Like the record and film distribution companies, they don't even bother to be competent

It really seems incredibly bizarre that Google Books uses some algorithm to suggest other books to me.

When I simply want to read one of their ebooks I can't even open the reader directly, I have to look at their stupid storefront, which insists on showing only five books, the two last opened and three terrible suggestions from the store. The suggestions aren't even weighted to show the next book in a series - in fact their default book page often doesn't even have that information so you have to know the title of the next and then search their disaster store for it!

Even if I charitably assume they've never heard of series, that's no reason to suggest random authors I have no inclination to read instead of things that could arguably interest me, like other books by the authors I've just bought! Yet at the same time nothing stops them from suggesting books I've already bought or "Top Selling" books based on location detection and hence in a language I've never bought a book in.

ETA at 9 pm: Actually this did inspire me to look harder for sources of DRM-free epubs, and it's not quite as bad as I feared, although I'm far from confident that I can find the specific books I want to read that way.

Done with le Carré's Karla Trilogy...

The main interrogation in Smiley's People made me wish Smiley would study me and brilliantly determine the most psychologically effective way to interrogate me.

Not in a kinky way.

I still have plenty of other le Carré and even other Smiley-verse books that I haven't read*, but it was so great that I do feel a little bereft in case none of them are as enjoyable.

Though now I have the two Alec Guinness miniseries (I've never resented "series" for being its own plural before! I should treat it like Finnish maybe: 'seriekset'😐. At least that's fun to say) to look forward to (once we manage to get hold of them).

 

Though I will read something else first, because I always read at least one other book in between books of a series to minimize how much they blur together in my mind later. If I gulp it all down at once, the details will generally disappear from my memory after a few years.