Kobo Plus vs. Scribd vs. Kindle Unlimited

Photo by Henry Be on Unsplash

Resurrecting this moldy old carcass of a blog just in case this information is helpful to any other readers out there. I recently tried 30-day trials of Kobo Plus, Scribd, and Kindle Unlimited and had Opinions about the experiences that require airing. All of these platforms rely on a subscription fee to give you access to read the books, but they do not give you ownership of the books, and you lose access to all the material as soon as your subscription ends.

Kobo Plus:
I’ve used Kobo in the past for purchasing a few ebooks but hadn’t tried their monthly subscription. I tried the Kobo Plus Read & Listen plan, which is normally $9.99/month as of now. During the 30 days, I read:

Ebooks:

• Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher
• A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher
• Seven for a Secret by Mary Webb
• These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

Audiobooks:

• The Bird and the Sword by Amy Harmon
• The Queen and the Cure by Amy Harmon
• She by H. Rider Haggard
• The PG Wodehouse Collection (the parts of the collection I hadn’t already read)
• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (short story)
• “The Cats of Ulthar” by H. P. Lovecraft (short story)
• “Lot No. 249” by Arthur Conan Doyle (short story)
• “The Dunwich Horror” by H. P. Lovecraft (short story)
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (didn’t finish)

I enjoyed what I read, but by the end of 30 days, I was also coming up pretty empty on things I really wanted to read. Kobo has a lot of classics you could easily read on Librivox for free, and a lot of self-published stuff that varies wildly in quality. I disliked the mobile app intensely, especially for audiobooks; it would randomly skip ahead several chapters and absolutely would not allow me to go back. The only way to fix it was to delete the audiobook and re-download it. Ultimately, I thought the trial was well worth it, but continuing the subscription definitely wasn’t.

Scribd:
I had high hopes for Scribd because their selection looked so impressive. I added 250+ books to my to-read list and excitedly planned to binge as much as I could in 30 days, and maybe even extend the subscription, which costs $11.99/month. During the 30 days, I read:

Ebooks:

• A Walk in Wolf Wood by Mary Stewart
• The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
• Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
• Gone to Earth by Mary Webb
• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier (in Documents)

Audiobooks:

• Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher
• The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
• The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
• Being Seen by Elsa Sjunneson
• “The Design” by China Mieville (short story)
• Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher (didn’t finish)

Scribd’s selection does indeed look great on paper…until I realized that the more I read throughout the month, the fewer books were available to me. Scribd throttles access to the full selection as you consume content, so after I’d read two ebooks and two audiobooks in a month, I only had access to about half of the titles on my to-read list. By the time I’d read four ebooks and four audiobooks, I only had access to Scribd originals (Scribd-only content that looked extremely unappealing) and Documents. (Documents are a bit of a grey area on Scribd; people clearly upload full novels to them, and you can read them even when all other content is throttled, but I can’t imagine that it’s legal to do so.) The more recent, popular books you read, the faster you’re throttled, so you might be able to read a bunch of classics without much impact (although you could also get those for free on Librivox), but if you read a couple bestsellers, that’s pretty much it for the month. I was also incensed to discover that the throttling can happen mid-book, as happened with Paladin’s Hope—I was literally in the middle of listening to it when I lost access. Scribd cheerfully announces that these titles will become available to you again at the start of your next billing cycle.

I was very frustrated by this, obviously, but I was also halfway through a book and had some other titles I really wanted to check out (had to feed that T. Kingfisher obsession), so I grudgingly decided to pay for one month of Scribd. I was also wondering if the throttling might not be so bad once I got on the paid plan, as opposed to the free trial. During my second 30 days on Scribd, I read:

Ebooks:

• Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
• Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher
• The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher
• The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher
• Plot Gardening by Chris Fox (in Documents)

Audiobook:

• Paladin’s Hope (finally finished!)
• River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
• “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now” by Daphne Du Maurier (short stories)
• “Origin Story” by T. Kingfisher (short story)
• Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson (didn’t finish)

The throttling was just as bad, sadly, and once again I was cut off halfway through the last audiobook. By then I was fed up with Scribd. It might be okay for light readers (although one wonders if $11.99/month is worth it, in that case), but in my opinion, not for high-volume readers. The mobile app was better than Kobo’s, I’ll give them that. It’s worth doing the trial to get a few titles in, if you’re prepared to lose access partway through.

Kindle Unlimited:
I had done a trial of Kindle Unlimited a long time ago, and I don’t read a whole lot of indie authors so I didn’t find it to be worth it for me. But it had been long enough that I’d accumulated a list of KU titles by a friend to check out again, so I signed up for a 30-day trial of the plan that usually costs $11.99/month. (There’s currently a special where it’s $0.99/month for three months, but that wasn’t available to me at the time.) During the 30 days, I read:

Ebooks:

• Vow of the Shadow King by Sylvia Mercedes
• Heart of the Shadow King by Sylvia Mercedes
• A Girl Called Samson by Amy Harmon
• The Moonfire Bride by Sylvia Mercedes
• The Sunfire King by Sylvia Mercedes
• Of Wolves and Wardens by Sylvia Mercedes
• The Beggar Prince by Kate Stradling
• Of Silver and Secrets by Sylvia Mercedes
• Carabosse and the Spindle Spell by Sylvia Mercedes
• Overpowered by Kathryn McConaughy

Audiobooks:

None. I know there are a few audiobook titles available in KU, but they’re few and far between, and none of them really caught my eye.

I made good use of the time, but I felt pretty satisfied at the end of the trial that I’d read everything I wanted to for now. I just don’t read enough of the titles on KU for it to be worth paying a monthly fee; I’m far more likely to keep a list of indie books I want to read on KU and then sign up for a month every year or two to work my way through that list. Also, while I adore audiobooks, the selection on KU just doesn’t tickly my fancy.

My alternatives:

Ultimately I decided not to keep any of the three subscriptions, so what do I do instead? These are my favorite alternatives:

• I devour books on Libby, the free library app, like they’re going out of style. This is the first place I look for books, and I consume tons of audiobooks and a few ebooks this way. The selection (at least for our county library) is amazing, and if you have cards in different libraries, you can add more than one card to the app and expand your selection.
• My second stop is usually Hoopla, which also provides content through the library. Selection is limited and very random, but I do find some good stuff sometimes. Not bad for free.
• For books in the public domain that aren’t on Libby or Hoopla, the Librivox app is a great way to go. The audiobooks are read by volunteers, so the quality is quite hit-or-miss, but it’s free.
• Physical library books either from the county or from interlibrary loan are old-school but also often the best way to get hold of tough-to-find titles. I’m lazy and put holds on books that I want to all be delivered to the same branch in my county so I can go in and pick everything up at once.
• I don’t often buy audiobooks, but when I do, I like Chirp. They run good deals sometimes, and I feel better about supporting them than Amazon-owned Audible.

I hope this will be helpful for other folks in their hunt for books. Happy reading!

In the land of heat and humidity instead of the land of fire and ice

Sadly, as you all probably guessed, we won’t be going to Iceland this year. By March we knew the original May trip dates wouldn’t work but thought maybe late June had a shot. By May were were thinking maybe July could work; Iceland planned to open tourism back up since they a) had handled the pandemic brilliantly and were down to two active cases in the entire country and b) were testing tourists at the airport before letting them proceed into the country. I researched the heck out of air travel precautions and had everything planned down to the smallest detail…when Iceland, along with the rest of the EU, decided not to let Americans in after all since our case numbers and handling of the situation have been so atrocious. I can’t blame them in the slightest, but it was a bit of a blow. We didn’t get the final word until about 24 hours before our flight was set to depart, so adapting plans was a whirlwind.

Since we were not, alas, able to spend our fifth anniversary in Iceland, we instead went for a hike in Umstead State Park, where Ross had proposed to me, got takeout from Sitti, one of our favorite restaurants, and dressed up to eat it at home.

Haven’t worn this dress since senior year formal!

We also decided to take a few weekend trips around the state. We spent a hiking weekend near Blowing Rock and enjoyed some beautiful views in between rain storms.

We explored a lot of historic bridges in Chatham County, poked around the abandoned town of Coleridge, visited the Devil’s Tramping Ground (which turned out to be extremely anti-climactic–I wasn’t expecting to meet the devil, but was expecting something a little more exciting than a tiny clearing in the woods with a lot of trash), and finally went to the NC Zoo, which both Ross and I had never visited.

We visited on one of the days we should have been in Iceland, so it was particularly ironic to see this poor arctic fox, struggling in the North Carolina heat and probably wishing he was back in Iceland. Me too, buddy.

We also ran into this exhibit, which felt like piling insult on top of injury. Not only am I not in Iceland seeing geysers, I can’t even see the prairie geyser? Sigh.

We still had a fun time in spite of the heat, though, and we’ve been working hard to find the silver linings of staying home more than we had planned. Our Iceland trip is tentatively rescheduled for next summer; I’m sure that trip will be all the sweeter when we finally do go!

Unpredentedly uncertain

Words and phrases I would like to ban until further notice:

• Unprecedented
• These uncertain times
• An (over)abundance of caution (not seeing this one as much lately since things that initially were cancelled out of “an abundance of caution” are now cancelled as part of “the bare minimum of things we should be doing these days.”
• When this is all over (caught myself saying this way too much).

Okay, now that I have that off my chest, how are you? Life is weird for pretty much everyone now, but I know it’s been a heck of a lot harder for some folks. We’ve been very blessed in that our income hasn’t changed, unlike so many people we know who have been laid off work. Ross is teaching from home, which is fascinating to me. All over the country, spouses are realizing, “Wait, THAT’S how you sound when you’re at work?” Since I worked from home anyway for my day job as an executive assistant, not much has changed for me, other than being busier. I work for a nonprofit that provides healthcare in West Africa, so it feels like we’ve been sprinting since late February.

Life during the pandemic has been a strange ping-pong of anxiety over current conditions and enjoyment of the slower pace of life overall (work busyness notwithstanding). I have friends and coworkers seriously affected by the virus and it’s impossible to read the news and not be (rightly) concerned; the world is mourning and will be for some time. But I do think finding the bright side to all this is healthy on a personal level.

Here are my favorite things to do during these unprecedented, uncertain times until this is all over and we can go back to an underabundance of caution:

• Get outside. I know not everyone can do this right now so I don’t take it for granted, but it’s the number one thing improving my mood these days. We go on long walks and runs with Calvin all the time, and he loves it but is baffled by current circumstances, not to mention exhausted by them. He’s currently slumped at my feet after an hour+ run during which he finally just planted his feet and refused to go farther.

• Looseleaf tea. One of my coronavirus splurges has been ordering tea online from Chad’s Chai and Tin Roof Teas, and it’s my best pandemic decision to date. Both shops are running coronavirus sales. Bonus: you get to support local business.

• Get takeout. Speaking of supporting local business, we’ve been trying to keep some of our favorite restaurants afloat by ordering curbside pickup. Neomonde, Sitti, Tangerine Cafe, El Rodeo are some we’ve tried. We even dressed up for date night at home one night.

• Read. My concentration is shot these days, and I’ll bet a lot of you are in the same boat. Light and funny books are the name of the game for me. I recommend Terry Pratchett and James Herriott, for starters. I listened to It Can’t Happen Here on audiobook, and that was a terrible mistake. I’ll save the fascist dystopias for happier times, thank you. Another coronavirus splurge of mine was buying a few new books. Do I have a zillion books to read already? Oh yes. Was I thrilled to get new books anyway? Oh yes.
• Immerse myself in Icelandic culture. Since our trip to Iceland has been postponed indefinitely (I’m still hoping we can make it in late June, but I’ve reluctantly come to the realization that we may not be able to go until summer of 2021), I’m taking this opportunity to improve my Icelandic, take an online course on Medieval Icelandic Sagas, and read more Icelandic books (see above note about new books I didn’t need).

• Video chat with friends and family. This is becoming a double-edged sword because now we chat with folks every night, and it almost feels like we’re too busy again, but it’s still so lovely to see friends’ faces. We’ve caught up with folks we haven’t talked to in years, and I hope this tradition continues long after the pandemic is a thing of the past. We’ve even been playing board games like Settlers of Catan over Skype.

• Watch TV. Pre-pandemic, I was so busy that I was hard-pressed to squeeze in one hour of TV per week, which made keeping up with shows almost impossible. Now, especially with so many sites offering free month-long trials, I’ve been able to see most of Picard and a few other Trek episodes on CBS All Access, finally finished Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on Acorn TV, and have watched the occasional movie. Shocking!

What are some of your favorite coping mechanisms during all this insanity? Are you doing okay? Let me know!

Creating your own online library catalog

I love lists. I love lists of lists. I would probably love lists of lists of lists, but I cut myself off there because it seems like straying into the territory of dangerous obsession. Since books are one of the few things I love more than lists, I of course have endless lists of books. To read, have read, loaned out, borrowed, you name it.

So obviously creating an online catalog of all of the books I own is something I did a loooong time ago, with great delight. To some, this in itself probably already seems obsessive, but there are some practical reasons for cataloging your personal library:

1. Makes book shopping easier. Was it book 3 or book 4 I was missing from that series? Do I already own this particular Agatha Christie novel? Is this author I ran across at the shop the same one who wrote that one book I liked so much? Do I already own too many Louis L’Amour novels? (Of course not.) Bring up my library on my phone, and I have my answers.
2. Makes it easier for family to buy books for each other. My husband has access to and updates our online library as well, which makes buying books for each other MUCH simpler.
3. Helps rein in your book-buying. We can comfortable fit around 1500 books in our house, and having an online library keeps us accountable, both financially and in terms of space. We have a rule (at least for now) that for every book we buy, we have to give away or sell one, and we can track how often we buy books, and how many.
4. Keeps your books organized. On the shelves, our books are organized by genre, then alphabetically by author’s surname (with the exception of history books, which are organized chronologically by time period that they cover). Because my online catalog has columns for these genres and is sortable by author surname, I can look on the catalog and instantly know where any book is in the house.
5. Helps to rebuild your collection. Heaven forbid, if I lost books due to fire or flood or some other disaster, I’d know which books to replace.

So how do you set up an online library catalog? There are a slew of options:

• Goodreads. Goodreads already has an option to check the “owned” box for books, and I tried using this for a bit. I love using Goodreads for managing my read and to-read lists, but for me, it turned out to be impractical for a catalog. Searching for the particular edition I owned on Goodreads took too much time, and a lot of my very old books weren’t on Goodreads anyway.

Yeah, pretty much none of these bad boys showed up.

• LibraryThing. This one was super tempting, and I almost went with it. At the time, though, my phone was sketchy and wasn’t reliably scanning barcodes on books. Entering them manually had the same issue as Goodreads; finding my specific edition could be tricky, and really old books weren’t always on the site.
• Libib. Very similar to LibraryThing, but wasn’t around when I was building my library.
• Shelves, Home Library, Delicious Library, and BookBuddy are similar apps, so if you don’t mind scanning books, one of these may be your ticket.

Ultimately, I went a pretty clunky and labor-intensive route, but I have to admit, it works flawlessly for me because it’s so customizable. My books were already organized on their shelves, which made things pretty easy. I created a Google Spreadsheet and manually typed in every single book I owned. Ha. Yes. That did take awhile, though not as long as you’d think. Here are the column headings I use most often (click here to see larger image):

This works best for me since I can sort by author, title, category, whether I’ve read it or not, etc., and if I want to add additional columns (whether I’ve loaned a book out, for example, or to track book-buying), it’s easy to do so and to remove them when I’m done. I can search for particular words, and I can make specific notes on editions when I care to do so. For example, I have two copies of Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint Exupery, and I have a note in the library that one specific copy includes hand-written notes in the margins from a particular philosophy discussion group. But if the particular edition doesn’t matter to me, I can just leave it blank instead of having to select an edition in an app. Also, when I’m out and about, I can browse this quickly on my phone without using a lot of data, and since this is a Google Sheet, I can share it with whomever I wish.

Before I got married, I had read all but 20 or so of the books I owned. Then Ross’s massive book collection got added to the mix, so there are a lot that we own now that I haven’t read (and to be honest, probably won’t read since he and I don’t have all interests in common). I did convert him to my library idea, though; he ended up cataloging all of his comic books in a similar way, and we created a tab for our movies as well.

Warms my organized little heart. 😉

Heading to the land of fire and ice

I’m normally a pretty chill, emotionally even-keeled kind of person, but I’ve been squealing like a little girl A LOT lately. Why?

Ross and I are going to Iceland in June of 2020 for our fifth anniversary!!!

I’ve been dreaming of going to Iceland for years and years, for a plethora of reasons:

1. Have you seen the place?? It’s flipping gorgeous. The scenery has to be seen to be believed. Iceland has a bleak type of beauty that makes my heart hurt in a really good way. Browse the When in Iceland Instagram for more photographs too lovely to seem possible.
2. I grew up reading and loving the Poetic Edda and the Icelandic sagas translated into English and turning the Old Norse words over in my head even if I didn’t know what they meant because they sounded magical. Seeing the place where they were written will be a dream come true.
3. Icelandic book culture is a reader and writer’s dream. Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other nation in the world (although some say the UK may be taking that title in recent years), and Icelanders have a massive love for the written word. Storytelling is a national pastime. During the annual Jolabokaflod, or Christmas Book Flood, Icelanders buy thousands of books to give as gifts and to read themselves.
4. Icelandic culture in general is utterly fascinating. Crime is astonishingly low, averaging 1.8 murders per year (some sources say 1.6) in a country of over 300,000 people. There isn’t a single McDonalds or Starbucks in the entire country, and most of the global chains that have taken over elsewhere aren’t present in Iceland. 85% of its energy is from renewable resources (much of it geothermal). It’s one of the oldest democracies in the world, formed in 930 AD. Mosquitoes do not exist in Iceland.
5. Icelandic horses, whale watching, glacier hiking, geysers, puffins, turf houses…I could go on.

You’re may be thinking, well, that sounds fantastic, but the trip is more than a year away. Why all the hysterics now?

Let me preface this by saying that I hate surprises. I loathe them. Especially good surprises. If Ross had somehow managed to surprise me with a trip to Iceland in a month, I would be thinking, “Oh… Um. Yay?” Easily half of the fun of an exciting event is anticipating it, planning for it, and hugging the idea of it to my chest and making happy sounds while I daydream about how it might be (or might not be, I’m not picky and don’t usually mind if things turn out differently from how I imagined).

So here’s what I get to enjoy for the next year:

• Learning as much Icelandic as I can. Icelandic isn’t on Duolingo, more’s the pity, so I’m currently using a combo of this Icelandic course on Memrise, and various Icelandic videos on Youtube, especially this channel. I’m looking forward to getting an Icelandic dictionary.
• Planning every detail of the trip. Yes, a good chunk of that planning will go out the window on the first day with bad weather, but the planning is so much FUN. Because I’ve been dreaming of going to Iceland for so long, I have a list of natural wonders, historical sites, and attractions a mile long I’d like to visit, and I’m researching each one. I’m also researching different travel options, like renting a car and staying in Airbnbs versus renting a campervan and camping our way around the Ring Road. Iceland is VERY expensive, so making reservations early will save money.
• Rereading the Icelandic sagas and the Poetic and Prose Eddas. This literature was formative for me when I was growing up, but it’s been awhile since I’ve read a lot of it now. Rereading it with an eye for places I might be able to visit will be a new experience.
• Reading up on Icelandic history, some modern Icelandic literature, and Icelandic travel guides. You better believe I already have a Goodreads shelf going.
• Relistening to some of my favorite Icelandic music and building a roadtrip playlist. Tons of my favorite musical artists are from Iceland: Sigur Rós, Of Monsters and Men, Björk, Emiliana Torrini, just to name a few. I also want to explore new-to-me Icelandic artists.
• Buying an Icelandic sweater. This one may seem trivial, but I always wanted to get a traditional Icelandic sweater while in Iceland. Unfortunately, I learned that they’re pretty far outside of my price range, especially for an item of clothing I’ll almost never be able to wear at home in North Carolina without boiling alive. My compromise is to buy a used Icelandic wool sweater from Ebay or Etsy ahead of time (they cost about 1/5 as much used) and bring it with me to Iceland.

That’s a lot to look forward to in a year! Stay tuned for more Icelandic fangirling, if you’re into that. I’m sure I’ll be posting about the trip a lot in the next year.

In unrelated news, I finally got an Instagram, which is full mainly of dog pictures. If that’s your thing, check it out. And yes, there will eventually be a lot of Iceland pictures there too. 😉

“Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

As some of you have figured out by now, Ross and I will leap at any excuse, no matter how flimsy, to dress up in costume. Ross is teaching about WWII and the rise of superheroes in class? Time to dress up like Captain America! I’m going to a vaguely 1920s-themed gathering? Bust out the flapper dress!

In the last month, we’ve had two such occasions, the first being a gathering of friends for high tea at the Sugar Magnolia Cafe tea room for my birthday in January.

If you own a top hat, why *wouldn’t* you wear it?

The cameo pin I’m wearing belonged to my grandmother.

One of our friends had the foresight to bring along fake mustaches as well.

I received one of the funniest and direly needed birthday gifts: writer’s block soap, which “smells like regurgitated ideas and probably a vampire.” Goodness knows I could do with soap to wash away writer’s block, although I’ll take a pass on the vampire.

Our second costumed adventure was a 1930s-themed date night. We checked out Rockin’ Rolls Sushi first (not 1930s, but delicious, and any place that’s all-you-can-eat is a cost-effective option when dining with Ross), then drove up to Durham to see a special screening of 1933’s King Kong.

Doing my best Fay Wray impression.

Fun fact, Ross wore this outfit to a Casablanca party he and I attended together before we were officially dating, and he looked just as smashing then.

The movie, which I had never seen before, was surprisingly good, and of course groundbreaking for its special effects at the time. No real research would be done on the great apes until the 1960s, so Kong wasn’t accurately based on any particular species; the filmmakers gave him human-looking eyes because no one had any idea what a gorilla’s eyes looked like. The movie was also surprisingly gory and a little risque since it was pre-movie code, they made extravagant use of the chocolate syrup for blood. (Poetic lines aside, the airplane machine guns had a lot to do with Kong’s demise.)

I was also surprised to discover that Peter Jackson’s King Kong in 2005 (which I *had* seen!) was almost a shot-for-shot remake in a lot of ways. Clearly Jackson was a big fan of the original movie.

If any of you have been up to any costumed hijinks lately, let me know in the comments! I love comparing costume notes and sharing ideas.

 

 

 

Review: How to Publish Your Book (from The Great Courses)

I just finished How to Publish Your Book by Jane Friedman, part of The Great Courses, and I felt it deserved its own blog post.

It also deserves a spot on the must-read list for anyone who would like to get their writing published, even (perhaps especially) if they intend to self-publish. The course is written by Jane Friedman, possibly one of the most qualified people in the country to do such a thing, and it outlines in great detail how to find a literary agent, how to write a great query letter, and a lengthy list of what NOT to do at each step of the way towards, during, and beyond publication. Friedman is kind but doesn’t sugar-coat, and she doesn’t waste the reader’s time. Her realistic, professional approach to the market was refreshing, and I will be recommending this book to many of my editing clients.

While the book mainly focuses on the traditional publishing market, this is invaluable information for someone self-publishing too. To compete effectively, or at all, with traditional publishing, self-publishers need to understand the market–and it is a complex, rapidly changing one. The publishing landscape has changed so radically in the last twenty or even ten years that many of the strategies that worked before simply aren’t viable. Don’t expect to make it big doing what someone else did to make it big in 2009; times have changed, and writers have to change along with them.

You can get the book on The Great Courses website, naturally, but I was able to listen to the audiobook for free using the Overdrive library app, which I highly recommend. Don’t miss out on these insights!

 

The most relaxing song in the world and other aural delights

Music! Let me share some with you. Skews pretty heavily towards Icelandic music and indie music, but even that is all over the place, so you’ll probably find something you enjoy! (I realized way too far into this post that I could’ve just made a Youtube playlist…but then I’m not sure how I would’ve included the songs that aren’t on Youtube.) Note: this sat in drafts for MONTHS because there was so much I wanted to post, and I didn’t have time to just sit down and pick more than a few songs at a time.

• “Girl from the North Country” by Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. This is my favorite Dylan song, and I adore Cash even more than I do Dylan, so…basically a dream come true here.
• “Tracking Airplanes” by The Echelon Effect.
• “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” cover by…a washing machine.
• “Watching the Waiting” by Wye Oak.
• “Fed All My Days” by Máni Orrason.
• “Hailslide” by Júníus Meyvant.
• “Ryðgaður Dans” by Valdimar.
• “Listen to the Man” by George Ezra (and featuring scene-stealing Ian McKellen in the music video). Bonus: check out “Budapest” by the same artist.
• “Africa” cover by Angel City Choir. Turn your volume up!
• “Up All Night” by Alex Clare.
• Myrkur, a nyckelharpa artist. If you don’t know what that is, click the link.
• “Weightless” by Marconi Union, supposedly the most relaxing song in the world.
• “Crystal Blue Persuasion” cover by my brother, Ed Ricker.
• “Lost Boy” by Ruth B.
• “Bohemian Rhapsody” done brilliantly by a crowd of people waiting to hear Green Day.
• “Blue Monday” played on 1930s instruments by Orkestra Obsolete.
• Estonian choir sings songs created from Emily Bronte’s poems.
• “Obsession” by OK Go.  Poor guys, always having to outdo themselves in their music videos. Must be almost impossible by this point.
• “Pais Dinogad,” Britain’s oldest lullaby. Utterly entrancing.
• “I Know a Place” by Conan Gray.
• “Truly Do” by The Fleetwoods.
• Family casually sings Les Miserables together better than the actual movie cast did.
• “Sztoj pa moru” by Laboratorium Pieśni.
• Ancient FM, a playlist of commercial-free medieval and renaissance music.
• “Hunger” by Florence + the Machine.
• “Africa” cover by Peter Bence using whatever weird sounds you can make with a piano (be sure to watch).
• “Nothing to Lose But Your Head” by The Augustines.
• “Run to You” by Ocie Elliott.
• “Girl in Calico” by Tow’rs.
• “Rain Hat” by Noble Kids.
• “Island” by  Unknown Neighbor.
• “What Is Now” by Demons of Ruby Mae.
• “Tired and Awake” by Oliver Riot.
• “Rivalry” by Matthew Gordon Price.

Enjoy!

The best shipping notification I’ve ever received

I ordered the eighth House of Niccolo book, Gemini, by Dorothy Dunnett from BetterWorldBooks because I’m working on the seventh book currently, and I’m no idiot: one does not finish a Dunnett without having the next book in the series on hand. Those cliffhangers are murder.

This was the shipping notification I received:

Hello Stephanie,

(Your book(s) asked to write you a personal note – it seemed unusual, but who are we to say no?)

Holy canasta! It’s me… it’s me! I can’t believe it is actually me! You could have picked any of over 2 million books but you picked me! I’ve got to get packed! How is the weather where you live? Will I need a dust jacket? I can’t believe I’m leaving Mishawaka, Indiana already – the friendly people, the Hummer plant, the Linebacker Lounge – so many memories. I don’t have much time to say goodbye to everyone, but it’s time to see the world!

I can’t wait to meet you! You sound like such a well read person. Although, I have to say, it sure has taken you a while! I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but how would you like to spend five months sandwiched between Jane Eyre (drama queen) and Fundamentals of Thermodynamics (pyromaniac)? At least Jane was an upgrade from that stupid book on brewing beer. How many times did the ol’ brewmaster have one too many and topple off our shelf at 2am?

I know the trip to meet you will be long and fraught with peril, but after the close calls I’ve had, I’m ready for anything (besides, some of my best friends are suspense novels). Just five months ago, I thought I was a goner. My owner was moving and couldn’t take me with her. I was sure I was landfill bait until I ended up in a Better World Books book drive bin. Thanks to your socially conscious book shopping, I’ve found a new home. Even better, your book buying dollars are helping kids read from Brazil to Botswana.

But hey, enough about me, I’ve been asked to brief you on a few things:

We sent your order to the following address:

From there it gave the usual shipping notification info and signed off, “Eagerly awaiting our meeting!”

I already liked the impact BetterWorldBooks is making in the world (seriously, check out how much they do), but this just cemented my love. I have to wonder, though, what kind of book filing system puts Dunnett in between Jane Eyre and the Fundamentals of Thermodynamics? 😉

Shop talk + 20% off literary gifts

Getting gifts for book lovers should be easy, right? Just buy them books! This has backfired for me mightily before, though. Someone may be a great friend but have very different reading tastes, and just because *I* love Steinbeck doesn’t mean that everybody else wants every book he ever wrote on his or her shelves. Apparently. I’ve also had the opposite problem, where I excitedly purchased a favorite book of mine to give to a friend, only to see that said friend already has a copy on their bookshelves. Maybe even two copies. And yeah, you can always get gift cards to bookstores, but sometimes that just feels too impersonal.

Bookish gifts are a great compromise. I recently was approached by Melissa at Literary Book Gifts to see if I’d be willing to feature her shop here on the blog. I admit, I was fairly skeptical since I’ve never done anything even remotely approaching sponsorship before and was leery of the idea. After checking out her shop, though, I was extremely intrigued. She features t-shirts and tote bags with old book cover designs that are just lovely. Here are some of my favorites:

War of the Worlds t-shirt

Velveteen Rabbit t-shirt

Wizard of Oz tote bag

The Hound of the Baskervilles tote bag

Now, the really cool bit is that Melissa offered a 20% off discount code for readers of this blog! Just use the code QUOTHTHEGIRL20 at checkout to get 20% off anything in the store. No minimum order, and the code doesn’t expire.

I didn’t receive any compensation or products in return for this feature–just the code, which all of us can use. If you order anything, let me know in the comments what you think!