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Category: Reading

Posts in which we talk about reading habits and preferences

Some of you may know about Amazon’s new Matchbook program. Alas, it’s not my idea of a flash-of-fire gif when I delete a book I HATED off my Kindle. I still think that would be awesome and I hope someone gets on that soon. The Matchbook program allows a publisher to offer the digital version of a book for free or for a discounted amount to people who bought the print version (new) from Amazon. Used book purchases don’t count. The publisher decides whether to participate and what discount to offer, including free.

As a reader, I’m excited because, damn, I have bought a lot of books in print and I would be thrilled to get digital versions at a discount.

As a writer, I’m also excited because, see above. I hope there are lots of people out there who will decide to get my books. If someone ponies up for the Create Space print version of one of my self-pubbed books (it’s not possible to price those even at MMPB prices…) I’m happy to offer a discount for the digital version.

I’ve heard some people wondering why anyone would want the digital version if they have the print version.

I’ve heard some people in a panic over anyone getting the digital version for less for any reason.

So, whether you’re wearing your author hat or your reader hat or both, what do you think of this program? Why would you participate, or why not?

Posted in Former Riskies, Reading | Tagged | 9 Replies

Believe it or not, that’s the actual title of a book published in 1824. There are at least three remarkable things about this book.

First, allow me to share the title page with you.

WINE AND WALNUTS ;
OR
after Dinner Chit Chat
BY
EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE

CITIZEN AND DRY SALTER

SECOND EDITION
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL I
LONDON
PRINTED FOB LONGMAN HURST REES OEME BROWN AND
GREEN
PATERNOSTER ROW
1824

Chit Chat.I don’t think I knew chit chat was period.

But this: this kills me: Citizen and Dry Salter.

You OWN it Ephraim! Is it just me, or does that strike you as highly amusing?

More Words

If ever a man possessed a particular bent of mind from some inherent feeling I verily believe I may claim credence on asserting that I have experienced such an extraordinary faculty. But lest the assumption may appear proudly egotistical— nay savour too strongly of vanity, in this modest age be it known that my pretensions to notoriety for this singular gift are but on an humble score being neither more nor less than for possessing an inherent love for the PICTURESQUE. Now having said this much I will endeavour to show how this marvellous faculty had birth– call me egotist if it be your pleasure, for I am of the old school, and save a world of circumlocution…

Now, I would have sworn that ego-anything was not period. But apparently it is. And yet, if I had a heroine call someone an egotist, everyone would think of Freud.

Translation please?

And now, what the hell is this guy saying? My brain got all twisted up about ten words in. Allow me to translate:

I feel things more than most, and it’s gone all up in my brain and made me super smart. I’m serious. Not that I’m not vain or anything. Not compared to some of the blowhards these days. Everyone who knows me knows I’m smarter than any of those dodos from Oxford. Here’s my secret; I like pretty things. True statement. Now, listen up, because that’s why you’ll LOVE my stories. I am older than you. Hell, I’m older than your father. I know things you young hipsters don’t.

And that, my friends, took a LOT longer than I expected. That guy’s been in the wine. But then, as he goes on to say. He’s eighty years old.

I may just translate the whole damn book. This guy is funny.

This week I want to ask you all if you’ve been to Amazon to take a look at the debut of Matchbook. In case you don’t know, Matchbook is the Amazon program that works like this:

1. At some time in the past, you bought a print book from Amazon.

2. At some point between then and now, the publisher/rights owner of that book put out a digital edition.

3. The publisher/rights owner has enrolled the book you bought in MatchBook and set a discounted price for the digital book. The discount can be Free!

Result: you are entitled to buy the digital edition at the discounted price.

If you go to Amazon and click on the MatchBook link, you will be presented with a list of digital books you can get at the discounted price.

I looked at my list and here’s what I thought.

Near Real Time Carolyn Reaction Blog

I remember that book! Free? Click. Click Click Click

Judith Ivory’s Black Silk? $2.99? Hell yeah. I refused to buy that in digital because, as I recall, it was priced HIGHER than the print version. Click.

Oh, hey! I LOST the print version of that. Or maybe I threw it away because space is dear around here. $2.99? You betcha! Click.

Oohh. There are some of my Dorchester Books, where YES, I bought the print version way back. (No, I did not click because I MADE the eBook version, and so don’t need it again.)

There’s that diet book I was totally going to use, only the cat chewed on it and now it’s somewhere under my bed. I think. Maybe. $2.99. Click.

Why aren’t there MORE books? I’m confident my print purchases from Amazon number in the hundreds.

Why are there so many missing?

WHY ARE PUBLISHERS SO AFRAID of me re-buying books I already bought from them?

Additional Thoughts

If more of my print purchases had been there, I would have bought a lot more. I would totally re-buy books I remember fondly and either no longer have, or have in paperback but they’re fragile now. I’m actually worried about re-reading Loving Julia, for example, because the pages are yellowing and starting to feel a little brittle. What’s that old saw about the permanence of paper? B-effin-S. (Beffins. It’s a word now. Deal with it.)

I did not click on every book that was there. Some of them I hadn’t enjoyed enough to want in digital. Some of them I hated, but not enough for a hate re-read. And at one point, I thought, I can’t just keep clicking on everything! I’ll run out of money for food!

The oldest of the purchases on my list was from 2000. I was buying a lot of historical romance. (click click click) Avon, you have your head on straight!

No surprise, technical publishers were heavily represented in my list. I think that’s because O’Reilly has had these sorts of discounts in place for years, so all the other tech-publishers do the same. But it was nice to pick up an eBook for some of my recent tech book purchases. They were all free, by the way.

Polls!

[poll id=”17″]

[poll id=”18″]

So, what do you think?

Let me know in the comments.

As I’m working on finishing up Lucy and Thrale’s story (Sinclair Sisters, Book 2) I’m researching boxing and the like. I came across this interesting article: Hazlitt’s Prizefight Revisted, Pierce Egan and Jon Bee’s Boxiana-Style Perspective by David Snowdon posted at Romantic Textualities. Make a note, because it’s a fascinating article.

Which is not what my post is about. My post is about this book by John Bee:

Sportsman’s Slang, a New Dictionary of Terms used in the Affairs of The Turf, The Ring, The Chase, and The Cock-Pit; with Those of the Bon-Ton and The Varieties of Life, Forming the Completest and Authentic Lexicon Balatronicum et Macaronicum, particularly Adapted to the use of The Sporting World for elucidating Words and Phrases that are Necessarily, or Purposely, Rendered cramp, mutative, and unintelligible, outside their respective Spheres. Interspersed with Anecdotes and Whimsies, With Tart Quotations, And Rum-Ones; With Examples, Proofs, And Monitory Precepts Useful and Proper for Novices, Flats, and Yokels. Editio altera.

Let’s call it Sportsman’s Slang for short, eh?

Here’s a definition that answered a long-held question of mine (In the text, this is all one paragraph, but that’s too visually dense so I have added paragraphs for readability:

Bon ton: highflier Cyprians and those who run after them; from Bon–good easy–and ton or tone; the degree of tact and tension to be employed by modish people; frequently called ‘the ton’ only. Persons taking up good portions of their hours in seeking pleasure are of the Bon-ton, as stage actors and frequenters of play houses, visitors at watering-places officers &c. &c. See Haut ton.

In Paris they are both called Le bon genre. The appellation is much oftener applied than assumed. High life, particularly of whoredom: he who does not keep a girl or part of one, cannot be of the Bon ton; when he ceases, let him cut. Bon ton is included in haut-ton, and is French for that part of society who live at their ease, as to income and pursuits, whose manners are tonish, and who, like other divisions of society, employ terms of their own, which rather sparingly they engraft on the best King’s English. Mascul. et Fem.

Terms which denote the ton: ‘The go, the mode, or pink of the mode; bang-up, the prime of life, or all prime; the thing, the dash, and a dasher; quite the Varment–a four-in-hand, a whip, a very jarvy; a swell, a diamond of the first water.’ None can expect to attain perfection in all these unless he could obtain the same assistance that Faustus had, viz. Leviathan; and then he could not begrudge to meet the same end.

OK, so the phrase I have often wondered about is “Diamond of the First Water” as applied to a person. This is the first time I’ve seen the phrase in period literature. Mind you, here it’s used with a definite note of, shall we say ironic contempt? But here, we do not see the term specifically applied to a woman, and if it were, we might be excused for thinking Bee meant to imply a whore.

At any rate, I’ve wondered if the phrase might be a Heyer-ism, but if it is, she had some period authority for it. In fact, as I’ve been scanning through this, there are so many phrases I recognize from Heyer and her successors that I began to think she must have had this book in her library.

Are there phrases you’ve often wondered about?

Edited to Add!

There are dozens of uses of “Diamond of the First Water” with respect to jewelry and many that, in the same breath, mention giving that jewelry to a mistress who expects such a gift, but also many that apply the term to things that are not diamonds– and from there it’s really not hard to imagine applying the phrase to a woman. And, there are some. In the one below, we see a rather racy application of the term from dialog in a play which I include here because it made me laugh.

From Dissipation: A Comedy in Five Acts. As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal, by Miles Peter Andrews, 1781.

EPHRAIM: What ish impossible! There ish your friend Lady Rentless that I wash more intimate with than you are Maisher Alderman, for all you are my Lord’s captain.

ALDERMAN: You intimate with my Lady? Why she’s the very pink of the mode, makes fashions for the whole town, gives entertainments to the whole town, sits up all night. Why, drill me, but she’s a diamond of the first water.

EPHRAIM: Aye; I love the diamond of the first water and have got the possession of most of them.

In the comments, if you don’t mind, answer one or more of these questions:

1.  Name a few of your favorite historical romances. Books you’d want with you if you were stuck some place for a long time.

2. Are there types of stories you miss?

3. Duke. Pro or Con?

I’ll answer to get things started.

Mary Balogh’s A Summer To Remember is one of my all time faves. I loved Amanda Quick’s Ravished. I loved Karen Robard’s Loving Julia.

I miss the the big honking saga. I wish there were more Gothics. Once, I read a Regency-Set vampire book and I totally hated it. But now I wouldn’t mind. I can’t explain that.

Pro.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not open to non-dukes.