I read Never Let Me Go in college a couple of years ago. That book is emotionally devastating.

It did, however, lead to an argument between me and my professor, who claimed the novel was set in our future, rather than in an alternate past. Fortunately, I emerged the victor. Unfortunately, she marked my final paper two days later.

gutenberg.org

10,000 years of reading in one place.

Anybody seen the movie version of Never Let Me Go? Any good? I’m nuts about Carey Mulligan.

Highly recommend the movie version of Slaughterhouse Five, and, of course, the movie of Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day.

Just bought myself an Android tablet for downloading hardcore pr0n and reading ebooks. As owlbear alluded, thousands of years of Western literature are at one’s disposal. And hentai.

I guessing the first Kindle was dropped in water in some fashion, perhaps in the bathroom… But the first rule of Kindle Fight Club, is, well, ya know.

The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go are both lovely, elegiac and tragic novels, and both films are very good. But as with say, King Lear, I find I have to feel up for them and they stay with me long afterward. I remember I had to put The Remains of the Day aside for a few days after finishing the first major section.

Patches, Carey Mulligan is excellent in An Education and Shame, but I think her best performance to date in is Never Let Me Go. The same goes for Andrew Garfield. (It’s the second film I reviewed in this post, although I had to mention the-big-reveal-that-everyone-pretty-much-knows-and-isn’t-really-much-of-a-spoiler, but there’s your warning, if needed.)

I was disappointed in the film version of Never Let Me Go. It’s beautiful, but doesn’t pack nearly the punch that the book does.

I guess I was hoping for something more like Children of Men. It’s not nearly dystopic enough.

i liked the nook better actually. But gutenberg.org is my favorite website.

I discovered that you can’t read on a Fire in the sun

Thanks. I just wanted to let you know that On a Fire in the Sun will be the title of my forthcoming metal album.

WE DON’T TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FIRST ONE, SO JUST SHUT UP ABOUT IT, OKAY?

Is this something that involves handcuffs and a sling in a Red Room of Pain?

Never Let Me Go is a brilliant book. The understated prose matches beautifully with the way the story unfolds. Another book that I’ve recommended here before (on a previous science fiction thread) is Under the Skin by Michel Faber – not quite as good as Ishiguro, but still memorable.

Dead on. The movie wasn’t bad, but I blame that less on poor film making than on the fact that the book had such an understated, emotional resignation that is difficult to transfer.

My Kindle changed my life and maybe saved it too (edema, and it’s not easy to put your legs up and read your desktop monitor at the same time). And, as you get older, the ability to change type size as the day winds down is pretty damned nice.

Reread a lot of old SF on mine (as I suspected, most of it did not hold up well, esp. the Heinlein), then discovered some wonderful new books by John Burdett, Robert Crais, George R.R. Martin (not to mention reading all of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise books for the first time and discovering how incredibly superior they are to Fleming’s spy novels).

The batteries last forever, they’re easy to read and Calibre is the world’s greatest free software.

Congrats. I still like actual books but also got the Kindle Touch and like it for all the reasons you do. I recommend Calibre as a very useful program (a bit clunky but it’s free) that will not only sync your Kindle to a library on your hard drive but can convert and download HTML and other types of files to the Kindle via USB. I’ve been using this not just to save long web posts to read at the beach but for all the great free content out there, e.g., the zillions of author interviews at the Paris Review. (Calibre can convert pdf files, too, but these are so awful to begin with that the results are sometimes quirky.)

Mine is already packed with great books I meant to read from authors like Dickens and Dostoevsky — complete works for free or a buck or two at Amazon if you want original illustrations or something. Sadly, thanks to Sonny Bono and the Disney Corporation our copyright laws are so insane that even Tripp Palin will be middle-aged before a book as “recent” as, say, The Old Man and the Sea becomes public domain. Oh well.

The only drawback to the Kindle for me is that there are too many books still unavailable for it. (Okay, the other drawback is giving money to Jeff Bezos, but what the hell.)

Lots of good reading over at http://www.gwpda.org. I mean you guys know dontcha that ‘somebody’ actually digitised all the stuff at gutenberg, along with most of the other things you’re reading? ‘Somebody’ who thought it was really important to digitise books and paper documents before they dis-integrated, and then figured out a way to store the copies AND make them available to other people? I mean, it wasn’t just the Findger of G_d taking care of stuff. Ur welcome.

Try this one! http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/BritAgent/BATC.htm

Children of Men was an excellent film, but it depressed the heck out of me. Some dystopian stuff just gets to be too much for me. Maybe too real or something.

Never Let Me Go seemed a tad gentler for me, but I didn’t see the film. It raises some very interesting, and actually quite real, questions, along with being so beautifully written. Kind of book that sticks with you.

I’m still a print book kinda person but considering which digital device to buy one of these days, so thanks for the insights.

Back in my wild & crazy youth, I was fortunate enough to backpack twice around the world for a year each time. What I had the most of in my backpack was books (and I became adept at figuring out where/how to get English language books in the oddest, off the beaten track places). I sure coulda used a Kindle or similar back in the day… my pack woulda been a heck of a lot lighter, for sure!

When Mrs Fromage was gifted (by me) with a Kindle Fire, I acquired her old Kindle (I don’t think it’s a touch…it has clicky buttons on the side) and it doesn indeed carry a modest library in a pocket sized format. What I find I miss, though, is that ability to find a particular passage by about where it was in the width of the book, and where it was on the left or right page. How do you do that with a Kindle? I mean a passage that wasn’t memorable enough to highlight, but that gets triggered by a later passage.

Click the Menu button then select Search This Book.

That’s how it works on my Kindle.

Uh-oh, I too have to confess to having gotten a Kindle, soon after getting hired for my current job. Not having a beach close by, I persuaded myself that I needed a tablet for work but of course the iPad being out of the question by cost, the Kindle Fire would do very well. Heh.

And I do, in fact, have the Texas Penal Code and Code of Crim Procedure downloaded onto it. I’m looking for the right immigraition text to add. But yesterday I downloaded “Todos los cuentos”, G. Garcia Marquez, and el Inca Garcilaso (free) en espanol, too. But I love being able to access the Web, too. (don’t have a smartphone either. my money goes for books, now e books as well as dead=tree versions).

And do you know if the L&T actually read what you put on her Kindle? One can no longer tell by whether the pages appear aseparated or turned.

Nobody has mentioned a Public Liberry! I use the LA library and it has a zillion ebooks. Hie thee!

My wife and I each got The Cheapest Kindle (the one that puts advertisements up if you leave it alone for ten minutes) and our favorite game now is shouting “Jinx!” when both Kindles show the same ad. Some fun I tell ya.

My wife loves her new Nook Glow Light Touch. Can read on the beach, and has a glow light to read at night in bed.

I have the Kindle with the keyboard at the bottom. I haven’t checked out the Touch, but I’m happy with the keys. The “Complete Works of…” for a couple bucks is a great deal– Sherlock Holmes, O. Henry, Mark Twain– perfect for a quick break. I also got the NYT Crossword app and the six available volumes of puzzles. I bogged down in the hard ones, alas. That’s where the keypad comes in handy, BTW.

I have already run into the problem, though, of “Here’s a great book you ought to read! Here, I’ll lend it to you… Oh.”

Some local libraries are letting you borrow Kindle books for a few weeks. I plan to check it out (hah!) soon.