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@demerara@vivaldi.net cover
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

demerara

@[email protected]

Lifelong reader and book lover. Ebook maker. Retired application consultant. Old as dirt.
#ebooks
#mystery
#PulpFiction
#pulp
#Calibre
#formatting
#FOSS
#LibreOffice
#Linux
#html
#AA
#AlcoholicsAnonymous
#recoveryposse

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jiujensu , to bookstodon
@jiujensu@mas.to avatar

If you're reading this as someone new to the topic, you'll pick up a lot of detail about by the end, both in the older spy/romance storyline &in the one of a guy trying to get a book published. This book may just cause you to join a protest or scream into the void. Or at least examine some biases in the media or in your brain.

@palestine @israel
@bookstodon

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@jiujensu @bunnytown @palestine @israel @bookstodon

That 1 hour loan is really not very usable if you want to actually read a whole book.

Check this out: https://financial-accounting-acg2021-2013.blogspot.com/p/download.html

It will let you download an acsm, and then Adobe will get you the actual book.

We live in twisted times.

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@jiujensu @bunnytown @palestine @israel @bookstodon

Yes, it depends on the book. Some you can get for 14 days, others not.

It all has to do with the plutocrats' lawsuits against the existence of libraries.

weirdwriter , to bookstodon

I cannot believe that this is already a proposal, advertisements in e-books! I was making an offhand prediction from a college essay I did years ago, but then, someone actually replied with this. This is a literal nightmare come true! US20120084150A1 - Ebook advertising and related techniques - Google Patents https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120084150A1/en @bookstodon

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@fskornia @weirdwriter @bookstodon

All the more reason to get out of the Kindle system...!

Keep WiFi off at all times. No need to open the door to the spies.

Join the masses of users using and . Try and buy from the author.

eivind , to random
@eivind@fribygda.no avatar

Is a photo thing on here? I hope so, because I met this 10 m. (33 ft.) tall and v. handsome saguaro yesterday and want to show him off.

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@eivind @bookstodon

You might try Harry Harrison's West of Eden and Winter in Eden.

demerara , to bookstodon
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@bookstodon
Another new epub of an old mystery magazine - Clues Detective Stories for September 1939.
https://library.lol/fiction/15F4D30DB2775523BFCE784D44439B6D

demerara , to bookstodon
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@bookstodon
Another old crime magazine has landed as an ebook: Clues Detective Stories for May, 1936. Features a W. T. Ballard mystery--Death in the Patio.
https://libgen.rs/fiction/D2F999FFB6610AB65ACA28583AE1FF67

yo_bj , to random
@yo_bj@glammr.us avatar

"Big Publishing is clearly seeing nothing but dollar signs as apps like Hoopla gobble up identity-linked data on readers—and so it would be natural to put our hope in public libraries, which view patron privacy as a fundamental right essential to a functioning democracy." - https://www.fastcompany.com/90996547/e-books-are-fast-becoming-tools-of-corporate-surveillance

Bonus fun fact - OverDrive's reading history setting only hides the history. The data is still being collected - https://ldhconsultingservices.com/deception-by-design/

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@dbsalk @yo_bj @scissortail

The article talks about surveillance by the companies, and how they track you visiting web pages. All known stuff.

But the big hint here is surveillance within ebooks. And there is no hint about how this might be done.

I have edited literally thousands of ebooks from many sources. I've found traces of java script in one or two, and in neither case were the scripts anything that could track you. And most ebook formats and readers don't support scripts anyway.

Reading online, sure, they have you in focus. But reading an ebook offline? I've seen no evidence of it. Neither have many thousands of users on the relevant Reddit or Mobilread platforms.

Not that they would not like to do this! But I don't think they are there yet.

If anybody has seen a mechanism, like an example of code in the ebook, I'd love to see it.

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@yo_bj @dbsalk @scissortail

Yes, you are correct. These things you can't read offline. And most of the time, going the visual route (like imaging each screen and then OCR) to get a clear-text copy is ruinously time consuming and difficult.

Only if you can put the file on a device, and then read off-line, in airplane mode for example, with a FOSS reader, are you reasonably safe from tracking.

Even if you get a book DRM-free from Gutenberg or a shadow library, if you read it using a corporate reader like the Amazon app on a smartphone...I'd bet that Big Brother is watching.

MarianHellema , to bookstodon Dutch
@MarianHellema@mastodon.nl avatar

@bookstodon

"Crook Manifesto" is Colson Whitehead's second book about Harlem. In the 1970s it's a sordid world full of crime and racism. But still, both books are a kind of love song to the city and its crooked people. But even crooks have their own sense of honesty, their crook manifesto.

I am blown away by Whitehead's writing. The language is both tough and beautiful, in a mesmerising mix. My favourite line: "Crime is just how folks talk to each other sometimes".

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@MarianHellema @bookstodon

Books about Harlem, here is an old blockbuster! "Horn" by D. Keith Mano.

theotherotherone , to bookstodon
@theotherotherone@mastodon.world avatar

Who to read if you're an Agatha Christie devotee, but have read all of her books (besides re-reading her books, of course)? The former is true of me, but the latter, not quite yet. I'm planning ahead.

I know to at least consider Sherlock Holmes, anyone in the Detection Club (which Christie co-founded), medieval mysteries like Brother Cadfael, etc. And yes, I've already read some of those here and there, especially Cadfael.

What else?

@bookstodon

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@theotherotherone @bookstodon

I recently discovered A. Fielding and his Chief Inspector Pointer series. Excellent Christie-ish plots.

http://freeread.com.au/@RGLibrary/AFielding/@AFielding.html

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@theotherotherone @bookstodon

These are really good: the Henry Gamadge series by Elizabeth Daly. This is part of the blurb of one of them:

Elizabeth Daly was the author of sixteen novels in the Henry Gamadge series set in 1940s New York. She was awarded an Edgar for her body of work, and is said to have been Agatha Christie’s favorite writer

lunalein , to bookstodon
@lunalein@federatedfandom.net avatar

hi, @bookstodon - what are your favorite Australian/Kiwi ?

it’s coming on winter here in the Northern hemisphere, so I’m counter-programming by reading “Thirst For Salt” by Madelaine Lucas (lovely so far), and I love a Jane Harper thriller.

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@lunalein @bookstodon
Arthur Upfield, the Bony mystery series. Fabulous.

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@lunalein @bookstodon

Garry Disher, the Hal Challis series. Police mysteries around Morningside.

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@lunalein @bookstodon
Kerry Greenwood, of course, for the cozy Phryne Fisher mysteries and the Corinna Chapman bakery ones.

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@Kleen @lunalein @bookstodon

I discovered them in the 00s and found paper copies of all of them in used bookstores. Now I see on Amazon, some are available in paper (for a king's ransom), some in ebooks.

All of them are on LibGen for free. The author has been dead since 1964, so I don't worry about what the publishers think is piracy in this case...

Tinido , to bookstodon
@Tinido@chaos.social avatar

„The kidneys (grilled over a clear fire) lay on top of thick slices of bacon, surrounded by fried potatoes, golden brown and sizzling. The bacon was farm bacon (…) Gilbert fell to and enjoyed his supper; the grill, followed by apple tart, and the apple tart by home-made cheese.“ — I would love to read a novel full of food descriptions like that .Any ?
@bookstodon

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@Tinido @bookstodon

Try the Andrea Camilleri series starring Inspector Montalbano. The food is Italian; the inspector loves it and it is lovingly described. The first one in the series is The Shape of Water.

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@paul_ipv6 @Tinido @bookstodon

Ah, remember the day the starlings were cooked wrong...!

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@paul_ipv6 @Tinido @bookstodon

And once he was out in the country and got a fresh egg on a farm...how enjoyed eating it raw...

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@paul_ipv6 @Tinido @bookstodon

Actually, a raw egg is simply delicious, but they are toxic waste in today's big ag production world.

demerara , (edited ) to bookstodon
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@bookstodon
Sax Rohmer: Hangover House

Just landed at your local shadow library: http://library.lol/fiction/296049F4BF15BB1F02A7B996219F133E
A new epub from a fresh OCR.

The pdf is at Internet Archive, where you can read it an hour at a time (such fun). https://archive.org/details/bwb_P8-CDK-310

A rare book from the Dr. Fu Manchu man, this is a pleasant, short mystery story with all the tropes: a PI who is frenemy with the police inspector; beautiful woman with secrets, a corpse who is not really dead (at first), and so on. Very readable.

dangillmor , to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

The Whole Earth Catalog collection (and much more) changed my life for the better. It's all now online. This is seminal media and cultural history: https://wholeearth.info/

demerara , (edited )
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@posixgnulinux @IDIC @dangillmor @bookstodon

The -layout option is great, but if you want to then put together the paragraphs using the layout result, you have to watch the leading spaces.

Depending on the page images, you may find 0, 1, 2 or more leading spaces in front of each line for a whole paragraph...and then the first line may have 2 or 3 more, as the indent.

I usually go through the book or story to see what's what, then use a little regex and manual edits to get rid of any leading spaces except the paragraph indents you want.

Then I replace the real indent spaces with some unused character, blow away all the remaining line-feed and/or newline characters, then replace the placeholder characters with newline characters.

NOW I have a text file Calibre can turn into an epub with good paragraphs!

The Calibre heuristic processing option can do some of this, but it is not as accurate as doing it yourself.

ScienceDesk , to random
@ScienceDesk@flipboard.social avatar

Traditional porcelain and ceramic toilet bowls could be on the way out. A new 3D-printed bowl developed by scientists at Huazhong University in China is so slippery that nothing sticks to it. Science Alert has more:
https://flip.it/uATfwQ

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@ScienceDesk
@bookstodon

Chapter 27 in The Mote in God's Eye, By Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: the Moties make a toilet for the earthmen that is frictionless like this, and uses no water.

All very good, but what will we read about that silicone oil (or the other bits) in a few years?

More "forever chemicals" to screw us up?

This is the kind of super good idea we tend to take to without doing any homework...

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@timo21 @ScienceDesk @bookstodon
Good point! High friction seat belt needed.

rewarp , to random
@rewarp@anarkis.net avatar

I am no branding expert, but calling your opponents an "illegal shadow library" makes you sound like a villain, and elevates your opponents to protagonists, in an anime series like Read or Die.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/most-notorious-illegal-shadow-library-sued-by-textbook-publishers/

demerara , (edited )
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@rewarp

It always makes me wonder, the lawyers in the US yelling about "massively illegal" conduct by Libgen. If Libgen was in the US, then yes,of course. But based in Russia...do they really expect US law to obtain there?

Libgen is a hero to students in the global south, a repository of important stuff, and the main place book pirates upload their work. It's a terrible itch the capitalists just can't scratch.

(And loved by poor academics everywhere.)
@bookstodon

Greengordon , to random
@Greengordon@spore.social avatar

Proof that education is no guarantee of intelligence or wisdom:

"the new process, intended to ensure library books are inclusive, appears to have led some schools to remove thousands of books solely because they were published in 2008 or earlier."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/peel-school-board-library-book-weeding-1.6964332

demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@Greengordon
@bookstodon

In what universe could libraries consist of only the most recent works? This will erase history!

Private
demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@phoenixashes76 @betaquarii @bookstodon

Oh, James Schmitz is just amazing. Somehow I missed him when I was young, but discovered him a few years ago and just read everything I could find.

Tezley Amberdon and Trigger Argee are primary characters, not complicated, just right.

demerara , (edited ) to bookstodon
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@bookstodon

In 1929 Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) thought he'd try for a new super-evil antagonist. Maybe tired of Fu-Manchu?

This book was a real failure, and remains so. It jumps around, the characters are cardboard, and the plot is thin. Roscoe is no Nayland Smith, and the Zones are no Si Fan.

But it is interesting, just the same. Glad to find it in Faded Page.

https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20211153

Private
demerara ,
@demerara@vivaldi.net avatar

@htdrake @AimeeMaroux @bookstodon @smutstodon

will let you move books to and from your Kobo very easily. It will also store the books on a PC, let you curate metadata, convert between formats, and lots more.

https://calibre-ebook.com

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