3 August 2008

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.

5 comments:

Marg said...

I am not actually sure that there is any logic to what is going on with blogger at the moment!

Captcha is unfortunately a necessary evil when it comes to preventing spammers but it is annoying when it gets in the way of legitimate posters!

Kerrie said...

I've found too that they've turned the autosave off, so everytime I want to save my draft I have to decipher yet another captcha and when you get one wrong, your heart is in your mouth!

Anonymous said...

You are the third blogger that I've heard about with this problem. Someone needs to get to them and let them know that they are getting it wrong. A mass defection to another provider might do the trick.

Anonymous said...

I use Wordpress, so I don't have that particular problem. I have a Mt. TBR blogger acct for those blogs that don't allow the wordpress ID; my Blogger page is one entry that offers the link to my wordpress page.

As to the "fan novels", sequels by different authors, and using deceased celebrities... The new author still has to create a story that is original and well-written, so I don't feel it's plagerism. It's more of an "inspired by" story. I know a lot of the GWTW fans in the US are dying to get their hands on a copy of Scarlet, which is being blocked by the Mitchell family.

John (@bookdreamer) said...

I use http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/ which enables me to have time for key points around the worlds. When in forums its really useful to know what time it is for the others
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