I will survive – alt Funk cover

– by ScaryPockets feat Mario Jose

Late night, winding down my work for the day, I chanced upon this beauty on Youtube. I do love covers, almost as much as I love originals, especially when done really well. Most of them shine by exaggerating or taking further the original. Or taking it into new avenues.

This cover was interesting as it was more understated than the original. There is no argument about Gloria Gaynor’s version which is a true tour de force. But this one is a wonderful and worthy rendition. A funk version as advertised no the tin, but with a lot of soul in the funk. Real smooth without missing any of the feelings of the original.

Loved it! Well worth a listen.

How to connect your Amazon book purchases to Goodreads

I love Goodreads. It has been a great site for me to find books as well as note down my collection. I have even used it to collate and tag the physical books that I have. At one time I had even used the export to note the actual locations of my books 🙂

However some actions are still counterintuitive, specially the one where we can connect our Amazon buys to Goodreads. And having clicked left, right and center for the umpteenth time I thought I would document it for myself.

Where to go?

This is the most confusing part – how it is hidden away (at least it feels hidden away to me, Goodreads please don’t sue me 🙂 )

  • Go to Account by clicking on your DP on the top right corner

  • Click on Account Settings in the drop down
  • Now comes the crazy part. This are the choices we have in account settings :

For the actions we expect to take, which it to connect our book purchase to our Goodreads, I would have expect someone to click on either Book Links or Purchases. Both these choices are incorrect. Probably for valid reasons. Book links are for which site you want your book links to go to and Purchases have something to do with the, and I quote, “Purchase history of book swaps, advertising campaigns, and e-books.” I don’t know what it means 🙂

So where do we need to go for our holy grail? The non intuitive page – apps

  • So click on apps

What to do here?

  • Go down to where you see Amazon. You can link your Amazon account here.
  • Once linked you need to go regularly and click on the Add your Amazon book purchases. (I don’t mind this being a manual activity. I quite like doing it, as long as I can remember how to get here.
  • Once you click through you will see a page with all your book purchases which have not already been added to Bookreads. For eg. my page today was,

It is important to note that even my Kindle Unlimited books show up here. (I seem to have been mistaken here. Looks like the Kindle Unlimited books do not show up as a purchase. That is a major bummer for me 😦 )

  • The rest is elementary with Goodreads being it intuitive best. You can put it into various shelfs as usual
  • Note: If there are books you are embarrassed of, or find no value of it populating your goodread shelfs you can just press on the Do not add and it will not show up again.

Summary

Connecting the books to Goodreads is an easy way to put the books I buy onto my shelf. It also helps me with my TBR list as Amazon’s own content listing is a pain. But I, for one, will surely need to revisit it to remember the path to Apps. Hope it is helpful to anyone reading this post. If anyone from Goodreads is reading this, can we make this a little more easier now that you are in the same company as Amazon. Which also brings up another point, How do i connect Audible purchases as easily?

I do love Goodreads.

Poonawalla, adjuvants and vials in the time of Covid

Yesterday I read two articles about the infrastructure required for any Covid vaccine. Over the last few months, I have been militant about avoiding the news. It seems to me that all news have become tabloid news, with the associated muck. The only reason I picked up these articles was thanks to twitter link shared by Samanth. I am happy I did read them as they are good and informative.

The first article is The World’s Best Hope for Enough Covid-19 Vaccine Comes from India by Ari Altstedter. It is a summary of how the Poonawallas climbed to the top of the vaccine production business. The article also highlights their plan to produce billions of doses of Covid vaccines. For a person like me who only knew the page 3 status of the Poonawallas, it was a good primer on their history. I found the scaling efforts of Mr. Poonawalla instructive and informational. In a surprising way the article actually made me feel optimistic after a long time. Most interesting was the direct connection between stud farms and vaccine production. This was actually a question I had for the longest time but was too lazy to research.

If I could critique any part of the article it would be the last 3 paragraphs. Somewhere towards the end, it shifted to a Page 3 celeb observational piece. It was jarring especially in comparison to the main article itself. I felt like a voyeur which was most unpleasant. What was the intent of this , I wonder?. Did the article expect me to feel jealous of the Poonawallas? Or condemn them for their luxury?

I would still recommend this article for its main body. Let’s forgive the reporter for the ending as the main piece is a well written, fast, and informative read.

The second article I read was “Without Vials and Needles, a Virus Vaccine Is Just a Formula” by Sampath Subramanian. Thanks to The Seen And The Unseen podcast which introduced me recently to Sampath. (The related episode was Episode 183: The Art of Narrative Nonfiction (+ JBS Haldane) ).

I love his writing style and this article was no different. Simple, factual, and straight to the point. Reading it was a pleasure. Along the way, I learned about the needs of the various gear needed to have the vaccines reach the target. I never knew reading about adjuvants, vials and hypodermic would be this interesting. I think I have found my idol to try and mimic in my own writing.

So that’s it. If you have a few minutes read these two articles. Both of them are much better than than the bombast on television.

I must thank the cohort of Clear Writing course assembled by Amit Verma and his The Seen And The Unseen podcast. Thanks to them I am introduced to true journalists, excellent in their profession. I am hopeful that this will rekindle my love and faith in journalism itself.