Book ‘em on the fourth day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas My Truelove gave to me a book:

Read from 6500 reviews

IT’S good to see a book which is different on the best seller lists.

       This is how the book is described on Amazon:

This #1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing.

       Really, the only phrase out of place in that rather long description is “New York Times best-selling guide”

A Bent Banana Book

Our Bent Banana Books slogan is “books which are different”. If Marie Kondo can best-sell a book which is different, BBB can too.  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is #18 on the Amazon top-seller list and Michael we really have to talk is # . . . well, a fair bit lower than that.

Marie "KonMari" Kondo runs a consulting business in Tokyo helping clients transform their cluttered homes into spaces of serenity and inspiration. The late Michael O’Neill worked in state and federal Australian public services for 50 years, mainly as an employee counsellor. Marie de-clutters your house and Michael your mind.

The kernel of the KonMari method is quite simple and sound. “What I should be doing is finding the things I want to keep. Identifying the things that make you happy: that is the work of tidying.” Michael O’Neill’s philosophy is more complicated because he believes the noble institution of the public service is being corrupted by ego-driven Mandarins trying to impose a market economy on it. Pollyannas who pretend everything is okay while ruthlessly supressing well-meaning critics are a particular bane of Michael’s professional and writing life.

Reviews

Michael has no reviews for his book and Marie has 6500 of them and that hardly seems fair. Marie’s funniest review is from l. Whiton who writes: 

“My wife read this book and threw away a bunch of my stuff. I had to hide things in my truck to keep them off the chopping block. I no longer have a charger for my old iPod, she threw it away. I hate this book.”

Another review which I loved was from Aafke-Arton. 

“Marie is Shinto and so thanks all her stuff when using it, after using it and when throwing it out. I thought it was brilliant. I am not a Shinto animist, but I am "barking mad", and one reason I cannot get rid of stuff is that I feel sorry for the stuff that gets discarded. Marie has a different take on storing and keeping stuff.”

When Michael’s reviews trickle in, I trust some will be entertaining.

      

 More books for us

,

The Goldfinch has 23,000 reviews

Some other books

Other books to look out for this Christmas are novels The Goldfinch, a Pulitzer Prize winner, 

and

The Martian is now a film

and

The Nightingale is #57 in books

and 

Iraqi Icicle 

which I wrote and you should buy for whatever reason comes to mind.

Here is our song which will help declutter your mind.

On the third day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas My Truelove sent to me

Read from 131 reviews

Australian singer/ songwriter guitarist Courtney Barnett has taken the pop world by storm this Christmas with only one album and a couple of EPs under her belt.

       She is like Australia’s Lorde, only a decade older and only marginally connected musically and lyrically.

       So strike that comparison. Except both are talented wordsmiths, there is not much connection between Lorde and Barnett. I don’t know why I brought it up.

A great singer songwriter 

Maybe it’s because I don’t really dig other Barnett comparisons made with oldies Dylan, Lou Reed, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.

       Anyway, comparisons are odious. This album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit made me laugh in lots of places and made me ponder in others and just enjoy the music much of the times.

       Barnett is a competent musician with an attractive though unusual voice and a great storyteller.

       I do know where she gets some of her lyrics. You read “if you can’t see me, I can’t see you” on the back of a truck. I have never quite figured out what it meant in terms of trucks in traffic, something about mirrors. But as a relationship metaphor it’s cool. The lyric is in Dead Fox one of my two favourite songs on the 11-track album.

        My fave is Depreston an ambivalent look at the world-wide phenomenon of the young cool people – those who must wear black, I call them affectionately in my novel Iraqi Icicle  -  being forced out financially of the inner-city and having to conquer inner-suburbia.

Other songs contain lyrical gems such at the dredgers treating the Great Barrier Reef like a whore. (Kim’s Caravan.)

       Most of the music is blues-infused guitar rock and that’s just fine with me.

Adele is #1 at Amazon: read the reviews

       One surprise is that consumers taking up Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit are also buying Adele’s 25.

       When you look at the reviews on Amazon you might be perverse like me and insist on reading the one-star nasties.

       Some people are convinced Barnett is just a fad who will pass quickly. I doubt this.

If you wish to give someone an album that is a little different this Christmas, this one fits the bill.

 

Our song

 

Here is a bottler song which is not on the album. “The paramedic thinks I’m clever ‘cause I play guitar. I think she’s clever ‘cause she stops people dying.”

 

 

On the second day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas My Truelove sent to me

 

 Select from 70,000 reviews

THE KINDLE FIRE this Christmas retains its firepower which comes from its $50 (US) price tag but it has lost its Kindleing which started the fire.
       Bad pun aside, we don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about why the Amazonians have dropped the Kindle attachment to what is now the Fire tablet. This raises interesting semantic and philosophical questions. Does the 5^th generation Kindle Fire become the 1^st generation (Unkindled ) Fire tablet? BTW the 1^st-gen Kindle Fire cost $199 so  the price has tumbled since its birth in November 2011.

       I suspect the unKindleing marketers are trying to 1) redefine the product as a tablet not just an eReader and 2) position themselves as a genuine competitor to the iPad and its little sibling the iPad mini.

The cut-price Samsung tablet ships OS from Amazon 

Of course, Samsung would object that they are a handy competitor to the iPad as well. We can buy the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 7-inch online for $128.94 (USD, I think) and it does ship to Australia. There 4000+ reviews to choose from.

Read reviews of the Fire HD 10, 10.1"

Bigger Fires retail for significantly higher than the standard 7” model. Top of the range is the Fire HD 10, 10.1" which is now on sale for $229.99.

        I am not sure why I put up the above picture of the Fire 10 because on screen it looks like the 7” but, of course, it has a lot more whizz-bangery. Maybe it was to point out the Kindle 10 has 1900 reviews (for many products a worthy number) compared to more than 70,000 for the 7”. This shows the $50 price tag is the anchor of the Fire’s success.

       It is part of mythology that Kindle prices the standard Fire so low because it is connected to the Kindle entertainment store. In other words the message not the medium is making the moola. 

       

Fire upmarket competitor the Apple iPad with Retina Display is priced at $500

       For one of the best commercial communicators in the world. Amazon is tight-lipped on the fiscal side of its operations. For all we know Amazon is doing nicely out of its Fire 7” while millions of buyers cannot believe their good fortune in snaring such a bargain. 

    

Amazon Fire in Oz 

However the Fire 7" at $50 does seem something of a loss leader aimed at the US market lucrative for Amazon in its purchases of entertainment products. The Fire does not ship to my island home of Australia. Australia’s official Fire retailer Dick Smith is not selling any and Amazon Oz will sell me a HD Wi-Fi Fire 7” for $168.97 USD which is $230 in Aussie currency. This summarises why the Kindle Fire at $50 USD is indeed a bargain for those who can acquire one at that price.

TV Firestick garners thousands of reviews

Amazon does send to me the Fire TV Stick for $39.99. It plugs into a TV HDMI port. You can find out how well it works by sampling some of the 76,000+ reviews. That must be about the same number of reviews my novel Iraqi Icicle has by now and it also ships around the world. That sounds like a fantastic Christmas present to me.

·        

Nook tablet is reduced significantly in price

A good Christmas bargain which does ship to Australia is the Nook HD 7" 8GB tablet from Barnes & Noble. It is priced at $81.99 (USD) reduced from $199 and may include free shipping. Amazon tells me it may arrive after Christmas. If I give it as a gift I will just show the lucky receiver a picture of it and promise it is coming soon to a screen near her.

 

Here are our songs. That’s right! We have two because they are both classics connected to the topic of our second day of Christmas. Just to be different, I am presenting them in reverse chronological order.

 

On the first day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas My Truelove gave to me . . .

CHECK OUT USER REVIEWS

 wwa

IT is not easy being a hipster. It seems you have to get rid of your desktop computer or laptop because basically they just  don’t cut it in Hiptown.

       A relative recently decided to become a hipster. I said a beard did not suit but my sister said hers did suit her. She was now far more respected among her not-quite-inner-city clique, she said.

       I really want to have respect for hipster cool so I need to hide my HP all-in-one or convince my friends I use it ironically. The problem is I love my HP so I am not here to bury it as I should. I’m here to praise it.

       Apple CEO Tim Cook is the latest techdroid to stand over the PC to perform the last rites.

Cook recently flew to London for the launch of the iPad Pro and to announce the Death of the PC.

Check out the iPad with retina display: Apple of your eye?

        "I think if you're looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC any more?” Cook said.

        Sitting in my computer room at home, I put up my hand to answer but Cook’s iPad must have not received the image. “No really, why would you buy one?" Cook emphasised

        Embarrassed I snuck down my hand. Cook is way more famous than I, probably more famous than you, too. And he knows way more about computers than I, maybe even more than you do.

        So, even though I knew he was 133.34% wrong about the Death of the PC, I lacked the courage to stand up to him while he was spruiking in London. "Yes, the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people,” he declared as I fell silent.

You'll still need a fancy phone. I just happen to have one I can sell you: Mr Cook

       “They will start using it (the latest iPad) and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones."

       

       So you are telling me, Mr Cook, your iPhone and your iPad are making my .HP 23in- all-in-one, with Bang & Olufsen speakers,obsolete. I don’t think so.

CHECK OUT MORE THAN 80 Q&A

      

  

Take in  some of  23,00 reviews of this novel which my HP 23in happily reads two pages at a time.

       I am reading a novel, two pages, side by side as readers have been doing for centuries, only across my 23-in screen. And you’re saying my reading would be just as pleasurable on your 12.9in iPad, Mr Cook? I don’t think so.

See mixed reviews on the re-mastering of a film noir fave

       Or watching one of my favourite films noir, Detour perhaps, on full screen with the bass-driven B&O speakers throbbing along to the action. I can do that on a iPhone? I don’t think so. Mr Cook.

       Now I’m not much of a gamer but I doubt you can convince those that are the PC is dead.

No, Mr Cook, mark my words. I’ll say it again. Mark my words in twain just to show how serious I am. Mr Cook, your report of the death of the PC was an exaggeration.

Here is our song. It is an oldie just to show shiny new baubles are always different but not always better for certain tasks of enjoyment.

12 characteristics of film noir

I recently joined the social-media Q&A site, Quora.
This adds to my list of sites where I am a member but I don't really know what the site is all about.
It's like I am in the middle of a film noir and I know I will leave the cinema without having figured it out. Luckily Film Noir is one of the topics they ask questions on and that is a topic I do know lots about. Here is one of my answers:

Watch a film classic for free

PLEASE sir, can I have some more film noir?

       Like Oliver Twist, we are asking the question, only we will not be turned away with a clip across the ear.

       Today we will go to the land of Charles Dickens to continue our feast of noir.

      As we now know, classic noir refers to Hollywood films from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. But that is just an easy definition to cover many noirs because Gaslight is a British film made in 1940.

       If Hollywood had had its way, we would not be watching Gaslight later today.

Gaslight started life as the 1938 play Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton. Theatre buffs can imagine how astounding the play would have been with the central gaslight icon and the glorious role-reversal scene towards the end.

       The play made it to Broadway with a strange name change to Angel Street. If anyone knows the story behind the name change I would love to hear it.

       Anyway, the British movie and the Broadway play, both called Angel Street were successful and the Hollywood studio MGM paid its respects. It bought the remake rights. But  - and some like big buts in Hollywood – MGM demanded all existing prints of the British version be destroyed. The studio further demanded the negatives be obliterated as well. Luckily this outrageous caveat was not met.

Eddie coils to strike in noir

ONE name won’t spring to the lips of critics naming the most accomplished classic noir actors. As you may recall, classic noir usually refers to stylised Hollywood crime films made from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Robert Mitchum who is universally recognised as an essential noir anti-hero, or maybe ant-hero, responded to the exotic title of film noir in laconic noirish fashion. “We used to call them B-pictures,” he said.

       Humphrey Bogart is the other icon of male leads in noir acting. After this duo, the picture gets a little fuzzy with the names Sterling Hayden and Dick Powell likely to rise from the mist. Maybe Kirk Douglas. James Cagney, George Raft and Edward G. Robinson if you want to stretch it to the gangster guys. No Edmond O’Brien.

       Oh, yair, Edmond O’Brien. Eddie O’Brien. Forgot about him. O’Brien starred in maybe a dozen or more noirs, including four of the most famous, The Killers (1946) White Heat (1949) The Hitch Hiker (1953) and the movie we will enjoy later D.O.A. (1950). He also played Winston Smith in the first cinematic adaptation of George Orwell’s novel 1984.