Is it ethical to buy used books and music instead of new copies that will financially reward the author or artist?

Okay, perhaps the writer of the query means, books that are currently available new but you are able to score a used copy in the local Oxfam shop or whatever - maybe.

(Which of course raises another effikle q that in that case it is For A Good Cause....)

And as someone who has spent years hunting down works which were not in print, or were only reprinted by Virago or the British Library or whatever after I had acquired my collection after arduous searches and considerable expense, or, finally, can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg or the Faded Page -

Hollo larfter.

True, I have also bought copies of works which I probably could have acquired shiny new, but was not entirely sure whether they were for me, taking a punt on something I had heard of, etc etc. And sometimes this led to me buying up everything the author ever wrote, their backlist, preordering their forthcoming, and so on. In hardback.

Plus, while I was appalled at those people who were buying books on Amazon and then returning them and getting their money back, and also at book piracy, on the whole I don't think it is the end-user, the actual reader, who is the greatest villain facing authors, rather than the publishing industry.

***

In other book-related news, yesterday I was still feeling the effects of a couple of bad nights with lower-back flare-up and did that thing of doing some small tedious task which has been lingering about for, lo, a very long time.

Transferring my FREE PDFs of Open Access academic books to my tablet (and also sorting out the file titles to be something a bit more helpful than a truncated ISBN) so I can, should I be moved to do so, actually read them. Some of them are things that yes, I should read, and others are more, er, aspirational.

I also, whilst faffing around with my tablet, finally got the issue with Princeton UP's annoying walled-garden app sorted. So maybe I can finally get to the books I bought in their sale nearly a year ago.

Why, why O why, would anybody choose a 'sperm donor' (and it looks as though he made his donations very up close and personal, we are not talking test-tubes?) whose pitch was - on Facebook! - 'recipients did not have to “have a weirdo in a lab coat look at your hoohaw”. (The service was also free.)

Do we think that anyone asked for a recent STI check? The whole thing sounds ick to the max.

No, instead you got involved with this deeply odd and controlling bloke who claims he fathered more than 180 children and far from just vanishing over the horizon, in several instances has tried to gain custody of the resulting children.

In the US, where he was offering sperm donor services until 2017, there is a warrant for his arrest over unpaid child maintenance amounting to thousands of dollars.

I suppose at least this guy has been seriously spreading it about ('dozens of children across South America, Australia and the UK' and presumably USA), unlike the Dutch guy most of whose 100s of offspring are in the Netherlands.

(Larfs liek a hysterykle drayne.)

Life and work of Thomas Hardy to be performed at Stonehenge: Readings and performances will be staged at the ‘misfortune of ruins’ that long fascinated the writer.

The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was fascinated by Stonehenge, using what he described as “the temple of the winds” both as a setting for one of his most striking scenes and as a lifelong inspiration, a pathway back into ancient times.
In what is being billed as a unique performance, the life and work of Hardy is being showcased at the great stone circle in Wiltshire as part of Salisbury international arts festival.
....
An orchestra will play music, ranging from the sort of folk tunes Hardy may have been familiar with to pieces by Gustav Holst and Peter Warlock.
....
It is believed to be the first time that a performance incorporating Hardy’s life and work has been staged at Stonehenge.
Lesser said: “Hopefully* it’ll be lovely weather and you’ll have this marvellous atmosphere as the evening develops with the light changing and these wonderful words of Hardy.”

I don't suppose they are going to represent Hardy in his lighter and realistic vein:

Last week's bread held out very well, right up until the point when it did something quite spectacular in the mould department, fortunately there was still a roll left from the weekend.

Friday night supper: (I had been hoping it would hold out for frittata, sigh) ven pongal (South Indian khichchari).

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 3:1 Marriage's Light Spelt Flour (end of the bag), and Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour, which worked rather well.

Today's lunch: sweet potato gratin, shallots rather than onion as I had some left from the other week, and kalamata olive tapenade; served with spinach sauteed more or less according to Dharamjit Singh's recipe in Indian Cookery (really doesn't need added water), and gingery healthy-grilled baby courgettes (teriyaki rather than tamari, and I really didn't think marinade needed extra salt).