LOL!

Did he really just do a “back in my day ....” piece?

Would George Soros please please please give me a few million dollars so I can buy the Post and demote Cohen to assistant obit writer?

It’s pathetic watching the slide into irrelevancy of the old media.

It will be good once it is all done and we don’t have to deal with morons like cohen.

Anyone who would buy a book based on an Ernest Hemingway blurb really needs to get his (or her) head examined.  I know that this is already a given with R. Cohen, but whatever.

Also, gotta agree with “befuggled”‘s criticism of the Amazon reccos.  If you have bought gifts for folks with differing tastes than yours, you will get annoying emailed suggestions.

Sorry, but ‘Her Privates We’?  Sounds like soft core porn for dyslexics.

“Penthouse Forum Dear: it thought never to happen me…”

I think he recently watched “You’ve Got Mail”

If you have bought gifts for folks with differing tastes than yours, you will get <strikethrough>annoying</strikethrough> emailed suggestions.

I’ve corrected that for you.  The comedy gold that comes into my inbox from Amazon is something I treasure.  It’s often even funnier than the haikus I get trying to sell me viagra (or, as they call it v1@g@).

Life is too short to read Richard Fucking Cohen..

A-fucking-men.  Cohen’s turned into an unfunny version of Abe Simpson.  If I want to read screeds about kids getting off of lawns and how tattoos are the downfall of humanity and how horrible it is to try to use these new-fangled computing devices, I’ll go find some Simpsons transcripts to read through instead.  I swear, any day now I expect Cohen to start a column off with “So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time…”

Well, Amazon really doesn’t do a great job at the obscure but amazing author game. But neither does Barnes and Nobles. B&N;killed all our bookstores before Amazon even caught on. They came in with a football field of books, killed all the competition, then ripped out half the books for a kiddie room and a music section.

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Not soft core - hard core fetish.  And you won’t believe what else her privates do.

Of course poor folk like me use the Library. It’s not green but wh… oh wait, yeah it is green.

Was around when good ol Cohee poo was pickin up women too.

Um, the praise of Her Privates We by Ernest Hemingway?  Which Cohen couldn’t possibly have known about if he’d gone to Amazon?

It’s on the Amazon UK page for the book.

Odd to make fun of Richard C and belittle a title you simply know nothing about!
The words are from a title to a WWI novel—Her Privates We, and the phrase is from

... Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors? Guildenstern:
Faith, her privates we. Hamlet: In the secret parts of fortune? ..

go forth and sin no more

I love how he goes into a tizzy fit about “the chyyyllldrunnn!” - we must save printed books for the sake of the chyylldrunn!  Dude, the chyyllldrun are reading badly-spelled and worse-written “Hannah Montana” fanfic on the Internet, and you’re worried about the f**king Kindle?  Get a grip.

I can’t see myself ever actually buying a Kindle.  At least with a printed book, I don’t have to worry about the battery running down.  And Amazon’s recommendations do tend to suck - I followed a link from Feministing once in the course of snark over a children’s Bible - “God’s Little Princess” or some such nonsense - and next thing I knew Amazon was recommending books on “Submitting to your husband because GAWD SEZ SO”.

@ Mark B. and LittlePig: *snerk*

Amazon’s even ore fun when, like me, you sell books and other things on there. When you’re listing thousands of books, that means you’re also searching for thousands of book listings.

Amazon now thinks I’m a single parent caring for a sick spouse while battling dementia, and an atheist enthusiast of the Left Behind series of books… who also is a professional christmas tree farmer/architect/botanist who dabbles in sculpture and painting and who loves NASCAR and opera.

“and the phrase is from ... Hamlet”

I think the phrase is also in “Hamlet 2”

Well, technically he’s right, in that Ernest Hemingway is unlikely to be posting book recommendations on a blog or a bookseller’s webstore.

Actually, if you find this book on amazon, the Hemingway endorsement is prominently displayed across the bottom of the front cover image.  You can even click the “See Larger Image”.

And as usual, there’s the False Dichotomy: it’s either Amazon.com or the nice small bookstore. I haven’t ought a book in ages from Amazon (there isn’t an NSB around) by leearning to utilize—gasp—the public library.
Librarians are book-loving, well-read people who are only to happy to recommend unsung but good stuff—and 9 times out of 10, when I make a request for a book not in the catalog, they’ll just buy the thing—which means the publisher gets paid AND my community gets yo share the book.
If it’s any good at all, a public library is a charming little bookstore wrapped up in a powerful community resource.

My fave Amazon recommendation happened in 2004 during the presidential election campaign.  When I went over to Amazon their top recs for me were How to Make Love Like a Porn Star by Jenna Jameson, and Unfit to Serve, the swift boat hit job on John Kerry.  The supposed explanation for each was that I had bought opera DVDs.  (figure that out).  I’m guessing the reality is that Amazon had product to push.

Her privates we has been digitized and put up, I believe, at the Australian Gutenberg, under its Australian title, The Middle Parts of Fortune. It can be found here:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200261.txt

Really, Cohen ought to get out more if he has never heard of Her Privates We. Next thing you know, he’ll discover David Jones’ In Parenthesis.

I’m 30 years old and have as much contempt for Richard Cohen as ever but man, I love bookstores. I sure don’t want to see them all go out of business, as current trends seem to indicate they will. But then again current trends seem to indicate that just about everything is going out of business.

My own favorite Amazon recommends: I’m in to Neil Gaiman and he wrote the Sandman, so Amazon started recommending Sandman related products, including a different series based off of it, called The Endless. I said I was interested, and now I get weekly recommendations to purchase Endless-brand designer shoes.

I’ve never purchased shoes over the internets, let alone women’s shoes. But if Neil Gaiman created them, who am I argue?

Oddly, one of the things keeping those tiny specialty bookstores open is places like Amazon and Alibris (and even BarnesandNoble.com).  They no longer have to depend on walk-in customers—they’re able to sell their stock to customers all over the world.  I’ve been buying used and rare books for work lately and Alibris is a girl’s best friend for finding obscure, out-of-print titles for very reasonable prices.

???  He has a nationally-published column, and this is what he chooses to write about???

Apparently he didn’t see You’ve Got Mail. The little bookstore was gobbled up by behemoths like Barnes & Noble and Borders.

Has he got something against Borders and B&N;, too? Or just the evil Internets?

Ew, he lives in Boulder? I feel so dirty.

Cohen asks for “obscure” books so at the next cocktail party he can bore some unfortunate soul with his knowledge of literature.  Everything is about him (typical of his circle).  He admits that he bought the Kindle even though he has no intention of using it.  Why? Because of his adolescent desire to have everything his friends have.  This self-proclaimed funny man with the serious military fetish definitely has some issues.

“I never buy from Amazon unless I have to.”

What a douchenozzle.  He rails against Amazon, but buys from them anyway?

He has a nationally-published column, and this is what he chooses to write about?

Sure, for the same reason most of the the ads on the nightly newscasts resemble this one: http://www.robotcombat.com/video_oldglory_hi.html [embedded Quicktime]

It’s important to understand the hopes and fears of audience that supports you—especially when that audience is dying off under you and no-one is coming along to replace them. If the WaPo page editors are smart, they printed this column on the same page with “Family Circus,” the Jumble puzzle, and suppository ads.

One important thing to remember regarding the kindle is that you are NOT buying a book.  You’re buying a license to store and retrieve a book on your kindle.  What happens when amazon stops supporting the technology?

I like the idea of the kindle, but I’ve handled one and played with it and it just doesn’t work for me.  I read really quickly, and it doesn’t display a whole lot of text on the screen, which is annoying.  But I wouldn’t mind having one for travelling—much easier to pack a kindle than the 4-5 books I end up having to bring on business trips.

Pretentious a-hole sez:

You go there and people are browsing or having coffee or staring into open laptops and pretending they’re writers or something.

The cranky stupid-internet-booksellers-get-off-my-lawn tone and content of this column is both annoying and predictable (I can just imagine Cohen complaining to random strangers on the bus about this), but I will agree with one thing here: the Boulder Book Store is pretty feckin’ fantastic, as bookstores go. Great selection, lots of used and bargain books to go along with that selection, and completely inobtrusive staff.

What happens when amazon stops supporting the technology?

Same thing that happened when MS and Yahoo both shut down the license servers for their old DRMed music: angry customers, panicked backtracking, and a 2-year stay of screw-age before the consumer must do his duty and re-purchase all that media.

The real value added from the Kindle is instant access to all those delicious books via wireless, but the DRM and proprietary format destroy the benefit. Not surprisingly, ol’ grumpy gramps misses a major, demonstrable advantage that paper books have over Kindle e-books: you buy them, you own them.

I read really quickly, and it doesn’t display a whole lot of text on the screen, which is annoying.  But I wouldn’t mind having one for travelling—much easier to pack a kindle than the 4-5 books I end up having to bring on business trips.

If you have a Windows Mobile PDA or smartphone (even an older one) with a large-ish screen (3”+), check out uBook Reader ( http://www.gowerpoint.com ). Among its many features, it allows you to autoscroll the text at whatever speed you want, and won’t blast your eyes out in the process. I’ve used the software quite happily, and it’s clear that the guy who designed it also loves dead-tree books—perhaps even more than Richard Cohen does.

Cohen is the dilettante’s dilettante.

This article actually isn’t that bad though.  I’d rather read about him having a warm-fuzzy over the printed page than read his ruminations about how John McCain is really a rebel and insurgent (his words!) and will sadly try to become a conventional Republican to win the general election.

Ever notice how frequently he writes about war and books written about war?  I’m still trying to figure out if his interest is genuine but he’s just naturally pompous, or if he’s desperate for deep quotes for his forgettable articles.

I love amazon, B&N;, Borders, local indy stores . . . all of them.

News of the impending demise of printed books is greatly exaggerated.

Screen, cost, battery life, and property issues aside, e-book readers are not very conducive to the sort of attention needed to read long-format works.  Sure, that could be solved with single-function devices, but economics works against that, as multi-function devices are more useful and almost as cheap.  Maybe paper books will one day be viewed as an oddity, but it doesn’t look like that will be happening anytime soon.

I love Amazon because, despite not being a total freak, my taste in books seems to be too obscure for your standard brick and mortar. Even the normal stuff, like my obsession with crochet, is too specialized for Barnes and Noble or even our local independent.

So Amazon is about the only place where I can readily find books I’m interested in.

If bookstores carried more than the best sellers and a few general interest stuff, maybe I’d frequent them more.

Since this seems like a good place to ask, what’s the best spot on the intertubes for free eBooks you can read on your Palm device?  I used to know, but now I can’t seem to find the ones I used to use anymore.

Shorter Richard Cohen: “I’m really old and don’t know how to use computers! Pity me! I just got paid for writing that!”

The real value added from the Kindle is instant access to all those delicious books via wireless,

This is quite appealing to me, but it might be one of those things that’s so appealing that I’ll have to not let it into my life, lest it become an addiction.  Not that I’m a problem reader or anything.  : )

Ebooks - theoretically - would rock for things like technical texts, college textbooks and other non-pleasure reading that benefit from constant updating and search functions.  Unfortunately, none of the current readers seem to be that good displaying such books, especially if they are on PDF or one of the other. more esoteric book files like CHM and IDPF.

Since this seems like a good place to ask, what’s the best spot on the intertubes for free eBooks you can read on your Palm device?  I used to know, but now I can’t seem to find the ones I used to use anymore.

A lot depends on your e-book reader software. Back when I used Palm, I liked pluckr ( http://www.plkr.org/home ). You can generate your own e-books from text or html files using plucker Distiller. And if you have books or articles that start out as PDFs, I’m sure you can find a PDF-to-txt converter out there.

Good old Project Gutenberg has a wealth of free classics and out-of-copyright books that they offer in several formats, including pluckr:

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Help_on_Bibliographic_Record_Page#Plucker

If you want to grab the best of them in bulk, I think Gutenberg has a torrent of selected classics.

Archive.org probably has some good stuff, too. If SF is your thing, I believe TOR Books offers a bunch of free downloads in HTML format. Google up TOR free e-books and their library should come up.

1)  Richard Cohen is an idiot
2)  Amazon has turned friggin’ abusive with their emails.  They seriously try to get people interested in buying stuff with higher margins than books.  The proper way to search Amazon for things to read is by threshing Listmania pages.
3)  I have a Sony Reader, and it does a huge amount for me.  Of course, I bought it for 65 dollars, that doesn’t hurt.  I also do not “purchase” ebooks.  That also saves.  Note:  e-versions must be below $10 with no DRM to be viable.

Poor Richard. I guess I’m just lucky to live in Portland. But wait! Powells does have a web site! There ya go, Richard, you can now avoid Amazon altogether.