Sunday Salon #20 - 3 August 2008

This week slipped by pretty easily and quickly with not a lot of reading done. My archive counter says I have created 260 posts in 210 days - that makes me a pretty prolific poster I think. July alone produced 41 of them.

The downside is that this morning I have discovered that Blogger thinks I may be a potential spammer and has put "captcha" on so that I have to type in a "word" in order to edit an old post. I saw reports from Reading Adventures that she had been locked out of her blog, and thought I was OK. Prolific posters beware! It took me 3 attempts to decipher the letters to be typed in, so I was probably close to being locked out. I am wondering if it has something to do with the fact that I frequently run the page in 2 windows to make it easier to do things like this Sunday Salon summary. Perhaps it relates to the fact that I have more one blog site.

This week's posts:
A couple of philosophical postings, new lists of potential prize winners, a competition and a promo, my first DNF for the year, and events to participate in if you are in Australia.

• Riding on the coat-tails, or plagiarism?
  If an author writes a sequel to a novel by a deceased author, or uses their characters, or includes in the novel "real' deceased (famous) people, how do you feel about what they are doing?
• Carnival of Criminal Minds #19
  The Carnival which has been at Mysteries in Paradise for the month of July, has moved on to another Australian location.
• Can you browse?
  I am my own worst enemy, just incapable of going into a bookshop or library without emerging with an armful.
• For Australians: Fathers Day Competition
  Hachette Livre has a competition where if you buy a book, or sneak into a bookstore and copy down a barcode or two, you can enter a competition for a Barossa Valley weekend, or consolation prizes of Peter Lehmann wines. You need to live in Oz though.
• Ned Kelly Shortlist - how well did we do?
  As predicters not very well at all really. But the main ones got through. Go Michael Robotham!
• Man Booker Prize Longlist
  Crime fiction makes it onto the list. Two Australian authors there too.
• REVIEW: THE QUIET GIRL by Peter Hoeg
  Disappointingly my first DNF for the year. I struggled to 200 pages, and then decided I really didn't know what was going on.
• Books Alive Australia 2008 - books & events
  A national literacy initiative sponsored by the Australian government. Buy a book at participating bookstores from the 50 listed books and you get a copy of a Michael Robotham mini-book. In addition there are events country wide many with Michael who is the Books Alive ambassador for 2008. On the Books Alive site, check when/if somebody is coming to your library or favourite book shop. Some events have already happened.

Currently reading:

• now - THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, Stieg Larsson
• next - WASH THIS BLOOD CLEAN FROM MY HANDS, Fred Vargas
• then - UNTIL IT'S OVER, Nicci French
• audio book - BENEATH THE BLEEDING, Val McDermid
  

Miscellaneous:

• I'm off to Darwin tomorrow morning for work for 4 days, and catching up with friend Sally tomorrow night.
• I added a widget from clock link to my sidebar this week , so you can not only see where South Australia is on a world map but also the time in around various world time zones. I first saw the clock over on Juliet's Muddy Island.