Friday, June 13, 2014

The Chillax Weekly Link Round-Up


The pruning, raking, hauling, and painting have paid off, and now begins my favorite time of the year: chilling out in the pool, reading book after book, and sipping one tall cold drink after another. Denis and I have gone to The Poisoned Pen, been on a jewelry buying expedition, gone out to lunch... and most of my afternoons are spent out in my oasis-- usually with a damselfly on my book or my finger or my shoulder (it's a youngster and can't make up its mind).

Before I wax any more poetic, I'd best harvest those links, eh?


Books, Movies & Other Interesting Tidbits

Channeling my Inner Indiana Jones
  • Tests have confirmed that a painting is a Rembrandt self-portrait.
  • An ancient pharaonic tomb has been discovered in Egypt.
  • A US Navy dive will be exploring a World War II-era shipwreck.
  • Why Queen Elizabeth II was marked by World War II.
  • Ten fascinating facts on the 70th anniversary of D-Day. (Ever seen Saving Private Ryan? Those opening scenes of landing craft taking the soldiers to the beach heads? That's one of the things my grandfather had to do-- driving landing craft-- during World War II.)
  • You never know what you'll find when you clean an old painting-- like a beached whale in a 17th-century Dutch painting.

I   ♥  Lists

Book Candy

That's all for now. Don't forget to stop by again next Friday when I'll have a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure. Have a great weekend!


4 comments:

  1. Cathy - So glad you'll get the chance to relax. You deserve it. Not w for those literary put-downs. ;-)

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    1. Yes, one should always take stock of what the experts have to say upon a subject! ;-)

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  2. Cathy - Thank you for including the article "Is Amazon really the Devil"; I was glad to see an article that attempted to bring some level of balance to the situation of Amazon vs. publishers vs. authors. Many articles have not included that third party, authors, and they of course are a very critical factor here. Many readers like myself probably give authors too much respect. After all, they create our heroes, our stories. But they are not gods, and I don't buy their argument at all that they fear "for the future of literature". I think their first motivation is something else. My dear old dad would have said "they are talking from their own pocket". And many authors do not seem to be very good business people. Based on reading their quotes in several newspapers and periodicals I feel that many just do not truly understand the marketplace and all the changes that are taking place. And one last point. Here is a portion of an article from today's (June 18) Washington Post: "According to the Justice Department's 2012 complaint, Apple took advantage of the book publishers' frustration with Amazon's low e-book prices to facilitate an illegal deal that would drive up prices.....The publishers - Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster - were named in the Justice Department's original lawsuit in April 2012 but settled for more than $166 million to avoid trial." The article goes on to say that the same parties also settled with the European Commission. So I cringe when I see a headline from Hachette claiming to be acting also for the readers' best interests in their present discussions with Amazon. There are no heroes here, but I'll continue to support Amazon. Ken

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    1. I have to admit that I was thinking of you, Ken, when I was posting this link. There's always more than one side to every story.

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