The Ewelike Blog

Well, straight after releasing the new Folio Society Book Search Engine we decided to release our updated search tool.

As you’d guess it’s generally available on the Ewelike homepage and elsewhere.

We now take into account as much as possible of the search words that you give us and look for the actors, artists/bands, directors, authors etc. as part of the search which gives you a much better chance of finding what it is that you want.

Take a look and let us know!  We’re always happy to get feedback!

As many of you fellow book lover know Folio Society editions of books are about the best you’ll ever get.  Fantastic perfect binding, slipcases to protect the book, beautifully designed covers, and often full of specially commissioned illustrations (not to mention printed on quality paper with well thought out typefaces!) all make Folio Society books a favourite with book collectors and book readers worldwide.

Unfortunately the Folio Society doesn’t print each book forever, so many are only to be found second hand/used in specialist booksellers worldwide.  Well fear not, in an effort to help you find the Folio edition you want we’ve created a search engine just for them - the Folio Society Book Search Engine.

Personal favourites include;

Jerome K Jerome’s Folio Society Edition of Three Men In A Boat (to say nothing of the Dog)

Harper Lee’s Folio Society Edition of To Kill a Mockingbird

George Orwell Folio Society Editions of Nineteen Eighty Four, Animal Farm and others

Take a look and by some classics (note: if you need some hints then click the “see more suggestions” link on the page)

PS: We’ve also created a guide to booksellers descriptions of the condition of secondhand / used books .  Booksellers use a variety of terms (Fine, Near Fine, Good, Very Good etc.) and it’s not always obvious what that really means - hopefully our guide to used book conditions will help.

Apparently you can’t get enough of these books!  Here’s their 2006 book list (and we’ll add more if people want it!)

The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne

The Island by Victoria Hislop

My Best Friend's Girl by Dorothy Koomson

The Abortionist's Daughter by Elisabeth Hyde

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

(PS: I can really recommend the  The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova myself; beautifully written and an excellent page-turner - probably the best piece of fiction I read on the beach last year )

The links for the last book list seem to have been a success and a few of you have let me know how useful they were.

So, here’s the children’s list from last year (2007) that will hopefully get your kids reading and enjoying books.

Ben Cort & Claire Freeman - Aliens Love Underpants (three editions - Aliens Love Underpants - Paperback, Aliens Love Underpants - Hardback, Aliens Love Underpants - paperback inc. CD)

Sally Grindley & Lindsey Gardiner - Poppy and Max and the Fashion Show (two editions - Poppy and max and the Fashion Show Paperback, Poppy and Max and the Fashion Show Hardback)

Andrew Cope - Spy Dog (Spy Dog Paperback Edition)

Betty G Birney - The World According To Humphrey (three editions - The World according to Humphrey World Book Day Edition RRP £1.00, The World according the Humphrey Paperback Edition, The World According to Humphrey Audio Book on CD)

Mark Walden - HIVE Higher Institute of Villainous Education (two editions - HIVE Higher Institute of Villainous Education Paperback, HIVE Higher Institute of Villainous Education Hardback)

Derek Landy - Skulduggery Pleasant (Two Editions - Skulduggery Pleasant Paperback, Skulduggery Pleasant Hardback)

Sophie McKenzie - Girl, Missing (Girl, Missing Paperback Edition)

Robert Muchamore - The Recruit (The Recruit Paperback Edition)

Afternoon All,

Thought i’d point out that the UK’s Richard & Judy have published their new “Summer Read” shortlist and give you some links to buy them from the stores you like (and get some other reviews).

Richard and Judy’s summer reading lists tend to be a good set of books for reading on the beach. It’s not going to be Kafka or Tolstoy but there’s an excellent chance they’ll be a book that you can’t put down.

Sadie Jones - The Outcast (three editions - The Outcast - Hardback Edition, The Outcast - Paperback Edition , The Outcast - Alternate Paperback Edition )

Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye (three editions - No Time For Goodbye - Paperback Edition, No Time For Goodbye - Hardback Edition, No Time For Goodbye - Audio CD version)

Julia Gregson - East of the Sun (three editions - East of the Sun - Hardback Edition, East of the Sun - Paperback Edition, East of the Sun - Alternate Paperback Edition )

John Hart - Down River (three paperback editions - Down River - “Mass Market” Paperback, Down River - New Edition Paperback, Down River - Paperback)

Margaret Cezair-Thompson - The Pirate’s Daughter (three editions - The Pirate’s Daughter - Hardback, The Pirates Daughter - Paperback, The Pirates Daughter - Paperback)

Rebecca Miller - The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Toni Jordon - Addition (two editions - Addition “Mass Market” Paperback, Addition Paperback)

James Bradley - The Resurrectionist (two editions - The Resurrectionist Hardback, The Resurrectionist Paperback)
Where possible we’ve tried to show you more than one edition of each book. Why? Well that way you can either buy new or used (via a bookseller or a well known auction site starting with an “e” ). The choice is yours.

Remember to log in/register if you want to tell us about your favourite stores (that way if you just love some of our stores then we can show you those first in the list), and if you don’t want to buy right away then you can put them on a list and get somebody to buy you them for a birthday/christmas or just because you’re worth it!

A host of changes for you today.

We’ve added functionality to allow you to quickly get to your lists (shopping lists/wish lists/product lists).  If your browser supports javascript then we have a dropdown on the “my lists” banner field (once you’ve logged in of course!) so you can jump straight to a list in the same way as the “add to list” dropdown functions on the product page.  Try it out and let us know what you think.

Prices are now clearer (we’ve added a big “buy” button next to them to make it crystal clear) - we hope…

Also we’ve listened to your comments and we now have more booksellers in our lists, and we try and show you their location (by suffixing their name with (US)/(UK) etc.) - see the fourth edition monster manual as an example of buy buttons and bookseller suffixing.  Again let us know what you think.

(Advanced) Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition is now out so check it out (here’s a link to my other blog entry where i was getting excited about fourth edition coming out and the bargains that were up for grabs on the players handbook and dungeon masters guidebook (and monster manual …)).  Reviews seem to be either really positive or really negative, so make up your own mind (personally i rather like it and it’s probably my favourite since 3rd edition came out).

There are also more region zero/0 (aka ABC or region-free) Blu-rays up for grabs and some of the prices of the imports are significantly better than the European versions.

Let us know what you think and happy Eweliking!

Sorry to do this but there are a few of us that just love D&D (ahem AD&D I suppose as we all remember first edition…) and we’ve been aching for fourth edition (yes that’s slightly weird accounting as we had Edition 3.5 a few years back) to come out.

Well, Wizards of the Coast are publishing the core books imminently and Ewelike has some bargains for you (and me).

4th Edition Gift Set of Core Rulebooks (Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Manual) - RRP is £59.99 but Amazon.co.uk has it for £35, buy from the US (Amazon.com for example) and it’s yours for just £30. I think you can guess where i’m getting mine

If you prefer them seperately then;

4th Edition Players Handbook (Core) - RRP 19.99, but £11 from the US and from £13.50 in the UK

Dungeon Masters Guide (4th Edition) (Core) - RRP 19.99 but available for again around £11 from Amazon in the US and £13 from the UK’s Amazon respectively.

4th Edition Monster Manual Hardback (Core) is the same prices as above (Amazon UK Amazon US

Forgotten Realms (the campaign setting’s guide book) is also being updated and the good news is that Ed Greenwood continues to be involved (I have to say i’m looking forward to this one a LOT!) - RRP £22.99 and available anywhere from £15 in the UK.

Need an adventure to see the basic rules in action? H1 - Keep on the Shadowfell - seems to be relatively well reviewed (and what the hell i ordered a copy anyway just so i could get an easy start with the new rules).

If you’re wondering why there are no reviews then that’s an easy answer: they’re not released yet!

You’re probably thinking: “I want to support my local hobby retailer”, well that’s something I can completely understand and if you feel that way (and you have a local retailer) then go for it. However, if you’re going to buy it online (or at these prices you feel compelled to buy the core books online and support your local shop by buying the more niche material) then we hope we can help.

Now i’m just praying that they update and re-release the Planescape setting (and maybe SpellJammer? I seriously doubt it though ). Of course once 4th Edition is out then i’m sure some of you will want to buy the older 3rd (ahem… 3.5th Edition) books as they’ll likely be discounted and available very cheap via second hand booksellers on Ewelike

If you want to view the list of Dungeons and Dragons products then you can use the Dungeons and Dragons Category to help you find it

Oh and one last thing… if you’re a small retailer and you want us to show your prices then contact us and let us know. We’re always flexible and we want to support the Role Playing game (and wargame and adult boardgame) markets (we’re geeks after all).

A quick clarification for you blu-ray users out there.  We’ve been using the term ‘Region Unlocked Blu-ray” and some users prefer it as ‘Region Free Blu-ray‘ or even ‘Region Zero / 0 Blu-ray‘…

We need to find out what’s clearest for you, so please let us know…

Until then if you’re a fan of cheap Blu-ray discs then this is the page you want: Region Free / Region Zero / Region 0 / Region ABC Blu-ray / Bluray 

And if you still don’t understand the Region Coding for Blu-ray then hopefully our guide should help (but if not then i’m sure you’ll let us know )

You told us, and we listened: Ewelike was too slow for some of you so we’ve moved our hosting and we’re now running off some swanky new hardware.

This should improve everybody’s response times and allow better scalability when we’re under load.  Hopefully you’ll all like it!

We’re still bedding the new servers in, so let us know if you hit any snags or problems

Any comments, suggestions, questions then please let us know!

Hello all,

We mentioned a few weeks ago that we were trying to provide a function so that you blu-ray fans could easily find region free blu-ray discs and buy them inexpensively, well beta version 1 is up and running!

Take a look at our list of region free blu-ray discs and tell us what you think.  If there are any incorrect entries in there then we want to know, and if you know of other discs that are region free then please let us know.

At the moment we’re showing the region free bluray discs in our standard layout - let us know if you think it would be easier to use in a different format.

Hope it helps (PS: if you don’t understand what Blu-ray is then see our Blu-ray guide or see our region coding guide if you need a refresher on Blu-ray Region Coding).