What a week! I won’t bore you with the details, just know that Murphy’s Law ruled my life this week.

There are only 2 days left to go in the running to win my first Aussie Author Give Away so hurry and enter to win one of two great Aussie crime novels.

Don’t forget that Book Blogger Appreciation Week starts tomorrow. You should have already voted for your favourite blogs in the various award categories (and if you haven’t it’s too late now) but there are many other ways you can participate in the week’s activities and say thanks to the book bloggers that make your world a more bookish place.

This week (starting today in fact) is also Agatha Christie week.  As part of festivities Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting a Christie blog tour all week (my contribution is scheduled for tomorrow).

Books Then and Now

Regular readers will see that I haven’t reviewed a single book this week which is a rarity for me. I have actually finished two books (Ligny’s Lake and Death on the Nile) but they’re both the subject of posts which are due on specific days next week so you’ll have to wait for my opinions (how on earth will you sleep?).

I have partly-finished books all over the place, most of which I hope to finish soon. All except the one I slammed on the desk of the Nurse Ratched I came across at a local aged care facility. Thankfully it wasn’t a library book as it would have lessened the impact of my dramatic exit if I’d had to retrieve the thing.

Arrivals and Departures

Again I acquired more books than I managed to rid myself of this week. These are the four books that have a new home with me (the second one along is Fergus Hume’s Mystery of a Hansom Cab and was first published in 1886 though this is a new edition). I sent 2 books off to a new home with a fellow BookMooch member.

Link Fest

• According to the bloke who runs BookMooch Amazon is getting stricter on allowing use of its product database. Sites like BookMooch and Good Reads and the many others that use Amazon’s data might be forced to stop using the data or pay handsomely for the privilege. Amazon only wants its data used to promote the purchase of products via Amazon. Of course it’s Amazon’s right to set whatever rules it wants for its data but it won’t win them more customers.
• Scott Parker writes passionately about the joy to be obtained from audio books. As someone who has dreamt of having my own personal narrator on permanent stand-by I share his enthusiasm.
• Stephen Fry is (as always) (to me anyway) cleverly funny about book cover quotes from famous people such as himself
• At the Villa Rose has prepared a quiz for classic mystery enthusiasts. I love my crime fiction but didn’t score terribly well (in fact I only knew the answer to one of the 27 questions and only because one of my acquisitions this week was the right answer). But I am comfortable with my scope for improvement
• This article about what makes a publishable crime novel made me chuckle. Several successful authors were queried for advice and while much of it is not exclusively applicable to crime fiction writing, most of it does make sense. The bit that made me chuckle is that I read it shortly after hearing that James Patterson’s name will appear on 17 new books between now and 2012. If that doesn’t make a mockery of decent writing everywhere I don’t know what does.
• Page247 continued a discussion about Google Reader that I started here last Sunday. It was interesting to read other people’s thoughts about how RSS readers can make it easier to stop visiting blogs properly. In my case I wouldn’t visit blogs at all if it weren’t for my Google Reader account and I don’t mind if that’s all people do with my own blog (in fact I am chuffed anyone at all bothers to do even that given the staggeringly huge amount of content there is on the Net).

…and one more thing

When major companies release new versions of their software is it too much to ask that they do bit of product testing? Apple’s new version of iTunes released this week completely screwed with smart playlists containing non-music file formats (e.g. podcasts or audiobooks). So, instead of my regular Saturday morning walk listening to my favourite podcasts I spent 2 hours scouring the web to find a workaround to the bug. I pay a ridiculous amount of money for your shiny gadgets and musical bytes precisely so that the products you release are trustworthy Apple. So lift your damned game.