It's time for another of my Christmas Musical countdowns which, you may have guessed, is Bjork. So here she is singing Crystallline on the Jools Holland show back in November. I was fascinated by her performance - and the song has quite an addictive equality to it as well.
A pretty good song there me thinks. Strangely addictive. Bjork is defintely an original artist. But I have to ask - what the hell was going on with the 1980s' disco culottes and the platform boots? And that hair? She looks like she had an accident with some candy floss and a bucket of sick.
And what is this current craze with false eyelashes about? Apparently sales of false eyelashes have rocketed recently. To be honest, I think when you're eyes are so loaded up with mascara and lashes like Bjork it just looks like you've got two dead blowflies on your face or you've done a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. I tried putting some on the other day and when I stepped back from the mirror I thought I looked like a zombified Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Cripes - I just looked up Bjork's wikipedia entry. We're the same age.
There for the grace of God, go I.
Anyway, talking of Bjork. I read this book earlier in the year. In fact, it might even have been last year.
The Blue Fox is written by a chap called Sjon, who also happens to write lyrics for Bjork. The novel is short and sweet and, like Bjork, strangely compelling. It's a fairytale about a fox and rather good it is too. Well that's probably putting it too simply but it is well worth the read. I got my copy from the local library as at the cost of 7.99 (at the time I considered purchasing it) I felt slightly annoyed as it is a mere 112 pages. I do wish these publishers would stop trying to screw us - especially with ebooks. I am, quite simply, not going to pay the same price for an ebook as for a paperback and no argument is going to convince me that I should!
Right, I'm going to go and get my boot polish out and scare the neighbours. I might even dust the windowsills first and see if I can find some blowflies.
I don't have a Kindle or similar. But apparently, while the 'conventional' book is zero rated for VAT, e-books aren't. So I guess that explains why the price are similar.
ReplyDeleteGood point indeed Martin - and that obviously explains some of the difference. There are huge discrepancies though - take for example- in April this year I downloaded a sample of The Finkler Question on my Kindle and was enjoying it so much (I know strange!) and decided to purchase it without checking the paperback price - I was charged 7.40. A couple of days later I noticed the paperback price was about 4.00!!!
ReplyDeleteThe cost of The Finkler Question is currently 4.55 on Amazon for paperback and 4.32 on Kindle which is a far more realistic pricing. However, even with 20% VAT I still can't see when you factor out the cost of manufacturing and production how they can justify that sort of cost. The cynic in me says greed is a motivating factor - and still the author gets peanuts.