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Archive for May, 2014

Free Book Friday! How About A Classic?

Friday, May 30th, 2014

This week’s Free Book Friday prize is:

 

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

 

In Theodore Dreiser’s classic portrait of the dark side of the American dream, Clyde Griffiths finds his social-climbing aspirations and love for a rich and beautiful debutante threatened when his lower-class pregnant girlfriend gives him an ultimatum.

ISBN 9780451531551, Mass Market Paperback

 

2 lucky members will win a brand-new copy.

 

To enter, simply leave a comment on this Blog post. You must be a PaperBackSwap member to win.

 

We will choose 2 winners at random from comments we receive here on the Blog from PBS members.

 

You have until Sunday, June 1, 2014 at 12 noon EDT, to leave a comment.

 

Good Luck to everyone!

 

Note: All the books given away on Free Book Friday are available in the PBS Market. We have thousands of new and new overstock titles available right now, with more added hourly. Some of the prices are amazing – and you can use a PBS credit to make the deal even better!

 

 

 

10th Anniversary Celebration Cruise for PaperBackSwap Members

Thursday, May 29th, 2014

By Cheryl G. (Poncer)

It is hard to believe that come the fall, PaperBackSwap will be 10 years old! What began as a way to swap books with other avid readers across the country has turned into so much more.

For me, it has become a lifeline, a lifeboat, a connection to friends near and far. I have had the pleasure to meet and make friends with folks across the US, friendships that will last a lifetime.

I first found PaperBackSwap in a tiny blurb in a Women’s Day magazine while waiting for my husband in some doctor’s office, there were too many doctors at the time to even remember which one.

I tore out the blurb (yes, selfish!) and stuck it in my pocket. It was deposited on my desk with the other scraps and items that my pockets always seem to collect. And there it sat for months and months. After he passed away, I found the scrap of paper and decided to investigate. Heaven knows I had too many books just sitting collecting dust. Some I had read upwards of 3 times, whiling away the hours of endless doctor visits and hospital stays.

In 2006 I signed up for an account. Being the suspicious person I was trained to be, I keep looking for the “catch”. Never did find it, and soon enough my cynical side took a backseat. The members were so kind! And generous! And funny! And the friendships started within the very first few months of my being a member. Receiving books was great, forming friendships was life altering.

And that bring us to the cruise in October 2014 for Members and their family & friends. NCL 1 sun

We are sailing from Tampa, Florida on Norwegian Cruise Lines, on the Norwegian Sun.

We will embark on October 26 and return to Tampa on November 2, 2014.

Come join The PaperBackSwap Team and Tour Guides on a 7 day cruise to

  • Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras
  • Belize City, Belize
  • Costa Maya, Mexico
  • Cozumel, Mexico

8766163_origWhile we are at sea, your Tour Guides and Cruise Committee will be hosting multiple Wishlisted Book Swaps, a PBS Trivia Contest, a Scavenger Hunt, a Duct Tape Contest, a Q&A Session with members of the PBS Team, a Halloween Costume Contest, a Genre Dinner, Get-to-know-you Bingo, PBS Team Meet & Greet and a Cocktail Party. Our final stop will be Cozumel, Mexico, where lucky raffle winners will take a Jeep ride around the island with PBS founder Richard Pickering.

Inside Cabins are $535 per person. Oceanview Cabins range from $615 to $635 per person.  Space is limited–the cabins are almost gone, and once they are all gone we cannot get additional cabins at these prices! Registration is open until June 30th or until cabins sell out.  Don’t let the ship leave without you.  You can register for the cruise by filling out this form and our Travel Specialist will contact you.  Details are available in the Discussion Forum topic.

Come with us, meet some new friends, get together with old friends, celebrate PaperBackSwap’ 10th Anniversary with us on the sea!

 

“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.”  ~ William Butler Yeats

“The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

 

 

Memorial Day 2014

Sunday, May 25th, 2014

Free Book Friday Winner!

Sunday, May 25th, 2014

 

 

The Winner of this week’s Free Book Friday is:

 

Scott M.

 

Congratulations! Your book is on the way!

 

Thank you to everyone who commented on the Blog!

Free Book Friday!

Friday, May 23rd, 2014

 

This week’s Free Book Friday prize is:

The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti

 

A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s explosive account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special forces into competing covert manhunting and killing operations—the new American way of war — Osama bin Laden?s demise was merely one sensational moment in the first decade of America?s shadow war, the transformation of the national security apparatus into a machine calibrated for manhunting operations. Beyond the “big wars? in Afghanistan and Iraq, America has pursued its enemies with killer robots and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, unreliable foreign intelligence services, and ragtag proxy armies. The shadow war has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies, lowered the bar for waging war around the globe, and changed for good how America fights its battles: This is the new way of war. A new military-intelligence complex has emerged.

The CIA, created as a Cold War espionage service, is now more than ever a paramilitary agency ordered by the White House to kill off America?s enemies: from the sustained bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan and the deserts of Yemen and North Africa to the simmering clan wars in Somalia. For its part, the Pentagon has turned into the CIA, dramatically expanding spying missions in the dark spaces of U.S. foreign policy, like Iran. The countries where radical groups have carved out wide, remote swaths of territory are often the very places most openly hostile to American intervention. Where the soldiers can?t go, the United States sends drones, proxies, and guns for hire.

Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Mazzetti examines these secret wars over the past decade, tracking key characters from the intelligence and military communities across the world. Among the characters we meet in The Way of the Knife are a young CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played, an Air Force test pilot who fired the first drone missile in the Nevada desert, a chain-smoking Pentagon official who ran an off-the-books spying operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a woman from the horse country of Virginia who became obsessed with Somalia and convinced the Pentagon to hire her to gather intelligence about al Qaeda operatives there. Gripping, newsbreaking, and powerfully told, The Way of the Knife reveals the true nature of American warfare in the twenty-first century—a model that is here to stay.

ISBN 9781594204807, Hardcover

 

Please note: There are 4 pages of the index in the very back of the book that were miscut by the printer, affecting the edges of the page.  This book is NOT repostable for credit swap on PaperBackSwap. But it will make a nice addition to someone’s keeper shelf.

There are currently 61 members wishing for this book. 1 lucky member will win.

To enter, simply leave a comment on this Blog post. You must be a PaperBackSwap member to win.

We will choose 1 winner at random from comments we receive here on the Blog from PBS members.

You have until Sunday, May, 25 2014 at 12 noon EDT, to leave a comment.

Good Luck to everyone!

 

 

Note: All the books given away on Free Book Friday are available in the PBS Market. We have thousands of new and new overstock titles available right now, with more added hourly. Some of the prices are amazing – and you can use a PBS credit to make the deal even better!

 

Mystery Monday – Untimely Death

Monday, May 19th, 2014

9780060922528

Untimely Death by Cyril Hare

 

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

 

Hare’s series amateur, Francis Pettigrew, appears solo in some of the stories but acts in concert with Inspector Mallett in others. A Thurberesque male at odds with inanimate objects, bolting ponies, and incalculable females, Pettigrew works as a barrister and finds himself dragged into murder cases much against his will and inclination. Inspector Mallet is a “beefy man with a nimble brain.”

Untimely Death was last of the books featuring the detecting team Pettigrew and Mallett. Pettigrew, retired and vacationing with his wife, stays at a bread and breakfast in Exmoor, the same neighborhood in which as a boy he was frightened by finding a corpse. Unluckily enough history repeats itself as Pettigrew finds another corpse. When he returns to the scene of the crime with members of the local hunt club, however, the body has vanished. His new-age wife convinces him that it was pre-cogniton – a vision of future events – so he doesn’t inform the cops.

This sin of omission and the deaths that occur in the village during their vacation comes back to haunt him after he returns home. Mallett, also retired, is called in to act as a PI for people involved in a lawsuit concerning a death. Due to his efforts, Pettigrew is subpoenaed as a witness in a Chancery case about an unusual legal point arising out of the death. In other books, too, such as the stand-alone mystery An English Murder, the case hinges on legal point. Hare in real life worked as Judge Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark.

One hesitates to criticize “last books” since authors are facing The Big Sleep falter (See Chandler’s Playback or Gardner’s All Grass Isn’t Green). But the story and characterization seem thin in this one. Easy to read, with a tight plot, enjoying this would be readers who like amateur and professional duos and the familiar elements of cozy mysteries such as descriptions of the Somerset and Devon countryside, stag hunts on the moors, crazy wills, and eccentric judges wearing little wigs. Hare also presents provocative asides about memory and middle-age.

 

 

 

Free Book Friday Winner!

Sunday, May 18th, 2014

 

 

The Winner of this week’s Free Book Friday is:

 

 June W.

 

Congratulations! Your book is on the way!

Thank you to everyone who commented on the Blog!