Sunday Salon - 7 Nov 2010 - the countdown begins

Once November starts the season of pageants, Christmas day planning, and present buying is upon us. There's now officially less than 7 weeks to go!

Today I've launched my version of Give Books for Christmas 2010. This meme invites you to add links to a "Mr Linky" for crime fiction books you've read or reviewed and have no hesitation in recommending to others, or to a page on your blog where you have a list of recommendations. My own suggestions for Give Books for Christmas 2009 were really just my best reads for the year.

If you'd like to participate in Give Books for Christmas 2010 just go to the post and add your recommendations.
Of course, if you are looking for crime fiction books to give, it will provide an invaluable source of information too.

This week also I've launched Smik's Crime Fiction Daily on paper.li. It is a sort of daily summary of some of the twitter posts I follow. It is divided up into section and each shows 3 stories but you will see a link to other stories in each section. You can subscribe for an alert to be emailed to you everyday. It is another way of learning about even more books to read.

Reviews posted this week:

• 4.4, MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA, Agatha Christie
• 4.5, THE BLOOD DETECTIVE, Dan Waddell 
• 4.3, ANARCHY and OLD DOGS, Colin Cotterill 
• 4.7, THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN, P.D. James  - audio

Other blog posts

• Weekly Geeks 2010-36 Readers Advisory
• Books to give for Christmas - crime fiction of course
• Historical Mysteries read this year
• Forgotten Books: DEADLY VARIATIONS, Paul Myers
• 2010 Global Reading Challenge - Update November 3
• Death by Books? - book "sculpture"
• What I read in October
• of neglectful grandmothers..
• 2010 Global Reading Challenge - Update November 1

 News & Headlines

• Hard Times: Crime Novels by Dennis Lehane, Reggie Nadelson, Jeffery Deaver and Andrea Camilleri - NYTimes.com
• New in crime fiction: A guide to the latest thrillers and mysteries
• VI Pepe Carvalho Prize: Andreu Martin
• Scott Nicholson Giveaway Kindle blog tour
• CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award 2010 - Winner
• Amazon US Top 10 Books: Mystery & Thrillers
• Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel: event details! 30 Nov.
• Top 10 Unsolved Missing-Person Cases
• A Twist of Noir - flash fiction
• 8 Body Parts Forensic Scientists Use to ID a Body

TBRN (To Be Read Next)

• now - LET THE DEAD LIE, Malla Nunn
• then - ACTS OF MURDER, Cassandra Mitchell/ Laurali R. Wright
• now on Kindle - CITY OF VEILS, Zoe Ferraris (Saudi Arabia)
• now on Audio - ALEXANDRIA, Lindsey Davis

To finish the Global Reading Challenge:
* HAVANA BLACK, Leonardo Padura (Cuba)
* BEAT NOT THE BONES, Charlotte Jay (New Guinea)
* BAIT, Nick Brownlee (Kenya) - Kindle

Just two weeks to the next edition of the Agatha Christie Blog Carnival.
The next edition will publish on November 23/24, so if you have a blog post about an Agatha Christie title that hasn't yet been part of the Carnival, I invite you to submit it here.
The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge  is one of those it is never too late to join. You can read the books in order of publication or just in the order you locate them.
Read at your own pace, write a review on your blog, go to the Carnival collecting space and put in the URL, your details, and a comment about the post.