Yes, I’m back again, peddling my free book. It’s free. You don’t have to do anything but download a free copy and help me increase my stats. Why won’t you help your beloved magic bookshelf caretaker/yeti fighter, 3.5 readers?
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Bookshelf Battle
The only site where new bestsellers are forced to do battle for space on a nerd's bookshelf.
Tag Archives: books
My book is still free…
Still free, 3.5 readers. Just click. Please download a free copy and if you like, leave a review. Come on, earn your keep around here, nerds.
I’m Available for Interviews
Hey 3.5 readers.
If you have a blog and would like to interview me, BQB, for it, because apparently only 3.5 people only read your blog too or else why would you waste your time on me, I’d be happy to, seeing as how my book is free all this week.
Leave a note in the comments or send me a Tweet or DM on Twitter – @bookshelfbattle
My Big Book of Badass Writing Prompts is Free All Week!
Hey 3.5 readers.
Your old pal BQB here. My big book of Badass Writing Prompts is free all this week on Amazon.
Free. Gratis. You pay zilch, zero, nada. So, if you want to help keep the lights on around here, all you need do is go and download a copy, for free, and that’s it. Leave a review and you’d be helping a lot but otherwise, just give me a download to add to my states.
Thanks, 3.5:
Bookshelf Q. Battler’s Big Book of Badass Writing Prompts is the Perfect Gift…
…for someone you only mildly care about. I mean, seriously, if we’re talking about your wife, you can give her a copy, but add a diamond ring, a car, or a trip to Hawaii, you cheap son of a bitch. Don’t go blaming your divorce on me just because I said my book was a good gift.
Read the fine print. I said it’s a good gift for someone you only mildly care about. Like that guy at work who thinks he’s your best friend but you can barely remember his name. That guy is a 99 cent book of writing prompts kind of a friend.
Your mistress? She needs a gold bracelet and some earrings. Seriously, handle your shit, son, before your wife and mistress start telling each other about each other’s existence.
This is all very facetious. As if any of my readers have social lives…
Rate the Bookshelf Battle Cast!
Hey 3.5 readers.
BQB here.
So…I don’t have a big interest in becoming a podcaster at this time. My voice sucks, my improv skills stink, my main talent lies in writing so that’s what I need to focus on.
But I’ve been toying with the idea here, learning Garageband when I could…I figured it couldn’t hurt to read “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and see how it goes. Sadly, I have found all sorts of errors and all around shittyness just after listening to the two episodes, but each time I make one I learn how to improve for next time.
Should I take them down and fix them? Probably. But I think for now it’s just a learning exercise and getting them produced and up there. I’d like to finish “A Christmas Carol” reading and then get back to my writing and not worry about podcasting for awhile.
It’s water I’d like to dip my toe in but isn’t really my forte.
I do think if I could improve there would be some service i.e. you could listen to me read public domain fiction rather than pay for audio books. On the other hand, I’m a shitty reader who coughs a lot and sounds like I have a mouthful of farts so you get what you pay for.
It’s on iTunes. It’s on Soundcloud. The link above is for iTunes.
Bookshelf Battle Cast – Episode 002 – “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens – Stave 2 – “The First of the Three Spirits”
Dang, 3.5 listeners. Old Scrooge is going through some serious shit.
In Stave 2, the Ghost of Christmas Past visits our favorite crusty old prick. Scrooge is tortured to see how happy he used to be, how much hope and promise his life once held, and how he lost sight of that happiness in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
#1 – The Ghost of Christmas Past is an odd looking mannish sort of creature, with flames glowing out of his head. He carries a hat that looks like a candle snuffer, a little piece of metal that in the olden days, people would put over a candle to put the light out.
Is the past like a candle? Intangible – you can’t really hold it without experiencing the physical pain of the flame. Similarly, thinking about the past can bring about some good. There are beautiful moments that shine like a candle flame. However, there are sad moments, regrets, things we wish we had done differently. If we reach out and try to make those memories real in our minds, we are burned, just as if we touch the candle. The past cannot be changed and yet we often wish it could be, because we grow older, we realize how all the mistakes we made add up and how if we had just made different choices, our lives would have turned out better.
Are there any choices you currently face that might have an impact on your future? Think as yourself as Scrooge in the future, observing your actions right now with the help of the Ghost of Christmas Past. Would your future self have any advice to give? What would it be?
#2 – Fezziwig was Scrooge’s former boss. This is a case where Dickens exceeds at “show, don’t tell.” In Stave 1, we received a rather dour discussion of Scrooge’s counting – house. Ice cold, grim, Scrooge working on business until the very last second of the day, excoriating his clerk for the slightest error.
Was such heavy handedness necessary? After all, we learn that Scrooge’s old boss, when Scrooge was a young man, was Fezziwig. Fezziwig too was rich, yet he managed to get his business done and still find time to play. In modern parlance, “Fezziwig worked hard and played hard.”
Whereas Old Scrooge cursed his clerk for wanting Christmas off, Fezziwig bars the doors of his office, has everything moved to create a dance floor, and brings in fiddlers and dancers and food and fun, inviting Scrooge and other employees to quit work early and dance the night away.
Is Dickens trying to teach us about having a balanced life? Is it possible to work hard and play hard and be successful at both, or must one give way to the other?
#3 – Scrooge was once engaged. Alas, his fiancee grows weary over the fact that Scrooge spends more time chasing money than he does doting upon her. This seems to be an issue in relationships. Couples often fight over money, which means one spouse must work more to obtain it, but then they often fight over quality time, which means a spouse must work less to gain it.
How can couples work together to achieve a balanced relationship, one where there’s enough money and enough time to be happy together? Is such a notion possible?
#4 – Clearly, the past pains Scrooge. He thinks about his old life in the countryside, his sister, his old boss and work friends and parties, his lost love. The past cannot be changed and yet regrets have a tendency to eat away at us.
To get older is to be peppered with constant spoilers. To be young is to have all of life ahead and to be comforted by beliefs that things will get better. To be old is to be aware of how things turned out yet to have no comfort in thinking that things will get better as there is much less time left.
How can we live our lives so as to be regret free? Is that possible? If we have regrets, how can we learn to live with them so that they don’t weigh us down?
Bookshelf Battle Cast – Episode 1 – “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens” – Stave 1 – Marley’s Ghost – Discussion and Study Questions
Huzzah, 3.5 readers!
The Bookshelf Battle Cast lives! Yes, on this fine blog, I’ll be reviewing pop cultural happenings, attempting to be funny, and telling you all about my adventures as a magic bookshelf caretaker, yeti fighter and so on.
The podcast will be very different. I am very, very far from being the world’s greatest vocal talent, so I’ll be playing it straight. Each episode, I’ll be reading a piece of public domain literature. After you listen to me read it in my mush mouth voice, stop by this incredible blog for a discussion and study questions.
FYI – apologies. I’m new to this. There were some technical difficulties. I said I’d let my spokeswoman tell you all about who I am, but for some reason, Garageband did not like that file. It became a big production to try to re-record the podcast, so I’ll try to figure out that for the next one. Forgive me people, I’m learning as I go.
Oh well. Check out what my spokeswoman would have said here:
In Stave 1 – “Marley’s Ghost” we begin with a classic line in literature – “Marley was dead to begin with. Scrooge pops the joyous bubble of his nephew and local charity collectors, only to be warned by the ghost of his fellow usurer Jacob Marley that if he doesn’t change his ways, he’ll be a ghost too, forced to trudge the world with chains attached to him, lamenting the life he wasted on counting coins instead of helping the less fortunate.
STUDY QUESTIONS:
#1 – Dickens really, really, really wants the reader to know up front that Jacob Marley is dead, engaging in humor to insist, almost to a ridiculous degree, that he’s dead. What’s the point of that?
#2 – Scrooge’s nephew states to his uncle that there are things that exist that bring him no monetary profit, but they make his life better just the same. Christmas, says the nephew, is one of those things. Is the nephew a positive thinker, a man who knows how to build spiritual wealth, or do you side with Scrooge, i.e. the wealth in your piggy bank is all that matters? Can you think of some things that don’t bring you a monetary profit but still enrich your life? Would you give those things up in order to make more money? Can money buy happiness?
#3 – The charity collectors attempt to separate Scrooge from some of his dough, arguing that men of means have a duty to provide aid and comfort to the poor. Scrooge counters with the claim that he supports prisons, union workhouses and so on (through taxes) and thus doesn’t owe the poor anything else. What say you? Are taxes enough, or should people with bucks to spare share them with the poor as well?
#4 – Jacob Marley is a ghost. Chains and cash boxes and other monetary related devices are attached to him. He must drag them around wherever he goes. Further, Jacob spent his life never venturing past the counting-house, collecting money and ignoring the plight of the poor. His punishment, like the punishment of the many souls Scrooge sees outside, is that in death, he must wander the world, seeing all the things he could have experienced and enjoyed in life, but now is unable to do so because he’s dead.
Will you be a ghost one day? That’s a bigger discussion. You will be old one day though…and your body will eventually give out on you. When you’re old and gray and your knees fail, your body gives up and it exhausts you to walk more than five feet, what will you wish you had done in your youth?
CHALLENGE: Make a list of things you want to do before it’s too late to enjoy them…then DO THEM! Picture your afterlife as a Jacob Marley-esque ghost, forced to drag chains and wander the world. What would you like to see and do so that, if you ever become such a ghost, you can be happy knowing you got to do those things when you were alive?
Thanks for listening, 3.5 listeners. The second stave will be out as soon as possible.
A Rap About the Seventy Cent Royalty I Was Paid For My E-Book (Or, “Seventy Cents”)
Yo. 2017. Time to grip the green. Lay down some treble and crank up the bass. Bookshelf Q. Battler all up in this place, gettin’ ready to blast some beats in your face. Let’s do this shit.
Sometimes a man just got a dream…a vision in his eye and a song in heart.
But the world do all it can to rip him apart.
So he falls to the floor, his body feels spent.
Then he checks his account, sees he’s got seventy cent.
Oh seventy cents! You are a dream come true!
Gonna travel the world spending you!
Oh seventy cents! I’m rich as fuck!
What did my ass do to deserve all this luck?
Yo, I was in the bodega, and something struck me as funny.
A girl was all alone and she was a fly ass hunny.
So I said, “Girl you wanna get with me? I got a lotta money.”
And soon we were going’ at it like a couple of bunnies.
And then the girl was like, “How much money you got cuz I’m feeling pretty fine?”
And I was like, “Girl, relax, cuz I got seven dimes.”
Oh seventy cents! For a book that I spent like 600 fuckin dollars to print!
Yes, to see that money you gotta squint!
Seventy cents! Lift me outta my rut!
And Jeff Fuckin’ Bezos gotta take his cut!
Oh seventy cents, yes you are true!
Three quarters minus a nickel, I love you!
DISCLAIMER: We here at the Bookshelf Battle Blog always love it when Jeff Fuckin’ Bezos takes his cut of the proceeds from the book we put out that like 3.5 people have read. We hope Mr. Bezos puts the money to good use, most likely to become the Supreme Overlord Ruler of Us All. Hail Bezos!
Get Inspired with My Book for NanoWriMo!
Hey 3.5 readers.
Are you participating in National Novel Writing Month?
Cool. So you have no social life. That’s ok. There are more important things afoot.
Wait, what? You haven’t come up with an idea to write about yet? That’s cool. No worries.
Just consult my Big Book of Badass Writing Prompts! Inspiration awaits for 99 cents.
We all know you’ve made more unsavory purchases for less money so this is a great deal.
Bookshelf Battle 