Reading Random Books

I used to be an avid reader but it's something I lost with my stroke. I've recently been trying, not for the first time, to read more more books and a combination of discoveries has helped.

The first was If This Then That which lets you do stuff across web sites, so it tests something on one site and then does something on another, just like its name. The About IFTT explains this a lot better.

One of the cute things about IFTTT is that you can share recipes and one that someone has shared monitors an Amazon RSS feed which lists Amazon's current top 10 free e-books and emails you whenever a new one appears.

These aren't the usual self published dross, they seem to be an attempt at marketing, so Amazon give away one book by an author for a while in the hope that you will like it and then buy others by the same author, or they give it away for a while in the hope that you will then recommend it to friends by which time it'll have a price again.

The books that end up in the top 10 generally seem to fall into one of two categories: chick lit/romance¹ and crime/thrillers but there are the odd exceptions.

Having said that what got me started was Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor. I started it on a day that it was too bloody hot to think, let alone work, and I'd finished it by the end of the day.

It's a long while since I've read a book that way.

If it helps the style reminds me of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels and it's about time travel (so whatever you do don't think too hard about the plot - see also Looper).

And I've since been reading other books, mainly crime/thriller but there's been the odd exception like Village Books by Craig McLay (I see that one is now no longer free) which I'm reading at the moment and is, thus far, a romance for men.

I think.

Well, mainly.

Ask me again later.

I like this way of finding new things to read. It reminds me of the days when I used to often discover new books just by visiting the "three for the price of two" promotion at the book shop I was browsing in. Only this is better because it's free.

Which only leaves the one remaining problem which is that I don't own a Kindle. That's not the end of the world though: I do own a Nexus 7 and there's a good Kindle app on that.

It's also true that, with a little, ahem, jiggery pokery² it's possible to convert most Kindle books to DRM free EPUB which means I can then read them on my Sony PRS-350 e-book reader, which is preferable when I'm away and power is in short supply ... which it has been for the last two weekends and will be again soon.

1. That's something of a broad church as far as I can tell from the plot summaries, varying from the general romance and chick lit end of things to soft porn "50 Shades" sadomasochism at the other.
2. There's a reasonably clear guide here which explains how to do it using a Calibre plug in, but you didn't hear that from me ;-)