Kindle Unlimited

My hatred for Amazon (let me count the ways) notwithstanding, I just signed up for a two month trial of Kindle Unlimited...at 99¢ per month. (After that the full price--$11.99 per month, I think--kicks in, but I plan on being gone by then. Why have I allowed myself to do this dirty deed? (Other than the fact that it was done dirt cheap, of course). 

Well...it's David Estes' fault. Via this thing of beauty...

...which kept popping up on the opening page of my Kindle (the devious bastards!) The illustration got its hands in my guts and kept pulling harder every time I looked at it. So I read the free sample Amazon dangled in front of my chops. 

It was a generous sample, too. 75 pages. 

And I was pretty much hooked from page 1...when our young hero Roan was beaten up, kidnapped, and taken to an island reserved for plague victims. And just as I was getting caught up in that story, Monsieur Estes switched over to the story of Annise, a non-princessy Princess, and HER story was fascinating (she's a badass who doesn't want to be a sissy girl), and her father and mother were both AAAssholes, but her brother (also a badass) was with her, and he'd look out for her, but then---. Yeah. By the time we got back to Roan's story, which became even more enthralling, I was pretty sure I was going to need to buy this book. And...of course...it's the first of a five volume series.  (And of course there are dragons.) 

Hardcover $20.74

Paperback $13.99

Kindle $3.99

Not available at the library. Not available in Internet Archive. 

And then I noticed the note "$0.00 kindleunlimited."

So I looked at the kindleunlimited prices, and chose the cheapest version. Ahmo read this book, man.

And oh, look: they have the other four books of the series (Fatemarked) here too. 

Hmmmm. 🤔

ADDENDUM: April 2nd. Read to page 134. Probably going to read some more. It's a pretty compelling story 4 🏖.

Found Inside of a Book at Half-Price Books

 

Maybe the writer was Irish.

Eugene O'Neill

 

This shoddy looking place on a wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts (population in 1920 = 4,246) was the site of the production of Eugene O'Neill's first full play, Bound East for Cardiff. It apparently wasn't an astounding success. It ran for two nights, and there was only one copy of the full script. After its performance in Provincetown, a small theater in Baltimore offered O'Neill $15 for the rights to produce it. It was the first money O'Neill had received for his writing. He had to quickly type another copy of the script for the Baltimore theater company. (More details available HERE.)

Here's the rest of EO's canon:

Early Plays

Bound East for Cardiff (1914)
In the Zone (1917)
The Long Voyage Home (1917)

Ile (1917)
The Moon of the Caribbees (1918)

Major Works

Beyond the Horizon (1918)

The Emperor Jones (1920)

Anna Christie (1920)

The Hairy Ape (1921)

All God's Chillun Got Wings (1923)

Desire Under the Elms (1924)

Marco Millions (1924)

The Great God Brown (1925)

Lazarus Laughed (1926)

Strange Interlude (1927)

Dynamo (1929)

Mourning Becomes Electra (1931)...but this is a cycle of 3 

    plays

Ah, Wilderness! (1933)

Days Without End (1934)

The Iceman Cometh (1940)

Hughie (1941)

Long Day's Journey Into Night (1941)

A Touch of the Poet (1942)

A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943)

One-Act Plays

Recklessness (1913)

Warnings (1913)

Fog (1914)

Abortion (1914)

The Movie Man (1914)

Servitude (1914)

The Web (1914)

Thirst (1914)

The Sniper (1915)

Before Breakfast (1916)

The Rope (1918)

Where the Cross Is Made (1918)

In the Zone (1919)

Additional Plays

Now I Ask You (1916)

Gold (1920)

Chris Christophersen (1920)

The Straw (1921)

The Fountain (1923)

Welded (1924)

The Ancient Mariner (1925)

The First Man (1922)

S.S. Glencairn (1920)

Exorcism (1920)

Unfinished Works

More Stately Mansions (unfinished, 1939)

The Calms of Capricorn (unfinished, 1941)

The Last Conquest (unfinished, 1941)

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (unfinished, 1941)

51 plays total

ADDENDUM: Amazon has an e-collection of Eugene O'Neill plays that (1) is really cheap ($1.99) and (2) includes some titles I didn't see elsewhere...to wit:

A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda

 "...the idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit." (47)

Lindsey

I run into former students on a regular basis. It's usually a pleasant experience, and I receive far more compliments than I deserve. I'm sorry to say that I rarely recognize the person as a former student, but since they now range in age from a young of 26 and an old of 51, I think I can be forgiven for that.

Jacqueline and I volunteer at the hospital on Tuesdays. We push a cart around and serve drinks (hot chocolate, coffee, tea, and water) to people waiting for their loved ones. Yesterday one of my prospective customers looked at me and said, "Did you used to teach high school?" I admitted that I had, and she stood up and came close and said my name, tears popping out of her eyes. We hugged and she continued to cry, and after we'd caught up a bit she told me (tears still streaming down her face) about a moment that had touched her soul. 

I was teaching in a program for kids who really didn't fit into the concept of a school system. The program was designed to give them a break, second and third (etcetera) chances, and extra help along the way. One of the things I did on Fridays in the last minutes of class was to read a "minute mystery," and whoever got the solution first got a few points of extra credit. I thought it was a good way to make use of time that would probably have been wasted otherwise, and it also played to good listening and thinking skills. A useful waste of time I thought. The girl...well, woman now!...told me that she had been dyslexic and thought of herself as stupid, but that she solved every one of those minute mysteries before anyone else, and thought, "So how could I be stupid?" Needless to say we were both crying at this point.

We ended with well wishes and hugs, and I moved on to give out coffee and hot chocolate and tea and water.

I will certainly never forget her again.

And it hit me that this little mystery solving thing was just something on the side, virtually insignificant to me, a way to make things fun for kids who hated school. But it had made a real impact on this woman's life. It was something that she still remembered 24 years later. Something that made her weep at the memory it lifted up in her heart.

It made me grateful to have served that purpose for Lindsey...and fearful of the power that a teacher can have over a child.