Third Estate Sunday Review: KINDLE UNLIMITED (Kat, Ava and C.I.)

Tuesday, November 02, 2021

KINDLE UNLIMITED (Kat, Ava and C.I.)

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In 2018, community sites took turns covering a book every week. You can see "In 2018, we read books" to review that coverage. We didn't want to repeat ourselves in 2019 or 2020. So when Marcia came up with a way to cover books but with a twist, we were all for it. Marcia's idea was for us to digital books -- we're largely a printed text crowd -- and to use AMAZON's KINDLE UNLIMITED. So for 2021, we'll be trying to do a book a week and trying to just use KINDLE UNLIMITED. This week, we're speaking with Kat about her "THE PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE BIBLE as written by Laurence Myers."

This your fifth book review for 2021. Your previous book pieces this year were "I'm With The Bland," "ERROL FLYNN: THE QUEST FOR AN OSCAR," "HEARTBREAKER: TWO MONTHS WITH JUDY" and "How Mabel Normand's many scandals (at least five) destroyed her career." Did you plan to do so many?

Kat: No. I didn't even plan to do one this weekend. I was just browsing AMAZON -- for vinyl actually -- hit the home page button and then a list of suggestions came up and this was one of the suggestions in books, HUNKY DORY (WHO KNEW?): THE BEST I CAN REMEMBER FROM TWENTY YEARS AT THE HEART OF THE '60S AND '70S ROCK AND POP by Laurence Myers. It promised to be about music so I thought I'd enjoy it. But I didn't.

Give us some background on the author Laurence Myers.

Kat: Born in England in 1936, he became an accountant and had a number of celebrity clients -- including the Rolling Stones. He ends up a music executive of a minor label who has best selling albums in England, where he's based, but it's not their albums.

Meaning?

Kat: His company's best selling albums, for example, include Donna Summers' 70s catalog. She didn't record for them. She recorded for CASABLANCA in the US. In the UK, Laurence just had the rights to release those albums. An executive, not much of a music person. He admits that he made his money off of others -- raiding others works, assembling them into K-TEL type records -- where you get a bunch of tracks that are hits by various artists and you make one lp out of them. He's not an artist and that comes through over and over. He has no respect for the artistic process and no respect for any artists.

You note that he insults pretty much everyone.

Kat: Yeah, in a passive-aggressive manner. He's very bitchy. I felt bad that David Bowie even had to interact with this man. His tales, such as they are, are unimportant and would make poor dinner gossip. Somehow he thinks they were worthy of a book. He was wrong.

It's clear that you didn't like the book but you also did not like the author if we understand correctly?

Kat: You are correct. Remember, I told you about his KTEL type records? Well as the industry woke up to how much money was being made from those, it became harder for him to license tracks. So he turns to classical music. He issues a costly, multi-CD volume boxed set. And he admits in the book that the recordings used were abysmal but, hey, he insists, people bought it more as a coffee table book -- more to display to friends than to actually listen. That's his justification for charging an arm and a leg for what he knew was bad music. He fleeced the listeners and he thinks he should get credit for that. Again, he's not an artist. He's just a con man.

So what are you thinking about KINDLE UNLIMITED?

Kat: Pretty much what I thought all along. Really not worth it. That said, I might do one more book review before the end of the years.

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