MYSTERIES in PARADISE

19 January 2011

Getting started with e-books

I came across this great graphic today - check it out in full size if you can

These links to e-books posts might also be of interest:

18 January 2011

Taking Advantage of Your Kindle

I've my Kindle2 now for nearly 18 months and I have a few tips to pass on.
I'm presuming that these also hold good for the latest, the Kindle3.

These are features that I use a lot.

Collections/categories

Organising your books into collections is far better than listing your books in alphabetical order of title or author, or by "most recent."
Straight lists make it hard to find books and to know what you've read and what you haven't read.

Each book goes into just one collection on my Kindle.

Here are some of the collections I have.

now reading - one book goes into here
TBRN - to be read next, for those books I really have to tackle soon
special collections such as - historical, vintage, British, Nordic, global reading challenge, Agatha Christie, review books
completed - as I complete reading a book I move it into here and remove it from all other collections
TBR - any book not in another collection goes into here

How to do it

Sound

Somewhere I read just recently a suggestion that if you were anxious to finish a book on your Kindle but were unable to use your eyes, e.g. when you are driving the car, then you could use the Text-reader and listen.

Not all books come with a text-reader option - apparently that is something the publisher had to agree to - and if you can turn it on, it is a computer-generated voice. As you listen it auto-turns the page.

Still, it is not bad. You can plug some head phones in and listen too. If the volume is a bit low, there is a regulator on the right hand side of the Kindle. Be aware that it will run the battery down more qucikly.

Notes, Highlights and BookMarks

I have begun using my notes and bookmarks when I create my book reviews.
You can highlight bits of text you want to include in your book review and add notes too.
When you read them over they serve to remind you of salient parts of the story.

When you connect your Kindle to your computer, it is treated as an extra drive.
Look for My Clippings. This is a text file and you can open it with a simple word processor like Notepad.
The highlights and notes from your most recent book will be at the end of the document.
I select the text I want and then transfer it into another text document and then manipulate it from there.
Check my most recent review, and you'll see how I used a bit of text that I had stored in my highlights.

So I hope these pointers are handy.

17 January 2011

Crime Fiction Alphabet 2011 - Letter B - week begins 17 Jan 2011

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

We got off to a cracking start last week with the letter A, with a great mixture of contributions.

This week's letter is the letter B:

Here are the rules

By Friday of each week you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.
[Those who intend to participate regularly have signed up here.]

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname.
So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.
(It is ok too to skip a week.)
Link your post for the week back to this page.

After your post is published, put a link to your actual blog post in the Mr Linky that appears below.
(leave a comment if Mr Linky has disappeared)

Then come back at the end of the week to check to see who else has posted and visit their blog (and leave a comment if you can).

Please check each Monday for the letter of the week (a letter image will be supplied that you can use in your post as well as the meme icon if you wish).

Letters already covered: A

Thanks for participating.

16 January 2011

Review: THE PERICLES COMMISSION, Gary Corby

Publisher: Penguin Group Australia 2010
ISBN : 978-0-14-320591-3
322 pages
Source: Local Library

Publisher's blurb:

Athens, 461BC. A dead man falls from the sky, landing at the feet of a surprised Nicolaos.
It doesn't normally rain corpses. This one is the politician Ephialtes, who only days before had turned Athens into a democracy.
Rising young statesman Pericles commissions Nicolaos to find the assassin. Nico walks the mean streets of Classical Athens in search of a killer, but what's really on his mind is how to get closer - much closer - to Diotima, an intelligent and annoyingly virgin priestess, and how to shake off his irritating twelve year old brother, Socrates . . .

My take:
This novel had me hooked from the beginning.
How could I resist this opening paragraph?

A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thud. I stopped and stood there like a fool, astonished to see him lying where I was about to step. He lay facedown in the dirt, arms spread wide, with an arrow protruding out of his back. He'd been shot through the heart.

Nicolaos recognises the body as Ephialtes, the man who had brought full democracy to Athens. He doesn't however recognise the man who turns the body over, Pericles, part of Athenian aristocracy. Pericles is convinced that his friend and mentor Ephialtes has been murdered at the instigation of the Council of the Areopagus whom he had taken power from.

Nicolaos is just twenty, just finished ephebe training, and not really the best person Pericles could have chosen to investigate the death of his friend, but the two seem to hit it off right from the beginning. Athens has no police force (really a modern phenomenon) and such investigations are usually undertaken by families or tribal districts. And so Nicolaos begins his political education, finding out how the Athenian city state really works.

In the blurb on the back cover Kelli Stanley calls THE PERICLES COMMISSION "a rollicking romp" and I enjoyed both that aspect and the detailed background of Athenian history, from the "Timeline to Democracy" and the list of "actors" in the opening pages, to the thoughtfully provided Glossary at the end. In the Author's Note at the end Gary Corby says "Perhaps the greatest joy of writing a book like this is interweaving fiction into the fabric of truth" and I think he does that very well.

This is Gary Corby's debut novel, seemingly at least to have a sequel, if the implications of the final pages come to fruition.

My rating: 4.4

About the author:
Gary Corby has long been fascinated by ancient history, finding it more exciting and bizarre than any modern thriller. He's combined the ancient world with his love of whodunits, to create an historical mystery series set in Classical Greece. Gary lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and two daughters. He blogs at A Dead Man Fell From The Sky, on all things ancient, Athenian, and mysterious.

I debated with myself for quite a while about which of my "challenges" I would count this novel against.
I have decided on

2011 Global Reading Challenge: 7th continent
Cruisin' thru Cosies Reading Challenge: perhaps this is the most doubtful but Nicolaos is after all an amateur
Aussie Author Challenge: in fact this is my first Australian author for the year
Historical Fiction Challenge

Sunday Salon - 16 Jan 2010 - is your course charted?

Do you have a reading strategy for 2011, or are you a free spirit, floating where the breeze takes you?
I'm afraid I'm in grave danger of becoming far too organised - but I find it is a matter of juggling the books on hand, and those I want to read.

One of my serious New Year plans is to deal somehow with the piles of unread books both of the made-from-paper kind and the e-books lurking on my Kindle.
I want these piles reduced, but the Kindle makes it so easy to buy more, the library to borrow more, and still more come through the post.

In reality I read about 3, maybe 4, books a week in a good week. So far I've managed 10 for 2011 but that is a pace I am unlikely to be able to maintain, despite the fact that I have some extended travel coming up later in the year (14 hour flights to and from Abu Dhabi are good for reading!).

Hence the lists. You'll see them everywhere on this blog (look for TBRN in the column to the right), and then there are the printed ones around the house, with the library books etc so I can read things in order. I have spreadsheets too that help me keep track of reading challenges I've committed to. Part of the reason for the commitment though is to try to "use up" some of the TBR.

This week on MiP will see Crime Fiction Alphabet - the letter B, and the first 2011 edition of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Blog Carnival

Featured posts:

Posts this week:

News & Headlines:

TBRN (To Be Read Next)

now - THE PERICLES COMMISSION, Gary Corby
then - BURY YOUR DEAD, Louise Penny
now on Kindle - PRIME CUT, Alan Carter
next on Kindle - OPERATION NAPOLEON, Arnaldur Indridason
next on audio STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG , Kate Atkinson
then on audio - DIED IN THE WOOL, Ngaio Marsh
next Agatha Christie - DEATH ON THE NILE

15 January 2011

Weekly Geeks: 2011-2: Crime Fiction awards that matter to me

This week's Weekly Geeks post used the recent American Library Association awards as it's starting point.

I thought I'd base my post on awards that I watch annually.
These are all crime fiction awards and I find their longlists, shortlists, and winners useful for indications of books to look out for.
Sometimes I participate with others in reading books on the shortlists and trying to predict winners.

I won't cover them all here but here are some. I've taken some from my various blog posts last year:

Australasia

Ned Kelly Awards: this is Australia's premier recognition of crime fiction and last year I blogged about the longlist, the shortlist, and the winners. The Ned Kelly awards are usually given out at Melbourne Writer's Festival in August.
Australia's Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards: These awards are for Australian female crime fiction writers and are again handed out during the Melbourne Writer's Festival
Ngaio Marsh Award - last year saw the creation of the initial Ngaio Marsh Award for excellence in New Zealand crime fiction.
2010 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards Shortlist

British Awards

US Awards

Others of interest

Review: OUR LADY OF PAIN, Elena Forbes - audio

UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK

Our Lady of Pain

By Elena Forbes
Narrated by Ric Jerrom
Length:12 hrs and 18 mins
Release Date:05-15-09
Published in paper in 2008
#2 in the Mark Tartaglia series
Source: I purchased it from Audible.com

This is the first I've read of Elena Forbe's titles, and I'm very impressed.

OUR LADY OF PAIN downloads from Audible in 2 parts and in the first part comes across as a fairly conventional police procedural with the officer in charge of the investigation a careful and meticulous detective who believes in taking every possible step to accumulate evidence.The crime at first appears to be a stand-alone and they focus on establishing on events happening in the 12 or so hours prior to the victim's death.

As a reader/listener you begin to wonder what on earth can happen in the second part to extend the novel for a further 6 hours of listening. And then new evidence comes forward, and the investigation heads off in a different direction, and the original crime seems to recede into the shadows.

Very enjoyable reading and listening. My rating 4.5

Read another review at Petrona.

I'm "counting" this in the British Books Challenge