It’s almost time to travel back to Middle-Earth. Amazon Prime Video’s hotly anticipated new Lord of the Rings series, “The Rings of Power,” arrives on the streamer on Sept. 2.
The fantasy series is one of Amazon Studios’ most ambitious projects to date, already breaking records ahead of its release.
Not only is it reported to be the most expensive television series ever made (Amazon apparently shelled out close to $715 million for all eight episodes), but the show’s first trailer racked up an unmatched 257 million views when it first debuted at this year’s Super Bowl, more than any Super Bowl trailer in history.
While binge-watching can be cool, nothing beats reading — and the lineup of Amazon Prime books on sale for Prime Day 2022 is helping us make that point.
Because there are some incredible books (and book deals) to be had, whether you’re in the market for a new read or want to read the book behind the film adaptation.
The beauty of books is that they can transport you to various places and times without you needing to leave the comfort of your couch—or, if you’re lucky, beach chair.
And the picks below are especially good at this, whether you’re into UFOs, Tolkien lore, college friendships, or none of the above. With that, below are 22 of the best Amazon Prime books to get in your cart and on your shelf, stat.
Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item...
Michael E. Karpeles, Program Lead on OpenLibrary.org at the Internet Archive, spotted an interesting blog post by Michael Kozlowski, the editor-in-chief of Good e-Reader. It concerns Amazon and its audiobook division, Audible:
Amazon owned Audible ceased selling individual audiobooks through their Android app from Google Play a couple of weeks ago. This will prevent anyone from buying audio titles individually. However, Audible still sells subscriptions through the app (…)
Karpeles points out that this is yet another straw in the wind indicating that the ownership of digital goods is being replaced with a rental model. He wrote a post last year exploring the broader implications, using Netflix as an example:
What content landlords like Netflix are trying to do now is eliminate our “purchase” option entirely. Without it, renting become the only option and they are thus free to arbitrarily hike up rental fees, which we have to pay over and over again without us getting any of these aforementioned rights and freedoms. It’s a classic example of getting less for more.
As legend has it, a few years back, Jeff Bezos demanded that his team at Amazon Studios create a fantasy epic that would put Game of Thrones to shame. Turns out, that kind of thing is even harder to do than it sounds. And more expensive than you can imagine. Inside the epic quest to bring Wheel of Time to life—and maybe change the face of global television forever.
To create the world inhabited by the show’s vast collection of characters— including the fanatical Whitecloaks— Amazon spent millions of dollars erecting enormous sets outside Prague.
Not long ago, this quarry, 40 kilometers outside Prague, held a carefully built fake town called the Two Rivers. Then, a few days back, the producers and set dressers of Amazon’s The Wheel of Time burned it down. The town’s inn, an intricately rendered two-story building, is now blackened, its left side plunged into spiky rubble: Smoke machines give the impression that it is still smoldering. There are holes in roofs, artfully destroyed beams. Every house—interior and exterior—has been charred enough so that it shows on camera.
The actors who wander the Two Rivers are made up to match. Rosamund Pike, who starred in Gone Girl, is smudged with soot. Rain has begun to come down in earnest, pooling in the muddy streets and making the extras and the stuntmen shiver. Michael McElhatton, who played Roose Bolton on Game of Thrones and is playing a character called Tam al’Thor on The Wheel of Time, sits on a stump in the middle of it all in a big down jacket, staring at nothing in particular.
It’s November 2019, and the production—comprising hundreds of, and on some days nearly a thousand, people—is filming the end of the first episode of what everyone hopes will be a television show that runs for, well: six seasons? Eight? A show that will be as epic and sensational and ubiquitous as Game of Thrones once was.
Amazon is withholding ebook and audiobook versions of works it publishes through its in-house publishing arms from US libraries, according to a new report from The Washington Post. In fact, Amazon is the only major publisher that’s doing this, the report states. It’s doing so because the company thinks the terms involved with selling digital versions of books to libraries, which in turn make them available to local residents for free through ebook lending platforms like Libby, are unfavorable.
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