bobblybear

I've just finished Blood, Sweat and Tea by Tom Reynolds. I usually read one fiction and one non-fiction at the same time, but I'm not sure which non-fiction to pick up. I have some 'paper' non-fiction that I could read, but since I've bought my Kindle I prefer reading ebooks. What to do...what to do?

Blood, Sweat and Tea: Real Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulance - Tom Reynolds I got this book free on my Kindle, otherwise I probably would not have bought it, being of the squeamish (yet still oddly curious ) type. As the title says, it is written by a London paramedic and is actually edited blog entries. Not bad, and certainly a bit of an eye-opener, but I would have preferred a bit more detail. 3/5

The Stand - Stephen King This is one of my favourite books of all time, and probably the one I have read and re-read most. You'd think after about 10 re-reads, there would be little left to keep me hooked, but I still loved it. It was good revisiting the old characters - Stu Redman, Larry Underwood, and the others - and the story which just never gets old. It's one of those books that I think my life would be a bit emptier if I'd never discovered it. M-O-O-N, that spells 'Great!', Laws yes!! 5/5

Finished The Stand. The last time I read it was about 3 years ago, so it was good to pick it up again. Still one of my favourites. Next on the list is The Hundred and Ninety Nine Steps by Michel Faber, which I got on Amazon for £1.

I have the clip in leather cover but I don't have any cracks in my Kindle, touch wood. I've been thinking of getting a new case, as the leather cover is quite irritating. It's heavy, and often keeps flipping closed when I'm reading. I have been taking it out of it's cover to read it, but now I'm worried that I might be weakening it. I think I may look for another case, like a slip-in one.

I'm still reading The Stand, though my reading has slowed down since my return to work. I've also been reading a blog-converted-into-a-book, that was free from Amazon called Blood, Sweat and Tea, about the work life of a London paramedic. Not bad, a pretty easy read.

Still on The Stand, and probably will be for a while given it's size. It's such a great book. Even after so many re-reads, I'm still completely hooked on it.

I really enjoyed this novel too. I hesitated before picking it up, because I didn't think I would like it, but it turned out to be one of the best reads of last year.

^ I think the software may be called Calibre. That is what I have anyway. It is a great little program which converts files from one format to another. I only have the non-free email address on my Manage Your Kindle page. Can you not try to use the free one anyway? It will simply be yourusername@free.kindle.com. The worst that can happen is that it will bounce back.

Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn A real surprise treat of a book is this one. I've never quite read anything as original and as linguistically clever. Briefly, the story tells of a little island (I think just off the coast of America), whose only claim to fame is that the creator (a chap called Nollop) of the sentence: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, lived there. They had built a statue with that sentence, in honour of him. Then one day, one of the letters falls from the statue. The Council members have a meeting, and decide it is Nollop contacting them from the grave urging them to stop using this letter immediately. So they pass a law banning use of this letter, but over time the other letters begin to drop, and their use is subsequently banned from the island. The book is told in a series of letters, so over the course of the novel, the letters become more and more..."interesting"...as these people attempt to communicate with fewer and fewer letters. It's only a short novel - probably 200 pages, but it packs a lot into those pages. 5/5

I think it's a shame. The story was written in a way that accurately reflected the times, and it should be preserved for that reason. Who is the publisher to make a decision to tamper with a classic novel like that?

Finished Ella Minnow Pea last night. Loved it, very original. Now I've kind of broken my rule about not re-reading anything for awhile, and I have started The Stand....again. I just can't help it. It's too good a read. I bought the Kindle version, however incredibly irritatingly, the formatting isn't up to scratch. There are no section breaks within the chapters, so it reads as though each chapter is one continuous section about the same characters. Very irritating. I will try to contact Amazon/the publishers about it

I'm still quite early on in the book, but am loving it so far. It's very original and clever, with a lot of play on words.

Finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and am now moving onto Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - JK Rowling I recall trying to read this book several years ago, when Harry Potter hype was in full swing, and I just couldn't get into it. This time around though, I really enjoyed it. I'm definitely going to read the others in the series, but I will try to space them out so I don't get sick of them. 4/5

Finished Bill Bryson's At Home, and currently cracking on with Harry Potter, which I hope to finish today.

At Home - Bill Bryson First one of the year, though technically I read more of it in 2010, than in 2011. I've been reading this one since July 2010, although I don't know why it has taken me so long to read it as it is one of the more compelling non-fiction books I've read in a while. If you have a curious mind and have an interest in useless bits of information, then this will probably be right up your alley. It covers vast amounts of information about the history of houses in England (more specifcally based on Bryson's old Church of England rectory), room by room, but goes off on so many wonderfully interesting tangents that it is really about anything to do with the way of life over the past couple of centuries. I was so overloaded with information - nearly every page holds some bit of fascinating trivia - that I wish I could remember a lot more than I actually do. I love Bill Bryson's books; there is always a bit of humour in there that give me a good chuckle every now and then. It makes me want to re-read A Short History of Nearly Everything, another one that I loved. 5/5

My top 5 would have to be: The Stand - Stephen King Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood The Hand That First Held Mine - Maggie O'Farrell The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak

I did the same; I bought all the Michel Faber books that were available for £1, aside from short stories. I've only read The Crimson Petal and the White by him, but it was good enough to get me hooked.

It should be something like username@free.kindle.com where your username is the first part of your email address that you use to sign into Amazon. Just make sure it has 'free' in the email address title, as the other one (username@kindle.com) has a charge linked to it, I think.

I'm going to make some sort of chicken dish using a Colman's BBQ mix, plus sauteed potatoes and onions (yum, but haven't made it in a while, so may screw it up ), and some greens. Just waiting for the chicken to defrost.

I vaguely recall the same thing happening to me with a Word document. Have you tried emailing it to your free kindle email address, and picking up the document from there? I think that's how I got around it.

Have picked up At Home by Bill Bryson again. So fascinating.

January At Home - Bill Bryson Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - JK Rowling Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn The Stand - Stephen King Blood, Sweat and Tea - Tom Reynolds The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps - Michel Faber Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling Winnie-The-Pooh - A.A.Milne The Fire Gospel - Michel Faber February Room - Emma Donoghue The Zombie Survival Handbook - Max Brooks Flowers In The Attic - VC Andrews Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde March Ice Station - Matthew Reilly The Rembrandt Secret - Alex Connor Ubik - Philip K Dick The Help - Kathryn Stockett Truth Dare Kill - Gordon Ferris April IT - Stephen King Affluenza - Clive Hamilton A is for Alibi - Sue Grafton May The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver (Unfinished) The Checkout Girl - Tazeen Ahmad The General's Daughter - Nelson DeMille June Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling The Redbreast - Jo Nesbo The Business of Dying - Simon Kernick Mindhunter - John Douglas July The Hobbit - JR Tolkien Watchers - Dean Koontz The Brotherhood of the Rose - David Morrell The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins Holes - Louis Sachar The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafron Shadow - Michael Morpurgo August Before I Go To Sleep - SJ Watson A Kiss Before Dying - Ira Levin The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien September Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins The Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger - Stephen King After You'd Gone - Maggie O'Farrell Swan Song - Robert McCammon October Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins Red Leaves - Thomas H Cook A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson Eleven - Mark Watson Into The Darkest Corner - Elizabeth Haynes A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling November The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde 11/22/63 - Stephen King December The Divide - Nicholas Evans A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro Florence and Giles - John Harding Last Light - Alex Scarrow Salem's Lot - Stephen King

It depends how long I'm stopping for. If it's for the night, then I try to get to the end of a chapter or section. If I'm stopping for half an hour to go do something else, then I'll happily stop anywhere.