people watch a single episode of the most popular sitcom of the day than have seen all of Shakespeare’s plays live on stage…combined through history.

If a creator chooses to use a phrase from a book as a title, I don’t think they generally intend to usurp the popular association. I think they tend to use it ironically, or to have their readers and potential readers be informed by the allusion.

I named my own book of quotations

The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

after a quotation from a movie (The Thing). I didn’t think most people would make the connection right away, but that some people would.

Given that this is the case, that much of an audience may encounter the quotation before the source, I thought it would be fun to do a little quiz. 🙂

In each of these cases, I knew the original source before it was used as a title for another work. For that reason, I think I assumed that other readers did, too…but that was certainly presumptuous on my part.

I’ll give you ten titles (and I’ve decided to include band names) taken from books (that could include things like fairy tales, possibly…written word works might be the best description. They won’t have originated in visual media, like TV and movies). See how many of the original sources you know! Feel free to make your guesses in comments to this post if you’d like others to see it. No fair looking it up before you do so, though: let others try to guess using just their own minds. 😉

Tell you what I’ll do: if you make a comment guessing at at least one of these, and we’ll have to use the honor system that you didn’t research them, I’ll put you in a pool to get a free e-book gift of The Mind Boggles (if you tell me you might want one in the post…be aware that I’ll need to send it to the e-mail address listed privately when you post. My readers don’t see your e-mail address, but I do). I’m going to figure right now on gifting up to five copies, but might flex that depending on how many “players” there are. Note also that you’d have to be in a place where you can get a gift from the USA through Amazon.com.

I’m not going to base it on how many you get right, because again, it would be easy to look them up. If I get more than five qualifying requests, I’ll randomize (unless I decide to give more).

Your comment must be made before I publish the answers…probably in a few days.

Okay, here we go!

1. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
2. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
4. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
5. The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth
6. The Doors (the name of the band…and the origin of the name of the book on which the band name was based)
7. The band Steppenwolf
8. The band Veruca Salt
9. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
10. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

How many of these do you know? Ready, set, and then let’s go! 😉

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

Quotations…with full definitions #1

Quotations…with full definitions #1

I sometimes get chided for being too explicit in my language…using many words when fewer (or an initialism or acronym) would do as well.

Well, I’ve never seen brevity as a virtue. 😉

William Harper “Johnny” Littlejohn in the Doc Savage adventures was also known for using long words, as was the Wogglebug in the Oz series.

I thought I would take it to an absurd length, and make a game out out of it. 🙂

What I’m going to do is take some public domain works and quote something I think would generally identify them to many readers of this blog…but replace each of the words with the first definition shown on my (no longer sold new) Kindle Fire HDX. Note that the first definition may not be the contextually appropriate one…that’s on purpose. I also want to use this to illustrate how the dictionary might or might not help someone in understanding a text. Consider, say, an artificial intelligence system trying to understand a novel…

You can see if you can identify them. 🙂

I’ll separate the definitions with a pipe: |. In other words, each word in the original is represented by a definition separated from the next word with |.

If there is a proper noun, I’m going to block it as too much of a give away (and it may not have a definition).

Note that the dictionary will tend to define the root word; for example, if you look up “swinging”, it will define “swing”…look up “cats” and it define “cat”.

If you see a word all in capitals, that is how the dictionary refers to another major entry.

I’ll post the answers in the next few days.

#1 “Shine with a gleam that varies repeatedly between bright and faint, | shine with a gleam that varies repeatedly between bright and faint, | small in size, amount, or degree (often used to convey an appealing diminutiveness or express on affection or condescending attitude) | an implement with a handle and a solid surface, usually of wood, used for hitting the ball in games such as baseball, ,cricket, and table tennis! |

In what way or manner; by what means | denoting the next after H in a set of terms, categories etc. | a feeling of surprise, mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable | asking for something specifying something | used to refer to the person or people that the speaker is addressing | expressing location or arrival in a particular place or position.”

2. “Used to introduce something contrasting with what has already been mentioned | easy to mold, cut, compress, or fold; not hard or firm to the touch! | Asking for information specifying something | the natural agent that simulates sight and makes things visible | moving in one side and out the other side of (an opening, channel, or location) | at some distance in the direction indicated; over there | an opening in the wall or roof of a building or vehicle that is fitted with glass or other transparent material in a frame to admit light or air and allow people to see out | separate or cause to separate into pieces as a result of a blow, shock, or strain?

The study or use of systems (esp. computers and telecommunications for storing, retrieving, and sending information | third person singular present of BE | denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge | the direction toward the point of the horizon here the sun rises at the equinoxes, on the right-hand side of a person facing north, or the point on the horizon itself, | used to connect words of the same part of speech, clauses, or sentences that are to be taken jointly | [Name]  third person singular present of BE | denoting one or more people or things already mentined or assumed to be common knowledge | the star around which the earth orbits!”

3. “Denoting the next after H in a set of terms, categories etc. | 1st person singular present of BE | denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge | feeling or showing pleasure or contentment | an animal, as distinct from a human being | expressing the situation of something that is or appears to be enclosed or surrounded by something else |  denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge | the earth, together with all of its countries, peoples, and natural features. | Used to express uncertainty or possibility | used to refer to a person or thing that is different or distinct from one already mentioned or known about | human beings in general or considered collectively  | possess, own, or hold | past and past principle of SAY | to such a great extent | during the period of time preceding (a particular event, date, or time,) | used to introduce something contrasting with what has already been mentioned | used with an auxiliary verb or “be” to form the negative | the lowest cardinal number; half of two | accompanied by (another person or thing) | of the type previously mentioned| just behavior or treatement.”

4. “The chemical element nobellium | the lowest cardinal number; half of two | accompanied by (another person or thing) | of the type previously mentioned| past of WILL | possess, own, or hold | accept (something) as true; feel sure of the truth of | expressing the situation of something that is or appears to be enclosed or surrounded by something else | denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge | coming after all others in time or order; final | the time taken by a planet to make one revolution around the sun | expressing the relationship between a part and a whole | denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge | one more than eighteen; nine ore than ten; 19 | a period of one hundred years | used to identify a specific person of thing observed by the speaker | used to identify a specific person or thing close at hand or being indicated or experienced |  the earth, together with all of its countries, peoples, and natural features. | Used to express uncertainty or possibility | first and third person singular past of BE | present participle of BE | look at or observe attentively, typically over a period of time | having or showing eagerness or enthusiasm |  used to connect words of the same part of speech, clauses, or sentences that are to be taken jointly | a short distance away or apart in space or time | identifying the agent performing an action | the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills | of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above the normal or average | introducing the second in a comparison | an adult human male |  used to connect words of the same part of speech, clauses, or sentences that are to be taken jointly | up until the present or an unspecified or implied time; by now or then | used in comparisons to refer to the extent or degree of something | (of a living being, ofen in contrast to a divine being) subject to death | used in comparisons to refer to the extent or degree of something | belonging to or associated with a male person or animal previously mentioned or easily identified; used with a possessive to emphasize that someone or something belongs or relates to the person mentioned.”

Whew!

That was a lot of work (I retyped all of those), but it was fun!

If I was given this challenge, I think I would be confident in getting three out of the four, and might get the fourth. I would have to treat it like a puzzle…break it down, solve certain words as a clue to the quotation…and from there, the book. You can give yourself the point on a question if you know the book…you don’t have to “translate” the entire quotation.

Hope you have fun!

Update: I forgot to mention that I was perhaps inspired by the spirit of

Allan Sherman’s Night And Day (With Punctuation Marks) (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Allan Sherman was a brilliant musical comedian (considerably preceding Weird Al Yankovic), and you can hear a sample of the song on that page. Update: I just listened to the sample…they never get to the really funny parts! Oh, well. 😉

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

Trivia in the Kindle store

Trivia in the Kindle store

I love trivia!

I’ve had books about it for years.

When I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore, I had a publisher’s rep who had been a five-time Jeopardy champion (that was the limit back then)…and in casual things, I could win. 🙂 So much of Jeopardy is about the buzzer, though, so there’s no way to tell how well you would do on the show.

I was the only person to have twice judged the Millard Fillmore Trivia Hunt. That was a great event! It was put together as a team competition for high school students. The teams would get a set of questions on a Friday, and then have the weekend to find the answers (no internet was available)…and then on Monday, there would be a judging.

That’s how I first got involved: I helped teams. 🙂 While I often knew the answers offhand, the contest required that you document them. My being able to answer the questions helped them figure out where to look for proof.

I think one of my favorite parts was the teams’ lawyers (again, one of the students) would have to argue for their answers. You could prove yourself right…and perhaps equally importantly, you might disprove other people’s answers.

There were two arguments where I would still maintain that we were right and other people were wrong, but we didn’t win that (although we got credit, too).

One was in the category of Musical Cities, and the clue was, “A famous shoeshine boy** worked here.” I was sure right off that the song was Chattanooga Choo Choo…even though the shoeshine boy wasn’t famous, it was the only one that would be likely to fit.

So, the official answer was Chattanooga.

However, we argued that was incorrect…the right answer is New York City.

Why?

The shoeshine boy is in the beginning of the song:

“…is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?”

“Yes, yes….Track Twenty-Nine.”

“Well, you can give me a shine.”

Later in the song, we learn this:

“You leave old Pennsylvania Station about a quarter to four…”

Penn Station, of course, is in New York City…so that’s where the “shoeshine boy” works.

Chattanooga should be an incorrect answer…but they accepted both.

The other one was a question about two people (at the time) who had been made honorary citizens of the United States.

I knew them: Winston Churchill and the Marquis de Lafayette.

We argued (on my advice) that  the Marquis de Lafayette should not be ruled as a correct answer, since that’s really a title, not a name. You can’t just say the “President of the United States” when you are looking for which one did something. We said that the only right answer should be Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette.

Again, both answers were accepted. 🙂

You can tell: I enjoy trivia.

I often light-heartedly give trivia points in the Amazon Kindle forums, too.

There is a section for

Trivia books in the USA Kindle Store (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

There are 1,522 books at time of writing, and 835 of them are part of

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

It’s interesting to me, because many of these titles are tied to a particular topic.

For example, there is a book with 5,100 questions about Star Wars!

5,100-Question Mega-Ultimate Star Wars Quiz Book
by Erin Neidigh

It’s  only $40.69. 😉

That’s not the most expensive one, though…that would be

Now You Know Absolutely Everything: Absolutely every Now You Know book in a single ebook Doug Lennox (Author), Catriona Wight (Illustrator)

at $99.99.

The most reviewed book is

The Big Book of American Trivia by J. Stephen Lang.

I looked for the Fred L. Worth books, but they aren’t available in the Kindle store.

Hm…I have to say, I’m finding a lot of books I don’t really think of as trivia books….well, let’s say trivia quiz books. There are a lot of books (like the Imponderables series, which I really enjoyed) that have odd facts, but that’s not the same thing.

I would like ones with pop culture and wider trivia, and not just on one thing. 🙂

I’ll have to dig some more.

In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite trivia questions…I’ll provide the answers soon, but feel free to guess in the comments. One rule: you can’t look them up, you have to just know. 🙂

• What is the one foreign capital named after a U.S. President?
• What is the only city on two continents?
• What is the deepest lake in the world?
• What is Forsythe P. Jones’ nickname?
• What is Templeton Peck’s nickname?

One of these could be argued, but follow what I learned in F.O.M.F. (Friends Of Millard Fillmore): give the answer you think I want. 😉

Feel free to throw in trivia questions for me in the comments, if you like. I’ll see if I know them, but I’ll admit that I’m not as good as I was a couple of decades ago…

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

**Certainly, arguably, ‘Shoeshine Boy’ is not a term you will hear nowadays…it is in the song, and that brings us to what I have called before the The Chronological Cultural Context Conundrum

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

Happy 80th birthday, Monopoly! The Kindle connection

Happy 80th birthday, Monopoly! The Kindle connection

March 19th marks the official eightieth “birthday” of the boardgame Monopoly.

I have found memories of playing it with my siblings and a grandparent (I only ever knew one grandparent).

Like many people, we made up our own version of the rules…although, we do that with a lot of things (and then scrupulously stick by them).

We said that if you landed on Free Parking, you got money…lots of people do that, but it isn’t part of the official rules.

How much money?

We primed it with $2,000, so it could never have less than that.

Then, penalties that you would pay to the bank (like luxury tax) would go into the pot instead.

This would tend to lengthen our games…as all of our rules were designed to do (we might play the same game for weeks).

There was no limit to the number of houses and hotels you could put on a property…if you could afford it, people might have to pay you quintuple rent.

We could also loan each other money…which we would tend to do.

A bit thing for us was including “immunities” in a property deal. For example, let’s say you had two of the green ones, and another player had the third. You each had one of the cheaper purple ones. We might make the deal, giving the player who had the one green card maybe two “immunities”…if they landed on a green property, they didn’t owe anything the first two times it happened. That would be in addition to the purple card…and maybe cash, depending on the cash situation.

Clearly, we weren’t the only people to value Monopoly. 🙂

After all, it’s still going strong after eighty years…and has come out in an amazing number of specialized editions. In addition to managing a brick and mortar bookstore, I managed a game (not gaming) store…we had a lot of boardgames, chess, yes we had fantasy gaming stuff, darts, go, mahjong, Balderdash, and so on. We had some specialized Monopoly sets, I believe.

The Kindle store has not been immune to the allure. 🙂

This search

Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Humor & Entertainment : Puzzles & Games : Board Games : monopoly (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

has twenty results at the time of writing.

The first result is the game itself…and it’s the active content version (not for Fire tablets, but for non-Fire Kindles).

It’s available for the following devices:

• Kindle e-Readers
• Kindle (5th Generation)
• Kindle Keyboard
• Kindle DX
• Kindle (2nd Generation)

It’s interesting to run across that, because Amazon isn’t promoting  Active Content much any more…when the Voyage was released, it didn’t do it at all. I believe that’s still the case, but I probably should check.

I bought that version over four years ago. 🙂

After that, there are a couple of main categories of books.

One is strategy guides…how to win. Gee, but if somebody wins, isn’t the game over? That doesn’t sound like fun… 😉

Some of those guides are available through

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Amazon’s $9.99 a month subser (subscription service)…you wouldn’t pay anything additional for them, over your monthly fee.

That sounds like a great use of KU. After you read a book like that once, you probably aren’t going to want to re-read it…you’ll get the tips, take them to heart, and that’s about it.

Of course, you can buy them if you want to make sure you have them in the future (books can go in and out of KU at any time).

Another category is actually one series of books on Monopoly “House Rules”.

I was curious about that, so I got a sample of the “Weird Science” one…they also have Zombie Attack!, Dungeon Adventure, Wild West, and more.

The sample, though, told me very little…which means it’s a very short work! The first page of the introduction was 70% into the book!

What was there didn’t make me especially excited to read it…for one thing, the introduction said the regular game “…seems to go on forever and becomes very boring.” Never got boring for me! I used to say to our now adult kid, “How can you be bored? You’re here.” 😉

Oh well, maybe I’ll try one of these as a KU borrow eventually.

If you are looking for something which is more substantial, perhaps as a gift for a Monopoly enthusiast, there is

The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game (The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game) by Mary Pilon
4.2 stars out of 5 | 27 customer reviews
published by Bloomsbury

This is the story of the game…and the perhaps twisted origin story. I’d be interested in that one…if it was in KU, it would go on my wishlist for that. Instead, it will go on the wishlist for me that my family uses on gift giving occasions. I’m in no hurry for it, but would like to read it…just not at $9.99.

Happy birthday, Monopoly!

Do you have any Monopoly memories? Do you read strategy guides for games? Feel free to share with me and my readers by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Answers to Being Mary Watson’s Spouse

Answers to Being Mary Watson’s Spouse

Recently, I posted

Being Mary Watson’s spouse: it’s who you know

in which I talked about how we almost always refer to some characters by their relationships to (typically) better known characters.

I wanted to turn the tables a bit, and give you some descriptions from the point of view of someone who isn’t the protagonist, so you could try to identify them.

After doing it, I thought it would be fairly easy…and it seems to have been.

Here are the characters and the answers…if you want to guess, go to the link above first.

Mary Watson’s spouse

That’s Dr. John Watson…who you are likely to see referred to by a relationship to Sherlock Holmes. That’s another good example…have you ever seen a picture of Holmes alone, captioned, “Dr. Watson’s friend?

One of my readers who guessed, Peter Willard, thought this might be Peter Parker AKA Spider-Man.

The character in question there is Mary Jane Watson, so I have to give credit…and yes, they were married at one point in the comics. It’s funny, because I would never think of this character as “Mary Watson”. Geeks (like me) commonly refer to MJ (or M.J.), or “Mary Jane”, but I don’t think you’ll often find “Mary Watson”. I have to consider it a legitimate answer, though, even if it wasn’t the one I intended.

Kala’s human child

Okay, yes, Tarzan is often a good answer when I do these games. 😉

Kala raises Tarzan…while the common reference is to “Tarzan of the Apes”, it appears much more likely to me that Kala and the rest of the Mangani are some sort of surviving non-Homo sapien human species.

Kala is definitely a hero for the actions taken protecting Tarzan, especially from Kala’s own Significant Other, Tublat, and from Kerchak, leader of the group.

Toronado’s Rider

Toronado is also known as Tornado, which might have helped some people. This is Zorro’s horse…very fast, but perhaps more importantly, very intelligent.

Mrs. Hudson’s best known tenants

I thought having two from the same universe might be tricky for you. 😉 Mrs. Hudson has Holmes and Watson as tenants at 221B Baker Street. Never described physically in the original series or given a first name (to my knowledge…I know there is some speculation that a character called, “Martha,” might be Mrs. Hudson), Mrs. Hudson is somewhat of a foil for Holmes.

Scout’s father

I thought this one might be easier than I think it turned out to be. The answer is Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*). I thought it would spring to mind due to it being an unusual name…and honestly, I think of Scout when I think of TKaM as much as I think of Atticus Finch.

Becky Thatcher’s love interest

Tom Sawyer…and even though they are kids, I’d say this clearly a legitimate description. Becky “has a crush” on Tom.

Wendy Darling’s pretend spouse

Peter Pan…again, it’s clear that Wendy has a romantic interest in Peter, and gets the Neverlander to take on the role of father to The Lost Boys, while Wendy plays mother. It doesn’t appear that Peter understands Wendy’s deeper interpretation of the game…and I have to say, in the recent live version, it even seemed like Wendy was sort of…predatory.

There you go! Did you know them all? Did you recognize more ot eh answer characters than the ones in the question (like knowing Zorro, but not knowing Toronado? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Join more than a thousand readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

 I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Being Mary Watson’s spouse: it’s who you know

Being Mary Watson’s spouse: it’s who you know

Regular readers know I make an effort in this blog not to identify genders, unless someone has volunteered it. I don’t identify mine, or my Significant Other’s or our now adult kid’s. I try not to do it with authors and such, either.

Why?

One of the things I love most about the internet is that it’s possible to be judged only by your thoughts…not by your intrinsic characteristics.

If a website requires me to enter my gender before I can post or shop, I simply don’t use that site.

Now, I don’t mind if people choose to disclose, and many do. I don’t feel like I’m hiding who I am, and I’m not ashamed of it. 🙂

It’s just that I want to set the precedent that you don’t need to identify (and perhaps be judged) by what you are (as opposed to who you are) if you don’t want to do so.

I try not to do any intrinsic characteristics, although it’s sometimes hard to not to suggest at least an age range for me, based on my experiences. I openly tell people I go back to the punch card days…I think you’d be quite hard pressed to find a  Millennial  (born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, approximately) who had worked with one of those. Vinyl, yes…punch cards, no. 🙂

There is a tendency to default unknown people as male. For example, there has been a lot of talk in the news lately about a “female fugitive”. I think almost every story I’ve seen has identified that person’s gender. If there had been one fugitive left who was male, I would be very surprised if they consistently referred to the person as a “male fugitive”.

That’s odd, isn’t it, when the majority of people in Europe (and the United States and Canada), where the story originates, are female? Since males are the “exception” (although the numbers tend to be quite close), you would think you point out that someone was male and not point out when they were female.

I’ve also had quite…passionate discussions with people about whether or not “actress” is an acceptable term. I maintain that it is a minimizing term…that it diminishes the person. When you ask how many actors are in a play, that includes males and females (as it should, in my opinion). You have a way to ask how many female actors, but not a way that ask exclusively male actors (without brining in more words). To me, “actress” again suggests the exception, something different.

I think almost no one uses “authoress” any more, although that used to be pretty common, I believe. If you check your dictionary, you may even see it defined as a derogatory or sexist term.

Then there was something that prompted this post.

I write about movies in another (relatively little read, but fun to write) blog,

The Measured Circle

I think a movie called

Suicide Squad

may surprise a lot of people this year with how well it does at the box office.

It features a group of D.C. Comics villains being “recruited” for a mission (I don’t want to say more than that).

The first interesting experience I had with it was when I was in a comic book shop (that’s actually a rare experience for me…I was looking for a gift for an office holiday gift exchange).

I mentioned the movie, and one of the clerks asked which characters were in it.

I mentioned the Enchantress.

The other clerk corrected me, saying that Harley Quinn was in it.

Yes, they are both in it. It’s possible to have two strong female characters in the same movie. 😉

The other thing was then trying to explain to someone else who Harley Quinn is (quite a popular character, although Quinn’s only been around for less than a quarter century).

Look up Harley Quinn, and you’ll immediately see her (identifying the gender is important here) identified as a “girlfriend” (or perhaps accomplice) of The Joker.

That’s true even when Harley is the only person in an image…not 100% of the time, but commonly.

Sure, I get that: people know The Joker, and don’t know Harley…so it gives you a point of reference.

You know what I don’t see?

I never see The Joker identified as “Harley Quinn’s boyfriend”.

Even if they were both together in an image, I doubt you’d see that.

That got me thinking…

I think especially female characters tend to be defined by their relationships to other character…typically male characters.

Again, that’s not universal, and it’s not just female characters. I’m sure we see Dick Grayson (Robin) identified as “Bruce Wayne’s ward” far more than we see Batman identified as “Dick Grayson’s guardian”.

I thought we could have some fun with this.

I’m going to flip it, as I did in the title of this post. Let’s see if you know who the other character is by defining their relationship to someone.

Who is…

• Mary Watson’s spouse
• Kala’s human child
• Toronado’s rider
• Mrs. Hudson’s best known tenants
• Scout’s father
• Becky Thatcher’s love interest
• Wendy Darling’s pretend spouse

Hm…I think this is easier than I expected, at least for my readers. I would get all of these pretty easily. I do think that if I posed the questions the other way, asking who was so-and-so’s love interest, more people would get it.

I’ll post the answers soon, but I’m guessing someone identifies them in the comments in the next day. That’s fine, by the way…I won’t confirm it for a day at least.

Bonus note: I was finally able to order an Amazon Echo today! You had to have asked for an invitation, and had Amazon approve your request.

My estimated delivery date?

Between May 27th and July 2nd.

Not only is that some time away, it’s quite imprecise. I’ve never seen a more than a month delivery window before!

Still, I’m excited to be getting one!

If you are wondering what the Echo is, here is my category of posts on it:

https://ilmk.wordpress.com/category/amazon-echo/

Join more than a thousand readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

I bought my Echo through AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Round up #276: PRH on subsers, Boehner blocks

Round up #276: PRH on subsers, Boehner blocks

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

No Active Content for the Voyage?

This question had come up before, but according to this

post in The Digital Reader by Nate Hoffelder

Amazon is not planning to add Active Content for the

Kindle Voyage (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

their flagship model.

Hoffelder reports having been told by Amazon that their “…focus is on building the best purpose-built reading devices.”

I suppose I can understand as a goal, but Active Content is one of those really non-intrusive things. If you don’t want to use it, you don’t. Games have been on the Kindles since the very first one in 2007 (although the games on that one were hidden…I played Minesweeper on mine, though). It’s an interesting decision.

There are over 1,500 customer reviews for

Every Word (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

in the USA Kindle store, with an average rating of 4.3 stars (out of 5). There have been ten reviews at time of writing in November 2014…and almost all of them were five stars.

It’s currently ranked #2,397 free in the Kindle store…out of 64,497, making it in the top 4% of sellers.

My guess is that this really has more to do with associated expenses (adapting the Amazon published ones for new models, customer service) than it really has to do with what customers say. However, I have had e-mail exchanges with the person listed by Hoffelder, and that person has always seemed nice and knowledgeable to me…so I’m sure there is some evidence for what the rep says.

$80 worth of apps free through Saturday 11/15

While I probably do more reading on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

than I do anything else (counting text-to-speech as reading…which I do), it certainly isn’t a “purpose-built reading device”.

I’m sure some people would argue that Amazon is turning away from Active Content to encourage people to buy Fires…but I think they’d be happiest if people had both. 😉

For those of you who do use a Fire and want apps, Amazon has a promotion going on through today (Saturday) with $80 worth of apps being given away. They are calling it an

App Toolbox (at AmazonSmile*)

Note that not all of these will work on a Fire tablet (the ones that don’t may work on the Fire Phone, if you are one of the rarities like me who owns one). 😉

Titles include:

• Office Calculator Pro: 4.4 stars, 172 reviews
• MathsApp Graphing Calculator: 4.4 stars, 63 reviews
• EasyTether: 4.3 stars, 861 reviews
• Open Document Reader: 5.0 stars, 3 reviews
• Oxford Dictionary of English: 3.5 stars, 8 reviews…normally $24.99

and twelve more.

Amazon and others advocate for Equal Collection Legislation

It’s been a while since I’ve written about this issue, but it’s back in the news.

Congress is considering a bill which would mean that sales tax would be collected on online purchases in a way similar to how it is collected now in brick and mortar stores.

Amazon and Barnes & Noble both support the current legislation, along with many other entities.

The

National Retail Federation

has sent a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner, urging passage. Unfortunately, every link on their website to that letter is failing for me…they may be overwhelmed because of the coverage.

Why does this matter now?

If the current bill isn’t passed before the new Congress takes over in January of 2015, it’s dead…and they have to start all over (again).

It might surprise you that Amazon and B&N are on the same side on this.

Amazon has argued for it before. They don’t want there to be lots of different rules about how this happens all over the country: they want one clear sales tax collection policy (not rate, policy) at the national level.

This (and previous bills) bill is not about people owing more taxes, but it would certainly mean that many people pay more.

Check the sales tax category (linked at the end of this post) for more information, but essentially, what happens now is that many people are supposed to pay tax on things they buy on the internet…and they don’t. Every year, my family adds more when we pay our State taxes for those uncollected taxes…it would be far easier if they just collected them at the time of purchase.

Can you imagine what it would be like if you had to track your in-store purchases yourself to figure out what sales tax you owed?

Amazon has repeatedly said that when they are in situations where sales tax is collected on their purchases, it doesn’t hurt their market share.

I believe that. Oh, that’s not to say that some people might buy very expensive items from Amazon to avoid having sales tax collected. Of course, they might be quite surprised if they ever get audited…not having paid that will not get you invited to the IRS offices for tea. 😉 It might get you invited somewhere else less pleasant, though…

According to this

The Hill article by Bernie Becker

Speaker Boehner is blocking the bill, despite some significant bipartisan support.

It’s worth noting that not every state would collect sales tax on e-books anyway (California doesn’t, when they are delivered electronically…at least, that’s how it was last time I looked), but this still could affect Kindleers.

PRH C.E.O. doesn’t like subsers

Generally, I’ve found Random House to be pretty forward thinking…but this

The Bookseller article by Benedicte Page

makes me question that.

C.E.O. (Chief Executive Officer) Tom Weldon of Penguin Random House makes several statements.

One of them has to do with keeping e-book royalty rates the same, but the headline item is really about not believing in subsers (subscription services), like Amazon’s

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

In this short excerpt, Weldon is quoted as saying:

“We are not convinced it is what readers want. ‘Eat everything you can’ isn’t a reader’s mindset. In music or film you might want 10,000 songs or films, but I don’t think you want 10,000 books.”

Well, as someone with something like 10,000 paperbooks on my shelves, I beg to differ. 😉

Certainly, it usually takes longer to read a book than it does to listen to a song or watch a movie, so you might think you need access to fewer…but you still need to make the choices as to which ones to consume.

While I think there is a lot future in curation (people, and perhaps software, picking books that you are likely to like), having a variety is important now.

Let’s say you like 1% of the books that are published each year. 10,000 gives you one to enjoy every three days. That’s a pretty good pace.

I think subsers are a big part (but not the only part) of the book market in the next few years, and I suspect Random House may come on board with it. Weldon didn’t rule it out, although the CEO thought they were more likely to succeed in emerging markets. If they did there, that might encourage them to join in more developed markets.

I recommend the article: see what Weldon has to say about PRH selling directly to consumers…I think what’s said there is wise.

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

Are there more…? #1

Are there more…? #1

This is just a fun little game. It’s based on Amazon’s categories, and I used

eReaderIQ.com

to do the search.

In the USA Kindle store, are there more…

1. Books about wombats or books about walruses?
2. Books with the reader age of “teen” or cookbooks?
3. Five star range books (probably 4.5 and up) that are free, or five star range books which cost at least $25?
4. Science fiction and fantasy, or romance?
5. Books in Japanese or books in French?
6. Books by Stephen King or books by Agatha Christie?
7. Books published in 2014, or books in the Classics category of Literature & Fiction?
8. Books published by Harlequin or books with the keyword of “clown”?
9. Books that are at least 50% off or books under $10?
10. Books in Kindle Unlimited (I did not use eRIQ for this) or books in Spanish?

Answers tomorrow…

Update: here are the answers!

1. Books about wombats or books about walruses? Wombats = 77; Walruses = 6
2. Books with the reader age of “teen” or cookbooks? Teen = 16, 481; Cookbooks = 47,002
3. Five star range books (probably 4.5 and up) that are free, or five star range books which cost at least $25? Free = 5,226; $25 or more = 27,736
4. Science fiction and fantasy, or romance? SF&F = 178,327; Romance = 210,896
5. Books in Japanese or books in French? Japanese = 28,502; French = 60,578
6. Books by Stephen King or books by Agatha Christie? Stephen King = 242; Agatha Christie = 439
7. Books published in 2014, or books in the Classics category of Literature & Fiction? 2014 = 708,668; Classics = 42,866
8. Books published by Harlequin or books with the keyword of “clown”? Harlequin = 21,945; Clown = 835
9. Books that are at least 50% off or books under $10? 50% = 1,814; Under $10 = 2,455,978
10. Books in Kindle Unlimited (I did not use eRIQ for this) or books in Spanish? KU = 740,397; Spanish =  107,216

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.