Today's Google Play video rental for 25 cents is
Vicky Cristina Barcelona starring Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson (it's $3.99 at Amazon). I watched Puncture yesterday on my tablet and it was OK - it's a pain to have to hold it the entire movie (and watching on the phone results in a hot phone and dead battery), but I may try plugging it into the TV to see how that works (the one other time I tried this, the resolution simply wasn't as good as even using the Roku box). Until Google fixes up a channel on either the TV or Roku box, though, I don't know that I'd recommend them for most movie watching, unless you always watch on your laptop, which is what I'll probably try for the next one, it's just a lot more of a pain to hook it up to the TV so more than one person can see it). At least this movie has a 30 day period to start watching it (I think, from reading the page), instead of the ridiculous 24 period the last one had.
Kitchen Confidential (
$0.25 Kindle,
Google), by Anthony Bourdain, is today's Google Play Deal of the Day, and Amazon is price matching it (just double check the price before clicking, as I had to refresh a couple of times to see the price). I already have this in mobi format, but for a quarter I'm buying it again at Amazon, so it'll be back up in my library.
Book Description
Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine."
Last summer, The New Yorker published Chef Bourdain’s shocking, "Don’t Eat Before Reading This." Bourdain spared no one’s appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain’s first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain’s tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You’ll beg the chef for more, please.
Lady Antebellum's
Own The Night (
$0.25 Amazon;
Google) album is today's MP3 Deal of the Day from Google. The Amazon version includes the digital booklet (although you can get it at the same price,
without the booklet).
Book Description
After you've conquered the world, what do you do for a follow-up? In the wake of Lady Antebellum's 2010 blockbuster, Need You Now, the trio's third album finds the group untroubled by that question. Lady A sagely stays the course, mixing post-Sugarland radio-ready anthems with dashes of R&B, roots rock and '70s singer-songwriter influences. Those who started calling them "the country Fleetwood Mac" when they first appeared will have little reason to alter that appellation, as Charles Kelley, Dave Haywood and Hillary Scott continue to blend their voices and songwriting skills seamlessly on slow-burning tear-jerkers ("Dancin' Away with My Heart") and up-tempo jukebox fodder ("Friday Night") alike, with expertly baited hooks to spare. Jim Allen, Google Play
Quell Reflect (
$0.25 Amazon;
Google), by Fallen Tree Games, is today's App Deal from Google Play, price matched at Amazon. I'm not sure how it works, but it does have almost all 5-star reviews at Amazon (and hey, with all three of these, I've still spent less than a buck today, so why not). It is compatible with most devices at Amazon (my phone, tablet and Kindle Fire), so that's where I'll go this time for this one
Book Description
Play a charming zen puzzler that is sure to test your brain and capture your heart. Quell Reflect has more than 80 levels of ingenious gameplay, a gorgeous art style, and a haunting soundtrack.
The objective is simple: Slide a droplet around a layout of obstacles, traps and pathways, until you have collected all the pearls. Underneath this simple gameplay lies a world of intricacy.
Quell Reflect's appeal lies in its gentle, soothing mood, which makes it a great way to unwind.
While browsing the
49 cent apps page at Google, I also ran into
Jamie's 20 Minute Meals (
$0.49 Amazon,
Google), by Zolmo, which normally sells for $7.99 according to Amazon. This is essentially a 60-recipe cookbook featuring Jamie Oliver, complete with videos to show you how to cook. If you missed this when it was free last summer, then definitely grab it now, if you are able to do so (you have to have Android device registered at Amazon or Google or they won't let you purchase). It's also a shame you can't gift the apps, as this is a perfect one to give college kids or new grads and works on phones, tablets or the Kindle fire. There's some other deals on that 49 cent page you might want to check out, such as
Business Calendar (usually $5),
TuneIn Radio Pro and a number of games and even a kids book. Most of them are also at Amazon and appear to be price matching (at least, for now).
Book Description
Who can help but be charmed by England's Jamie Oliver, The Naked Chef? Jamie is well known as chef, restaurateur, and an advocate for improving unhealthy diets, especially championing healthy school lunches for children.
Watch an introductory video from Jamie and get right to the recipes. Search for a recipe or peruse 10 categories such as Delicious soups, Tasty stir-fries, and Simple risottos. Each recipe includes a summary with a picture of the dish, an ingredient and equipment list, detailed instructions, and relevant videos on tasks like garlic preparation or onion chopping. Double-touch the screen in landscape mode to see pictures of each step.
Add ingredients to your list and then use the general shopping list to view by recipe or by aisle. Use the menu to quickly access any video or learn about what Jamie feels are kitchen essentials -- both ingredients and equipment. Jamie promises that this app will "arm you with the confidence" to have tasty meals in 20 minutes!
Liar, Liar (
$0.99), the first title in the
Cat DeLuca Mysteries series by K.J. Larsen, is one of Poison Pen Press' sale books this month (still full price at Google, though).
Book Description
Burned by her run-around ex-husband Johnnie Ricco, Caterina DeLuca took the skills she mastered during marriage and opened her own private eye agency. Now she’s a second-story woman, armed with a camera, ready to print 8x10 glossies for use in divorce court.
The men in her big, whacko family, all Chicago cops—one a crook—aren’t sure what to make of Cat’s career choice. But hey, it’s serve and protect!
Then one Rita Polansky retains Cat. Rita’s liar-liar husband is the mysterious, but seriously hot, Chance Savino. Cat is hot on his heels when an exploding building hurls her out of her stilettos and into the hospital. The FBI claims Chance was killed in the fireworks, but concussed Cat remembers a different scenario.
She escapes the hospital to meet with her client. But when Rita doesn’t show, Cat breaks into her home to find Rita with a knife in her chest and two clues at the murder scene: a clutch of candy wrappers and Chance Savino, rummaging through Rita’s drawers.
One surprise after another piles up. As no one else sights Savino, everyone around Cat thinks she’s crazy. Everyone except a determined killer who has put her on his “kill” list.
I've been watching for
The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free (
$3.99 Kindle,
Google), by Anne Byrn, to go on sale and was starting to think that it never would.
Book Description
Thirty million Americans are gluten-intolerant or have a gluten sensitivity, eliminating it from their diets because gluten—a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley—has been implicated in health issues ranging from respiratory problems and abdominal discomfort to anemia, anxiety, and infertility. The food industry has bullishly taken notice. Gluten-free baking products, including cake mixes from Betty Crocker, King Arthur, Whole Foods, and others, have increased sevenfold on grocery shelves in recent years, and the number of other gluten-free products has grown as well—832 were introduced in 2008 alone. And gluten-free options are on the menu of national restaurants like Boston Market, Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday, Outback Steakhouse, and others.
Now comes even sweeter news for people looking to cut gluten from their diets: Anne Byrn shows how to transform gluten-free cake mixes into 76 rich, decadent, easy-to-make, impossible-to-resist desserts. Performing the magic that’s made her a bestselling baking author with over 33 million copies of her books in print, she doctors mixes with additions like almond extract, fresh berries, cocoa powder, grated coconut, cinnamon, lime zest, and more—naturally, all gluten-free ingredients—and voilà: Tres Leches Cake with Whipped Cream and Summer Berries, Almond Cream Cheese Pound Cake, Chocolate Cupcakes with Milk Chocolate Ganache, Caramel Melted Ice Cream Cake, Warm Tarte Tatin Apple Cake, plus brownies, bars, muffins, and cookies. Dessert is back on the menu.
I picked up
Thunder Dog: The True Story Of A Blind Man, His Guide Dog, And The Triumph Of Trust At Ground Zero (
$3.99 Kindle,
Google), by Michael Hingson, during one of the earlier sales at Amazon and have finished about a third of it and can recommend it from what I've read so far.
Book Description
Faith. Trust. Triumph.
"I trust Roselle with my life, every day. She trusts me to direct her. And today is no different, except the stakes are higher." - Michael Hingson
First came the boom- the loud, deep, unapologetic bellow that seemed to erupt from the very core of the earth. Eerily, the majestic high-rise slowly leaned to the south. On the seventy-eighth floor of the World Trade Center's north tower, no alarms sounded, and no one had information about what had happened at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001- what should have been a normal workday for thousands of people. All that was known to the people inside was what they could see out the windows: smoke and fire and millions of pieces of burning paper and other debris falling through the air.
Blind since birth, Michael couldn't see a thing, but he could hear the sounds of shattering glass, falling debris, and terrified people flooding around him and his guide dog, Roselle. However, Roselle sat calmly beside him. In that moment, Michael chose to trust Roselle's judgment and not to panic. They are a team.
Thunder Dog allows you entry into the isolated, fume-filled chamber of stairwell B to experience survival through the eyes of a blind man and his beloved guide dog. Live each moment from the second a Boeing 767 hits the north tower, to the harrowing stairwell escape, to dodging death a second time as both towers fold into the earth.
It's the 9/11 story that will forever change your spirit and your perspective. Thunder Dog illumiates Hingson's lifelong determination to achieve parity in a sighted world, and how the rare trust between a man and his guide dog can inspire an unshakable faith in each one of us.
Murder in Mykonos (
$0.99), the first novel in the
Inspector Kaldis series by Jeffrey Siger, is another Poisoned Pen Press published title.
Book Description
A young woman on holiday on Mykonos, the most famous of Greece’s Aegean Cycladic islands, simply disappears off the face of the earth. And no one notices.
When politically incorrect, hot-shot detective Andreas Kaldis is promoted out of Athens to serve as police chief for Greece’s island paradise of Mykonos, he’s certain his homicide days are over. Murders don’t happen in tourist heaven; at least that’s what he’s thinking as he stares at the remains of a young woman found ritually bound and buried on a pile of human bones inside a remote mountain church.
Teamed with the canny, nearly-retired local homicide chief, Andreas tries to find the killer before the media can destroy the island’s fabled reputation with a barrage of world-wide attention on a mystery that’s haunted Mykonos undetected for decades.
Just when it seems things can’t get any worse, another young woman disappears and political niceties no longer matter. With the investigation now a rescue operation, Andreas finds himself plunging into ancient myths and forgotten island places, racing against a killer intent on claiming a new victim who is herself determined to outstep him.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (
$3.99 Kindle,
Google), by Alison Bechdel
Book Description
A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books.
This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form.
Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.
Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous (
$3.99 Kindle,
Google), by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, is not the diet book for those who want their hands held!
Book Description
Not your typical boring diet book, this is a tart-tongued, no-holds-barred wakeup call to all women who want to be thin. With such blunt advice as, "Soda is liquid Satan" and "You are a total moron if you think the Atkins Diet will make you thin," it's a rallying cry for all savvy women to start eating healthy and looking radiant. Unlike standard diet books, it actually makes the reader laugh out loud with its truthful, smart-mouthed revelations. Behind all the attitude, however, there's solid guidance. Skinny Bitch espouses a healthful lifestyle that promotes whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, and encourages women to get excited about feeling "clean and pure and energized."
Highland Protector (
$3.49 Kindle,
Google), by Hannah Howell
Book Description
The Murrays are back! From New York Times bestselling author Hannah Howell comes an all-new story of the beloved Scottish family, and two lovers entangled in a plot against the king. . .
Someone would see Ilsabeth Murray Armstrong hang for murder.
When her dagger is found buried in the body of one of the king's men, there is little room for doubt--the perpetrator must pay with her life. But Ilsabeth is no killer, and only one person can help clear her name: Sir Simon Innes, a man so steely and cool that no danger can rattle him. . .and no woman in distress can sway his heart.
Until now. Simon has spent his life searching for truth in a world fraught with deception. But the hauntingly beautiful fugitive seeking his aid affects him so deeply, he wonders if he can trust the flawless judgment he has always relied on. For all signs point to Ilsabeth's guilt, except one--the unparalleled desire he feels at her slightest touch. . .
The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale Of True Love And High Adventure (
$3.99 Kindle,
Google), by William Goldman
Book Description
William Goldman's modern fantasy classic is a simple, exceptional story about quests—for riches, revenge, power, and, of course, true love—that's thrilling and timeless.
Anyone who lived through the 1980s may find it impossible—inconceivable, even—to equate The Princess Bride with anything other than the sweet, celluloid romance of Westley and Buttercup, but the film is only a fraction of the ingenious storytelling you'll find in these pages. Rich in character and satire, the novel is set in 1941 and framed cleverly as an “abridged” retelling of a centuries-old tale set in the fabled country of Florin that's home to “Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passions.”
Once upon a time came a story so full of high adventure and true love that it became an instant classic and won the hearts of millions. Now in hardcover in America for the first time since 1973, this special edition of The Princess Bride is a true keepsake for devoted fans as well as those lucky enough to discover it for the first time. What reader can forget or resist such colorful characters as
Westley . . . handsome farm boy who risks death and much, much worse for the woman he loves; Inigo . . . the Spanish swordsman who lives only to avenge his father's death; Fezzik . . . the Turk, the gentlest giant ever to have uprooted a tree with his bare hands; Vizzini . . . the evil Sicilian, with a mind so keen he's foiled by his own perfect logic; Prince Humperdinck . . . the eviler ruler of Guilder, who has an equally insatiable thirst for war and the beauteous Buttercup; Count Rugen . . . the evilest man of all, who thrives on the excruciating pain of others; Miracle Max. . . the King's ex-Miracle Man, who can raise the dead (kind of); The Dread Pirate Roberts . . . supreme looter and plunderer of the high seas; and, of course, Buttercup . . . the princess bride, the most perfect, beautiful woman in the history of the world.
S. Morgenstern's timeless tale--discovered and wonderfully abridged by William Goldman--pits country against country, good against evil, love against hate. From the Cliffs of Insanity through the Fire Swamp and down into the Zoo of Death, this incredible journey and brilliant tale is peppered with strange beasties monstrous and gentle, and memorable surprises both terrible and sublime.
The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood (
$3.99 Kindle,
Google), by William J. Bennett
Book Description
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN
Raising up men has never been easy, but today is seems particularly tough. The young and old need heroes to embody the eternal qualities of manhood: honor, duty, valor, and integrity. In The Book of Man, William J. Bennett points the way, offering a positive, encouraging, uplifting, realizable idea of manhood, redolent of history and human nature, and practical for contemporary life.
Using profiles, stories, letters, poems, essays, historical vignettes, and myths to bring his subject to life, The Book of Man defines what a man should be, how he should live, and to what he should aspire in several key areas of life: war, work, leisure, and more. "Whether we take up the sword, the plow, the ball, the gavel, our children, or our Bibles," says Bennett, "we must always do it like the men we are called to be." The Book of Man shows how.
Dry Bones (
$0.99), the first title in
The Enzo Files by Scottish author Peter May, was originally published under the title
Extraordinary People.
Book Description
What has happened to Jacques Gaillard? The brilliant teacher who trained some of France’s best and brightest as future Prime Ministers and Presidents at the École Nationale d’Administration vanished ten years ago, presumably from Paris. Talk about your cold case.
The mystery inspires a bet, one that Enzo Macleod, a biologist teaching in Toulouse instead of pursuing a brilliant career in forensics back home in Scotland, can ill afford to lose. The wager is that Enzo can find out what happened to Jacques Gaillard by applying new science to an old case.
Enzo comes to Paris to meet journalist Roger Raffin, the author of a book on seven celebrated unsolved murders. The assumption is that Gaillard is dead. Armed with Raffin’s notes, Enzo begins his quest. It quickly has him touring landmarks like the Paris catacombs. Then Enzo finds Jacques Gaillard’s head.
The artifacts buried with the skull set him to interpreting the clues they provide and to following in someone’s footsteps after the rest of Gaillard. He must also review some ancient and recent history. As with any quest, it’s as much discovery as detection. Enzo proves to be an ace investigator, scientific and intuitive, and, for all his missteps, one who hits his goals, including a painful journey toward greater self-awareness.
Mew is for Murder (
$0.99) is the first in the
Theda Krakow Mysteries series by Clea Simon
Book Description
Theda Krakow is in a funk. Her sometime boyfriend’s gone for good. The death of her beloved cat opened a bigger void. And the career leap she’s made from copy editor to freelance writer has left her finances—and her spirit—flat. She desperately needs a headline to get her life back on track.
One day, out for a stroll in her Cambridge neighborhood, Theda spies an adorable stray kitten. This charmer leads Theda to an old woman holed up in a decrepit house full of cats. Is this one of those “crazy cat ladies,” a classic hoarder, or is the old woman a neighborhood do-gooder? More important: is this the story to catapult Theda out of the dumps? But when she returns to interview Lillian Helmhold, Theda finds her fascinating subject dead of an apparent accident. The neighbors are celebrating, the police aren’t interested, and the cats are removed to a shelter. End of story? Not for Theda—one or two things don’t compute. So Theda marshals her investigative journalism skills to turn gumshoe.
Why is the purple-haired punk Violet, a barista at Theda’s favorite coffee house, hanging around Lillian’s home? Then there’s Lillian’s neighbor who’s only too anxious to clean up an eyesore. What’s the story on Lillian’s disturbed son? Theda’s inquiries lead her from a halfway house in the hills of Western Massachusetts back to Boston’s happening rock scene. Enter a music-loving artist, the one who jumpstarts Theda’s pulse. He’s handsome, he’s interested—but is he a bit too mysterious? Theda’s quiet life, her heart, and her bank account are about to be shaken to the core.
