Netflix for books -- here we go

By Steve Weddle

If you're tired of reading your ebooks for free, you'll be happy to know that a few new options allow you to pay for the service.

Years back, my local library had Rocket eBooks, these blocky things in cases, pre-loaded with dozens of books. You could check out the "Mystery" ereader and you're carrying 18 ebooks -- Evanovich and Connelly and Child so forth. There was a literary reader. A romance reader. Each one, loaded up with a different genre.

You couldn't check out individual ebooks, at least not near me.

You can now read near boats!!

Overdrive came along and provided an effective -- though cumbersome and clunky -- way to check out individual ebooks. They'll pop up on your Nook. You can load them up on your Kindle. Heck, you could probably even plop them onto your Sony eReader. Whatever you have, you can log in through your local library, and -- if the book isn't already checked out and if your library has it -- read a soon-to-be favorite.

Recently, Oyster has gotten into the mix, offering old books for your Apple phone. If you want to read something that they have -- limited to participating publishers -- you don't have to worry about whether someone else in your county has "checked out" the ebook. You can start reading, for only $120 per year. As Oyster says:

We created Oyster to evolve the way people read and to create more of the special moments that only books can offer. From anywhere a mobile device can go—a bustling subway car, a quiet coffee shop, or lost at sea with a Bengal tiger—our mission is to build the best reading experience, one that is both communal and personal, anytime, anywhere. 

Imagine being able to read anywhere. It's like a dream come true.

Ha. I kid because I love.  (Seriously, though. Selling your ebook service as "now giving you the ability to read anywhere" is kinda weird because, you know, um, books have been kinda portable for a while. I mean, for reals, it isn't like any of my books are those big dog bahama mama books the monks used to gild, you know?)

I hope Oyster does well. The nice folks at BookRiot seem to love it. The app is only available for the Apple phone now, but word is they'll be expanding soon. The interface looks lovely, if that's something that you're interested in.

And now news that Scribd and HarperCollins are teaming up to provide another ebook subscription serivce.

Amazon has offered its lending library to Prime users -- $79 a year -- for quite a while, too.

We have many, many options for borrowing books. Some I've missed mentioning, no doubt. Free from the library. Paid-subscription from other folks.

I suppose there's gold in them thar hills if companies are now getting onboard with it. Netflix for books. Spotify for reading. MySpace for auto detailing.

Love/Hate

So Breaking Bad is over and done with and what are we supposed to do for entertainment now? 

After a slew of recommendations on Twitter I gave Love/Hate a go. It's been hailed as Ireland's answer to The Wire, a plaudit which does get thrown around rather easily, and while it doesn't have quite the depth or ambition of David Simon's iconic show there is a hell of a lot to like about it. 

The story -

Darren returns to Dublin to celebrate his brother's birthday after a period lying low in Spain, hiding from firearms charges, but the party is derailed by his brother's murder. Out for revenge Darren is drawn into the orbit of his former boss, drug smuggling kingpin John Boy, a snarling, psychopath surrounded by a coterie of yes-men who are only ever a wrong look or an extra line away from violence. Darren might be useful to him though; he's smart as well as vicious, and brains are in short supply in the business. Darren might also be the man to take him down though, if he continues to believe John Boy is responsible for his brother's death.


Cue power struggles, manipulation, violence, strange alliances and senseless killings.  Lots of senseless killings. And drug use/bad language/casual sex. Of course.

Do I really need another gangster show boxset, I hear you ask. Why not just rewatch The Sopranos? 

Well, Love/Hate is actually grittier I'd say, more akin to Showtime's Brotherhood - another series worth watching if you've missed it - a full speed pelt through post-boom Dublin's underbelly, touching on drug smuggling, prostitution and arms dealing, with the IRA making an appearance in later series.   

It boasts some outstanding performances, including The Wire's Aidan Gillen and Misfits' Robert Sheehan - who's probably a bit too pretty for the role - as well as a great supporting cast who actually look like street level dealers and muscle and bring a tonne of swagger to the screen.

The storylines might lack an overarching narrative but in place of grand schemes you have a more authentic sense of the chaos around criminality, the sudden flare ups and incompetence, politiking and self destruction which tend to dominate a world populated by psychos and thugs who have no fear of the police and massively out of control egos. 

But the real joy of the show for me is the script. Brutal when it needs to be, clever and dark, with a twisted sense of humour. It goes from laugh out loud funny to absolutely chilling in the blink of an eye and there's been nary a bum note in the three series I've watched. The writer Stuart Carolan is pure class.

One word of warning, after hitting the boxset you will almost definitely develop an Irish accent.

Seasons 1-3 are available on DVD and should keep you going for a few days at least.

The Vulture

 

Recently I read a book called, 33 Revolution Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs by Dorian Lynsky which I think is excellent. There’s also a good blog for the book that gets updated quite a bit.

I picked up the book mostly for the late 60s and early 70s stuff, research for what looks like will be a series from me, the “Eddie Dougherty Mysteries,” that start with Black Rock set in 1970 and will continue till… well, I don’t know yet, but 33 Revolutions... continues right up to today.

I particularly liked the section on disco. I was one of those teenagers in the 70s who firmly believed that, “Disco sucks,” but that has become just one more thing on a very long list of things I was wrong about.

And thanks to my Rdio subscription I listened to most of the songs mentioned in the book while I was reading and while they aren’t all as fantastic as Nina Simone’s, “Mississippi Goddamn,” it turns out there are a lot of terrific protest songs.

Another surprise in the book, one that’s crime fiction related, was the rather off-hand mention of Gil Scott-Heron’s mystery novel, The Vulture.

Wait, what?

Sure, I had a feeling The Revolution Will Not Be Televised wasn’t his only really good song, I had a feeling there would be other very good ones I’d just never heard and I had a feeling that he had written a lot of good poems that I hadn’t read, but a mystery novel?

Well, yeah. And it’s a good one.

This is the cover of the version I got out of the Toronto Public library, reprinted in the UK in 1996 by Canongate. There doesn’t seem to be a recent American version but it is available on Kindle and also as a double e-book along with Scott-Heron’s other novel, The Nigger Factory.

First published in 1970, The Vulture is described as, “digging the rhythms of the street, where the biggest deal life has to offer is getting high, The Vulture is a hip and fast-moving thriller. It relates the strange story of the murder of a teenage boy called John Lee – telling it in the words of the four men who knew him when he was just another kid working after school, hanging out, waiting for something to happen.”

In a lot of the stuff I’m reading there’s an underlying current of how things are changing. Well, change is constant, of course, but the change in attitudes from, say, 1968 to 1972 is quite striking and The Vulture is on top of it. As one character notes, “It was a new day for John Lee. There had always been a smile on his lips and a chuckle rolling over his vocal chords, ready to be exposed with only the slightest provocation. The daytime was gone from his eyes. All that remained was the night.” Another way he puts it is, “He was the corner fashion post. The blue jeans and T-shirt were gone, but so was the sunshine.”

In retrospect an awful lot has been written about the transition from the peace and love 60s to the greed is good 80s but Gil Scott-Heron was writing about it as it happened. In songs, poems and novels. 

The opening line to this is, “Standing in the ruins of another black man’s life,” and one of the comments on the YouTube page is, “Replace 'Black Mans Life' with 'Poor Mans Life' and it works even for us middle aged white men.....” Maybe one of the best YouTube comments of all time (though, really, I try to stay away from YouTube comments).

In the introduction Scott-Heron says he say the book as a movie and it’s really too bad that movie hasn’t been made. This novel is insightful and smart and a long way from blaxploitation.