Daniel Pinkwater's FISH WHISTLE free until Wednesday

Jennifer writes with amazing news! "FISH WHISTLE is a compilation of the best of Daniel Pinkwater's short essays. Contains classic (and very funny) stories of Pinkwater's family, travels in Africa, food, raising dogs and becoming an artist, many of which were first heard on NPR's 'All Things Considered.' Originally published in 1990, this first ebook edition is updated for 2013. And it's free through Wednesday on Amazon."

Pinkwater is like unto a god to me.

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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madopal

Indeed. Fat Men from Space warped my adolescent brain in the best possible way. I wish some of his older books were a bit easier to find. I have some nieces & nephews I’d love to warp as well.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

If you can find it, the audio version of this is WONDERFUL. Many if not all of the essays began as NPR commentaries, so listening to them is a natural.

I used to play the tape for friends in my car. For weeks afterwards they’d use phrases like “eat pudding” and “he was daft!”
http://twitter.com/sally_j Sally J.

Compass! Compass! Compass! Wonderful collection of stories, I have a cassette version somewhere at home…
sman

Sadly, in a proprietary format and thus not readable by me.
- wygit
  
  You’ve never heard of DeDrm?
  If you buy it, you own it.
  And Calibre is wonderful for converting book formats.
  - http://vincenzoravina.tumblr.com/ Vincenzo Ravina
    
    How do I actually download the file? It’s only letting me read the thing in “Kindle Cloud Reader.”
    - wygit
      
      You need to install Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac, which will let you download the file. On a PC, it’s in “My Documents/My Kindle Content”.
      If you’ve installed Calibre and the DeDRM plugins (you’ll have to read how on Alf’s page) you can just drag the file from the above directory into Calibre.
      
      I’m going to email you so you’ll have mine if you have questions, just because I also love giraffes.
      - literaticat
        
        Theoretically this is DRM free but Amazon is weird. Feh. We’ll get it up DRM-free on all platforms as soon as possible. :-)
      - http://www.redowl.ca jaddle
        
        And on linux? I guess I’ll do some research on my own to see how one would do this…
      - wygit
        
        Yup… that, I don’t know.
        There are some drawbacks to linux.
      - http://www.redowl.ca jaddle
        
        So far, all I’ve found involves running the windows app in wine. Not worth the trouble. Too bad…
        
        I’m really surprised that boingboing links to amazon so often, when faced with these kinds of restrictive policies…
    - exile
      
      If you have a UK Amazon account it won’t let you download… you get bumped to the UK site which does not have the freebie.
      - literaticat
        
        Ugh sorry about that — I thought it would be free for all kindle stores but apparently not. Thanks for letting us know, I’ll complain to Amazon!
      - http://dogsdespair.blogspot.com/ Anton Gully
        
        Just picked it up on Amazon UK for nowt, zip, nadda so…. VICTORY!
- literaticat
  
  Sorry about that – it will be available in all formats as soon as possible!
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
    
    Does that mean print as well? I realize this is an electronic reissue of a 1989 book, but for the non-e-readers among us paper copies are kind of hard to come by.
    - literaticat
      
      Probably, but sorting that out is a bit trickier – we want to make any print edition affordable, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate! More to come.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

As a young reader I found myself baffled by Lizard Music and The Hoboken Chicken Emergency. I liked them, but I couldn’t quite understand why, and kept trying to make sense of them. Then when I read The Magic Moscow something clicked. This was funny. It didn’t have to make sense. I just had to go with the flow and enjoy it. In that I think of Mr. Pinkwater as my earliest and one of my best mentors in both life and literature.
http://www.soulrecycler.com/ Patter Light Grey

Thanks for the link and thank you mr pinkwater.