I’m working on a new book. Here’s part of the cover:

Can anyone explain to me why Stephen Fry reads the audiobooks over in the UK, while we Americans get Jim Dale — a different British actor?

I mean, I can ALMOST understand wanting to have an American read it in the American version, but replacing one perfectly good Brit with another? Surely there is a reason for this illogical duplication of effort resulting in an inferior product? (No offense, Jim.)

Sure, Jim does neat voices, but STEPHEN FRY. The voice of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Short of reading it yourself, having Stephen Fry read a book to you is the pinnacle of book reading enjoyment.

Hopefully when the Harry Potter prequel and sequel serieses come out they’ll save themselves a bunch of time and money and just give us Americans the Stephen Fry versions. I don’t think I can sit through another 14 volumes knowing that there’s a better product out there that just isn’t available to me.

Do you remember the self-help book I put out a few years back? Well it’s in a brand new printing, so I figure it’s time to plug it again.

Do you ever wish you could spend your day frolicking about without ever worrying about a thing? Do you wish sex was less relationship-driven and more of a recreational activity? Do you wish you could do a double back flip, and kill sharks with only your nose?

This best-selling motivational book has helped millions lead the fulfilling lives they always wished they could, and now with the new chapter on whistle-based communication, you can do all that and help get ideas across to others in a more efficient manner.

There are a bunch of things I’ve been meaning to recommend to people, so I figured I’d just post a ‘meta-recommendation’ here. (note: All links to products are direct linked to the best Froogle result. I don’t get any cheesy commission or anything, because I think that is lame.)

Firstly, if you enjoyed Harry Potter, but wish that J.K. Rowling was a little bit less R.L. Stein and a little bit more C.S. Lewis, you should check out Philip Pullman’s superbly written and beautifully poignant His Dark Materials trilogy [froogle result]. All three of these books are my favorite.

Next up, if you liked Harry Potter and His Dark Materials and enjoy listening to audio books for free, you must check out The Pocket and the Pendant by Mark Jeffrey. This was originally posted as a podcast, and us listeners had the story dragged out for what seems like forever. You can subscribe in podcast format at podiobooks.com, but you apparently need to create an account, so it’s probably easier just to download each chapter by hand from the link above. This book is also available in print for those of you who don’t feel like listening to it for free (which I would highly recommend because all the character voices and music really add to the production), it is available in print [froogle result].

A week or so ago, MadProfessor recommended It’s Only Temporary [froogle result], which I purchased (and loved immensely) based on the review he wrote. I can’t do it justice, so just click on over to his review.

If you enjoy the work of Stephen King, want some helpful hints on how to write, and are possibly entertaining the idea of writing fiction of your own for fun and profit, you ought to check out On Writing by Stephen King [froogle result]. There’s a lot of really great advice in there, and some really entertaining stories regarding the events of Steve’s life that shaped the stories he would eventually write. An entertaining read, even for non-writers.

I’m going to try an experiment, one that hopefully won’t get me into any serious trouble.

There’s a book that is pretty darn neat, but is out of print. Because of its unattainability, the people that do have copies try to sell them for anywhere between $200 and $500. This is unacceptable. There are many people who have written the publisher asking for another printing run, but they refuse to do it. I think that it might actually be them periodically releasing copies into the marketplace at at least 200 times the cover price. This is unacceptable.

So herein lies my experiment: I’m going to post a crappy scan of the book (which has been easily attainable in the deeper darker scarier parts of the internet for quite some time now anyways) and see how long it takes before I get a cease and decist letter. I don’t think I get enough hits to really worry too much, but I am a little bit paranoid anyway.

My hope is that some of the people who want to read the book badly enough to pay the asshats who only have it so they can sell it for huge amounts of money will be able to find it without breaking the bank or supporting those that inflate the value of things.

Without further ado, I present you with Cards as Weapons:

Click to Download

Ricky Jay is an amazing magician and his card throwing technique is simply amazing to see. With this book, you too can learn to be somewhat closer to his level of expertise. Sadly the scan job is of a less than desirable quality, otherwise I would have run this through OCR and made a nice readable text version. Note to pirates: if you are going to go to the trouble to scan in a priceless book, please do a good job of it and spend the time to format it in a manner that doesn’t require a PDF viewer. Thanks.