Reviews: e-books and audiobooks: the Monopoly story, true horror, a voyage

To say that Drowned by Corn is shocking is to downplay the horror readers will feel about the deaths of two boys in Illinois, in the US, who, as the title indicates, died by drowning in corn. Erika Hayasaki gives a blow-by-blow account of the senseless accident in 2010, when a 15-year-old found himself in quicksand-like conditions while trapped in the sump pit of a silo holding grain.

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Published: 10:45pm, 14 Mar 2015Updated: 3:13pm, 17 Apr 2015

Drowned by Corn
by Erika Hayasaki
Amazon Digital Services
(e-book)

To say this book is shocking is to downplay the horror readers will feel about the deaths of two boys in Illinois, in the US, who, as the title indicates, died by drowning in corn. Erika Hayasaki gives a blow-by-blow account of the senseless accident in 2010, when a 15-year-old found himself in quicksand-like conditions while trapped in the sump pit of a silo holding grain. Two of his friends jumped in to help, but they, too, found themselves in trouble. Only one of the pair survived after being hoisted out by a rescue team. None of the boys was wearing a hard hat or harness, and none had studied safety procedures. The book suffers structurally because of unnecessary extracts from books such as Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (which says that more than a quarter of supermarket items now contain corn). But it spotlights industrial accidents and tells how this tragedy helped tighten regulations to increase safety for grain-bin operators in the US. In that year alone, 31people – including the two boys – died in 59 grain-bin entrapments.

by David Bricker
thebluemonk.com
(e-book)

If you bought a Kindle edition of The Blue Monk, you'll feel cheated, but for reasons that have nothing to do with whether you enjoy the book about David Bricker's voyages through the Bahamas and to Gibraltar. A free version is available on the internet (pubml.com/the-blue-monk/), although Bricker will gladly accept money for his work. Kindle customers will also feel diddled because the web-based e-book version includes maps, photos and video, and explanations of terms related to sailing, the book's focus. So if you are intrigued by "coamings", a click on the word brings up a picture of the "boards bolted edgewise around the cockpit to form a low 'fence'".<PubML>, also Bricker's creation, allows anyone to publish and to close "the imaginary gap between e-books and websites". Using The Blue Monk to show off its potential, however, is hit and miss, the latter because there's not enough adventure to satisfy a non-sailor. But learning about the e-book format will excite writers keen to publish in the alternative way Bricker has done.